Particle Engine tutorial?

[Auraomega]

Hi,

I'm looking for a good particle engine tutorial that uses C/++, or some heavy theory to cover how to create different effects. I've got my own pretty bog-standard engine in OGL but it fails with any real effects, and I can't think of how to make it do anything sexy, like fire

 

[NickK]

Check out the new initiatives around OpenCL and GPGPU.

2D or 3D fire?

Fire is a different thing to just particles and to really get it good requires an understanding of thermodynamics (fluid dynamics with thermal and possibly compressible mediums with different densities).

At this point your poor CPU is about to run to the hills and hide. You'll want a bit more oomph - have a look at OpenCL, gpgpu.org and books like GPU Gems which discuss techniques.

 

[Auraomega]

3D preferably. I was always led to believe that fire was based off of particle engines just with different effects on the particle? I asked for some theory or a tutorial so I could understand how one was designed and what I'd need to learn in order to make my own. Surely though, if my CPU can handle fire in older games like Painkiller and what not, I'll be able to make something that doesn't make my CPU weep

 

[dangerstat]

You could check out the smoke particles example that comes with the CUDA SDK if you using a NV card. Looks pretty neat: