[sldev] Re: Questions on the particle system

[Strata R Chalup]

"Erik Anderson" <odysseus654 at gmail.com>  wrote:
>   Speaking as a random observer from the sidelines, it sounds
>   like what we need or are developing is something like the
>   psychoacoustic models that drive the heart of MP3 and make
>   it work so well...

I'm newly following the sldev list.  If folks aren't already using formal modeling for the particle effects in question, there may be value in looking at the academic modeling of effects.  It's a very mature effort that has done a lot of work on reducing computational overhead.

Early examples are James Blinn's work on modeling naturalistic effects via particle simulation.  I have drifted out of the SIGGRAPH community lo these many years, but still recall being blown away by the smoke, fire, and water effects he pioneered there in the mid-80's.  And it's only gotten better since then.

Szeliski and Tonnesen have been doing work on more efficient algorithms for some of these things, too.  Someday, perhaps, we'll stop uploading static textures for various things and call an algorithm library instead-- there's a great cite for particle-based modeling of fabric draping at http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=133994.134037 for instance.

cheers,
Strata / Maybear