Has anyone other than JCD done a particle system in xith?? If so can you share the code or reference a webstart example??
JCD’s code is open isn’t it? Have you checked it out?
A basic particle system could consist of alpha-textured billboarded quads in TransformGroups. I would think that particle system theory for raw OpenGL could be applied to Xith3D fairly easily.
Will.
yea his code is open, but he does something to push the particles to the foreground which seems to involve some kinda matrix manip’s…not my strong point. I was also hoping for someting less cpu intense…time to search the web…
The matrix operation is used to billboard the particles. JCD effectively transforms one quad (four vertices) so that it is parallel to the view plane and then makes all over particle quads relative to the transformed one. Very nice. Matrix multiplications are not that expensive, and only one is required per frame rendering for the entire particle system.
hes such a show off 
LOL top stuff.
thanx for the info, the matrix op was not the performance part I was concerned about, it was the whole process of generating, moving, killing the paarticles.
i really don’t want to use an animated gif, or some pre calc’d set of textures. I wonder if a 2d image of particles. with alpha transparency, wrapped around a cylinder might work…hmmmm. I will remove the call to the billboarding and see if things are nicer. As it is the pariticles always appeared in front of any other obj…time to try it…
Definitally not a good idea to have hundreds of billboards. Have you ever looked at the billboard code?
Will.