continued_at_new_forum The Wingnut Chronicles

[Dad72]

pretty colors...   It's almost a fireworks. 

[GameMonetize]

That's freaking good!!

[Stephen Andrews]

Can't.... look.... away....

[Wingnut]

haha!  TriBlade ... I had that very same problem.  I couldn't stop watching it. 

 

See, that's the power of faery dust, rumor has it.  If you get dusted by a faery, you go all goofy (mesmerized).  Personally, I have not had the honor of being in a faery tale, but I've talked to folks who got dusted, and they were never the same. 

 

Thanks for the kind comments, everyone.  Credit goes to the author of our particle system, of course.  It is a high performance son-of-a-gun, and a pleasure to mess-with.  I wish my snowblower had as much emitting power.

[Stephen Andrews]

haha!  TriBlade ... I had that very same problem.  I couldn't stop watching it. 

 

See, that's the power of faery dust, rumor has it.  If you get dusted by a faery, you go all goofy (mesmerized).  Personally, I have not had the honor of being in a faery tale, but I've talked to folks who got dusted, and they were never the same. 

 

Thanks for the kind comments, everyone.  Credit goes to the author of our particle system, of course.  It is a high performance son-of-a-gun, and a pleasure to mess-with.  I wish my snowblower had as much emitting power.

Congratulations. At least you *know* some people who have been in faery tales.

[Wingnut]

I like how you roll with my stupid humor attempts, tb9.  I have a feeling that you are every bit as goofy as I.  Are you really in Shanghai, China, TriBlade?  There's something tasty about that!  I feel like a ham radio nut with QSL card excitement (something from far in my past).  Sigh.  Chatting with China!  Coooool.

 

Moving right along...

 

Hi gang!  Here's another particleDemo if anyone is bored.  The emitters and camera animate function is near the top, easy to adjust and hit RUN again, for experimenting.

 

This demo and a similar one were used to compare CREATING 4 particleSystems... versus CLONING 3 particle systems from a single created one.  Performance of particles looks about the same with both methods, but I have no exact frame rate comparisons.  This demo uses cloned particle systems with cloned box emitters, too.

 

I went reading about WebWorkers and thought about the possibility of putting each particleSystem on a separate worker thread.  I abandoned that idea, but it was an interesting thing to read about.

 

Nothing overly exciting here, but you can disable the camera rotation, and make the emitters rotate in different directions and at different speeds.  That causes pretty patterns.  Party on!

 

"sparticle" - a sparkly particle?    Maybe we've invented a word!

[joshcamas]

The linky doesn't seem to work for me... D:

[Stephen Andrews]

I like how you roll with my stupid humor attempts, tb9.  I have a feeling that you are every bit as goofy as I.  Are you really in Shanghai, China, TriBlade?  There's something tasty about that!  I feel like a ham radio nut with QSL card excitement (something from far in my past).  Sigh.  Chatting with China!  Coooool.

 

Moving right along...

...

"sparticle" - a sparkly particle?    Maybe we've invented a word!

Imagine how the world would be without humor. :C

... Oh, wait, we'd actually get things done then.

 

And yeah, I'm American (USA'ian), but am currently working in Shanghai. Nothing like lurking through forums while everyone else is sleeping.

 

Your demos have a unique addictive property. You might want to set up a support group or something to help those affected by them.

 

THIS IS SPARTICLE!!!

 

EDIT: Here's a variation on your sparkly particles allowing you to limit the colors in a range. Forgive me for preferring arrays over Babylon's Color4. It just seems faster.

[Wingnut]

Hi again, friends!

    Well here we go with yet another demo, but this time, I am studying mirrors (reflectionTextures), and it's a whole lot of fun, as usual.

 

The other day, I accidentally asked myself "I wonder what happens when mirrors go transparent?  Do they still reflect things?"

 

Well, the answer is... no.  In this demo (somewhat stolen from the playground scene for our Advanced Texturing tutorial), we see three bump and diffuse textured spheres, floating in the midst of three boundingBoxed mirrors.  The two upright mirrors in the back, are phasing between alpha ON and alpha OFF (actually between -.5 and +1.5 alpha to give us some time to see things better).

 

There are rotating boxes behind each upright mirror, and as you can easily see, when the mirrors go transparent, they lose their reflecting abilities, and show the rotating boxes.  As the mirrors go opaque again, they regain their reflecting abilities and the boxes disappear from view.

 

A strange demo indeed, but I needed to see it happen, and it's working just as it should.  The only non-real phenomena found... is that a mirror cannot reflect another mirror's image (apparently).  But I only tried it once, so I could be wrong.  Can a mirror reflect the dynamicTextured plane that is delivering the alpha numbers to screen?  No.  But again, I have just barely begun my experiments with mirrors, so I have lots yet to learn.

 

It's a messy playground, just like most of my other playgrounds.  Grab a zip for home experimenting, or do some adjustings and hit RUN again.  Report your discoveries.

 

You ask if mirrors can reflect "sparticles"?  Can you put all their names into a mirror's .renderList?    You'll be busy.  Party on!

[GameMonetize]

mirrors can reflect particules as long as the emitter is in the renderList

[Wingnut]

Thanks DK!  Whelp, every proper mad scientist has to test it, and I am no different.  So, here it is, one sparticle sprayer and three mirrors.  A reminder, sparticles = sparkly particles, gotten via a custom _update() function that is put onto a standard Babylon.js particleSystem (see the code in the editor).

 

I learned one uniquely-interesting thing while making this demo.  You must set the particleSystem emitter to invisible, or the particles will not show in the mirrors (but the emitters will). 

 

[update: Particle emitters no longer need to be invisible... to have their particles be visually reflected.]

31. emitter0.isVisible = false;

Sparkly particles in mirrors.  How fun!  If it weren't for mirrors needing a plane...

42. mirrorMaterial1.reflectionTexture.mirrorPlane = new BABYLON.Plane(0, -1.0, 0, -5.0);

... I might try to climb inside of a 16-subdivided reflectionTextured sphere with a sparticle sprayer.  Can you imagine what a light show THAT would be?  A fireworks show on the inside of an inside-out mirror ball. (see disco era.)

 

Babylon.js mirrors seem to work GREAT, and I might not be able to recover from all this FUN!  You know as well as I do... that mirror play can get out of hand, and we certainly have all the tools we need to go mirror crazy, eh?  *nod*  Party on!

[Stephen Andrews]

On 12/4/2014 at 10:11 PM, Wingnut said:

Thanks DK!  Whelp, every proper mad scientist has to test it, and I am no different.  So, here it is, one sparticle sprayer and three mirrors.  A reminder, sparticles = sparkly particles, gotten via a custom _update() function that is put onto a standard Babylon.js particleSystem (see the code in the editor).

 

I learned one uniquely-interesting thing while making this demo.  You must set the particleSystem emitter to invisible, or the particles will not show in the mirrors (but the emitters will).

31. emitter0.isVisible = false;

Sparkly particles in mirrors.  How fun!  If it weren't for mirrors needing a plane...

42. mirrorMaterial1.reflectionTexture.mirrorPlane = new BABYLON.Plane(0, -1.0, 0, -5.0);

... I might try to climb inside of a 16-subdivided reflectionTextured sphere with a sparticle sprayer.  Can you imagine what a light show THAT would be?  A fireworks show on the inside of an inside-out mirror ball. (see disco era.)

 

Babylon.js mirrors seem to work GREAT, and I may not be able to recover from all this FUN!  You know as well as I do... that mirror play can get out of hand, and we certainly have all the tools we need to go mirror crazy, eh?  *nod*  Party on!

Disco ball eh? That gives me some ideas...

[GameMonetize]

emitter0.isVisible = false; is no longer required. It was an awfulllll bug due to the next caching engine

[Wingnut]

Yeah, sorry, DK.  I am late to the plate.  Thanks for the bug fix!  And quick, too!  cooooool!

 

Let's show a fresh demo!  Here, the emitters are visible, and the particles are reflecting just fine, now.  In the new demo, I am not using a custom _update function (and thus, non-sparkly).  But, it's still super-colorful because of some sneaky things I did inside the animate function.  I'll let everyone discover it themselves.

 

It sure is beautiful... and easy.  sigh.

 

Make sure you do a unconditional reload (no cache/clear cache) for the fresh demo... so you get the fresh bug-fixed playground files.  You should see 4 pretty particle fountains coming from 4 rotating blue boxes.  (control-shift-r in firefox)

 

The ending part of that url... is "#1RLFUN".  #1 Real Fun is absolutely correct. 

 

Real Life Fun?  Reflection Land FUN?  *shrug*

[Wingnut]

Hi again!  I had to try another one (of course).  There is one other Babylon.js system that can use a mesh as an "emitter", and that is... yep, the beloved Lens Flare System.  (oh no!)

 

So, I turned one on (respectfully) in the midst of all this other mess that we have been making.  It uses orbiting emitter1, and emitter1 was added to each mirror's .renderList, just like the particle emitter0.

 

Conclusion: Apparently, lens flares do not reflect in mirrors. 

 

I know, I know, lens flares are not "real" mesh... but particles are, so I can understand why lens flares wouldn't reflect.  But still, I needed to try it... because I'm demented. 

[Stephen Andrews]

That looks rather Christmas-y for some reason Wingnut. 'Tis the season to be testing!

 

Also, Babylon has Lens Flares?!

[GameMonetize]

https://github.com/BabylonJS/Babylon.js/wiki/How-to-use-lens-flares

[Stephen Andrews]

https://github.com/BabylonJS/Babylon.js/wiki/How-to-use-lens-flares

Awesome

[Wingnut]

Speaking of Christmas (for those it applies-to), here we go again.  (thanks a lot, Stephen!) 

 

Help, I'm addicted to particles and mirrors!!! 

 

I don't know if this demo will look correct for others, as it took some serious micro-adjustments to get the particle lifeTimes and emit angles set, and numerous other hassles popped-up.  I wanted to avoid any particles being inside the cone, and therefore, all the emitters are rotating around their Y axes, with very careful emitPower, direction, and emitBox settings.  They needed to be tweaked carefully so that the particles would track along the outside of the cone taper.  Your mileage may vary.

 

Another one, you say?  Fine.  One thing I have not yet tried... is long-scaling a particleSystem emitter on one of its axis, to see if particles could be emitted along an "emitter bar".  The demo works fine and looks strange.  And if a mad scientist had 3 of those emitter bars parented to a single gizmo, that would be weird.  Party on!

[Stephen Andrews]

Speaking of Christmas (for those it applies-to), here we go again.  (thanks a lot, Stephen!) 

 

Help, I'm addicted to particles and mirrors!!! 

 

I don't know if this demo will look correct for others, as it took some serious micro-adjustments to get the particle lifeTimes and emit angles set, and numerous other hassles popped-up.  I wanted to avoid any particles being inside the cone, and therefore, all the emitters are rotating around their Y axes, with very careful emitPower, direction, and emitBox settings.  They needed to be tweaked carefully so that the particles would track along the outside of the cone taper.  Your mileage may vary.    Party on!

That looks absolutely sweet! You ought to spice it up and make it a seasonal BJS demo.

The emitters work fine, everything seems to be in place. The snow is an excellent touch.

 

It's rather trippy to view it from the top though. xD

[joshcamas]

Dang that is sooo cool!

[Wingnut]

Hi gang!  13 December is the one year anniversary of The Wingnut Chronicles thread.  18490 views, 423 replies.  (Mostly me)    Great numbers, though.  It is a shining example of just how much I can talk! 

 

 

Thanks to all the commentors!  Thanks to http://www.html5gamedevs.com!  See you here again for the 2015 anniversary!  Party On!

[Dad72]

I confirm  , you write a lot, a lot  . When will you publish a book on Babylon  . You do one in English and me in French. 

[Vousk-prod.]

Hey happy birthday unc' Winggy's thread !!

[Stephen Andrews]

Happy Birfdai!