Hydra Particle System update 13/10

Quick update on some of the things I missed in my last blog post!

[Collision]

Collision has now been implemented, you can choose between 3D and 2D collision modes for each emitter, select what the particles will collide with and the effect the collision will have on the particles. Video of 2D collision here.

[Emission Shape]

Shape emission has also been implemented, and we are currently in the process of adding and testing bezier curve emission. Users should be able to place and reposition points in the scene [or using the inspector] to create a shape of their choosing to emit from.  The curve can be a closed or open shape in the 3D space. Video here of bezier curve being used in the editor. We are also discussing the possibility of having particles emit/travel along the placed bezier curve.

[Texture Sheet Animation]

Particles can now be animated from a texture sheet, it gives the user the chance to be very precise when it comes to the look and development of specific particle effects, such as the smoke dispersion example above.

[Colours]

Though colours have been a part of the particle system for a while, the colour blending has now been completely rewritten. We previously had settings that were hardcoded such as colour-over-speed and colour-over-camera-proximity. Now you can control the order in which the colours are blended and layer them up. This also gives us the opportunity to add more modes at a later date. As you can see from the above screenshots [right] there is an expansive variety of colour blending options to choose from.

I have been testing the optimisation in our most recent version of Hydra Particles on my PC and can successfully have up to 2200 particles on the screen before the FPS begins to dip below 60. We have also had some testing done for us on Android platform with the following results:

Testing on a Samsung Galaxy S3 with APK v0.2.0

600 particles at 60FPS
900 particles at 60FPS
1200 particles at 35FPS
1500 particles at 25FPS
1800 particles at 20FPS
2100 particles at 15FPS

Between 600 and 1500 particles it runs pretty smooth, even when at 25FPS. Nevertheless for a mobile device 600 particles on screen are already a lot of particles, and at the current performance speed is truly top notch.

Surprisingly and contrary to what I was expecting, when activating the collider it doesn't slow down at all the performance.