I am trying to get started with particles for performances. In the future I would like to fancy stuff, like turning an actor into an emitter of fire-particles… stuff like that, or simply creating falling snowflakes. I know that this maybe is a little bit demanding for the beginning. The problem is I don’t know how to start, and with what. Is there any kind of learning path you could suggest to me? I’ve read through dottores Documentations and had a look at the library, but I don’t see how this helps me, to do stuff like that on my own, since I don’t speak HLSLish ;)
a good starting point would be building/understanding a particle patch based on a framedelay(value), like it is described in the beginning of dottores pdf. its nothing else then working with a loop, adding up values every frame and therefore create motion.
once you got this, you could try modify dottores ParticlesGPU_3d_Dynamic_PosCycle patch, its nothing else than a simple emitter. this could be attached to a hand coordinate coming from the kinect skeleton , for example.
for more indepth tweeking, a bit HLSL knowledge is useful. this can be gained by tweaking existing shader, try finding simple tasks,Pixelshader: like adding a alpha value to a shader if there isn’t any. Vertexhader: modulate the geometry with a sinewave function.
