CODEWITHSUNDEEP
swiftsystemscenekitparticles
Alec Firtulescu
Alec Firtulescu

Reputation: 553

Creating an explode particle system in SceneKit

I want to create an explosion particle system, but I'm not sure how can I do it. I was thinking create a fire particle system with emitter shape being an Sphere and after that just increasing sphere radius, but I don't know how can I animate it's size. Does anyone tell me how can I do that? Or does anyone have a better idea?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 1454

Answers (1)

Confused
Confused

Reputation: 6278

Emitter systems for particles are setting initial particle directions, and the rate they'll move at. That's generally how a visual representation of an explosion is created.

So rather than increasing the size of the emitter source to present an explosion, the dissemination of the particles in an outward direction creates the appearance of an explosion.

You're not limited to one batch of particles, nor one type of particles, nor just one emitter. The best explosions are a highly complex layering of different particle types with different textures, coming from different emitters at differing rates, with differing rates of decay, spin rates, colour changes and falloff in both transparency and movement speed.

Making a truly great looking explosion is a real art form and will often take a good designer days to do with a GUI and constant real time playback, especially when trying to minimise the use of textures, quads, blends, fillrate and physics.

Here's a video from Unreal Engine, wherein similar concepts and qualities as what's available in Scene Kit are used to teach the terminology. It's not a 1:1 parallel with the Scene Kit particle engine, but it's probably the best combination of visuals and simplistic explanations to help you rapidly understand what is possible and how to do it with particles.

//caveat: Unreal Engine probably has the best real time particle engine in the world at the moment, so it's a little more advanced than what's in Scene Kit.

But...the principles are essentially the same:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXK2Xbd7D9w

Upvotes: 1

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