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New Method for Rendering Particles Outlined

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the dust-in-the-wind dept.

Tomb Raider: Anniversary coder Mike Krazanowski has outlined a new method for rendering particles using pixel shaders and a little bit of math. "Although this method has been employed in games for many years, this article defines a method using shader technology to more physically represent these volumetric particles. This method will give a more accurate visual representation of the simulated volumes as well as potentially decreasing the necessary number of particles, which in turn will help to improve render performance. It should first be stated that the method defined in this article is limited to particles that represent volumes of sub-particles. It is also noted that the analysis that is to follow assumes a uniform density of the particles. There are methods that would allow the user to define more complex density functions, but that will not be covered here."

17 comments

  1. Contradiction or equivocation? by Hungus · · Score: 5, Funny

    New Method for Rendering Particles Outlined

    "Although this method has been employed in games for many years Slight contradiction or equivocation on the term "new"
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    1. Re:Contradiction or equivocation? by moderatorrater · · Score: 1

      TFA never even uses the word "new", so I'm guessing that it's an editing problem.

    2. Re:Contradiction or equivocation? by clem · · Score: 2, Funny

      Haven't you heard? "Old" is the new "new".

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    3. Re:Contradiction or equivocation? by UnderDark · · Score: 1

      Obviously, its a new instance of this rendering algorithm. They just have to remeber to delete it afterwards.

    4. Re:Contradiction or equivocation? by bsDaemon · · Score: 1

      I think they meant to use the term "retro" -- it's so old, its new again!

    5. Re:Contradiction or equivocation? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      TFA never even uses the word "new", so I'm guessing that it's an editor problem. There fixed that for ya..
    6. Re:Contradiction or equivocation? by archkittens · · Score: 1

      New Method for Rendering Particles Outlined

      "Although this method has been employed in games for many years Slight contradiction or equivocation on the term "new" nope, just bad writing.

      These volumes typically are simulated simply by determining how much contribution they present to the view using a simple blend function. This blend function defines how much the simulated volume of particles obscures the scene behind them. Although this method has been employed in games for many years, this article defines a method using shader technology to more physically represent these volumetric particles. This method will give a more accurate visual representation of the simulated volumes as well as potentially decreasing the necessary number of particles, which in turn will help to improve render performance.

    7. Re:Contradiction or equivocation? by neumayr · · Score: 2, Funny

      Why bother? RAM's cheap these days..

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    8. Re:Contradiction or equivocation? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      Read the article. From the snippet on slashdot, "this method" is referring to a previously mentioned method that was outlined in the article, and is not referring to the new one - which is the focus of the article.

  2. Bad Copy/Paste Job by Alzheimers · · Score: 2, Insightful

    RFTA.

    The line "Although this method..." is used to describe an unquoted review of previous methods for rendering particles.

    It has nothing to do with the new system, so please don't assume this is just the old rendering method wearing a new funny hat.

    1. Re:Bad Copy/Paste Job by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nobody said it was funny.

  3. How is this news? by UfoZ · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Soft/volumetric particles have been around for a long time now. The DirectX 10 sample implementing this technique is from June 2006. NVidia's whitepaper on it [1] is dated January 2007. Both of them offer a much better explanation than TFA with its crude ascii diagrams and wall of text (and having to click "next" a bunch of times, ugh).

    [1] http://developer.download.nvidia.com/whitepapers/2007/SDK10/SoftParticles_hi.pdf

  4. Not that new if I did it a year ago by TomorrowPlusX · · Score: 1

    I implemented this in OpenGL + GLSL a year ago ( April 2007 to be specific ). I got the idea from a paper dating to 2005 or so.

    Now, with that aside, it's awesome and easy to implement, so long as you have easy acces to a depth buffer, and the hardware to make use of it.

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  5. Slashdot is corrupt by hdon · · Score: 1

    Slashdot's listing of this article was bought and paid for. Gamasutra -> Money -> Slashdot -> Viewers -> Advertisements -> Money

    It's like printing your own money. I hate news aggregators with privileged editors (not that Digg is any better -- in fact it's worse.)

  6. Looks like... by MR.Mic · · Score: 0

    When I first looked at the result, I thought of the Afterburn particle rendering system. However Afterburn uses raymarching to render, which involves tracing rays through a procedurally generated volume at regular steps.