Working with Particles

raganmd

I love the use of particles in an Isadora patch, but learning how to take advantage of the 3D Particle actor can be a little tricky when you get started. If you've found yourself wanting to know more about how this actor works there are a few things to keep in mind.

We can start by looking at the 3D particle actor and working through a few important considerations to keep in mind when working with 3D particles in Isadora. One thing to remember is that when you're creating particles, the rendering system needs multiple attributes for each particle that you're generating (location in x, y, and z, velocity, scale, rotation, orientation, color, lifespan, and so on). To borrow a idiomatic convention from MaxMSP, you have to bang on these attributes for every particle that you create. There are a variety of methods for generating your bang, but for the sake of seeing some consistent particle generation I started by using a pulse generator. Pulse generators in Isadora are expressed in hertz (cycles per second), and when we're working with our particle system we'll frequently want a pulse generator to be attached at the front end of our triggers. To that end, we really want a single pulse generator to be driving as much of our particle generation as possible. This is to ensure all of our data about particle generation is synchronized, and to keep our system over head as low as possible.

For a fuller explanation take a look at my whole documentation set here:

[http://matthewragan.com/2013/04/24/soot-and-spit-particles-in-isadora/](http://blog.matthewragan.com/2013/04/soot-and-spit-particles-in-isadora.html)

Michel

Thanks for sharing raganmd.

raganmd

Thanks Michel. For all of the support, answers, and solutions I've seen here in the forums it only seemed right to share what I've learned. The Isadora community continues to astonish me, and it's certainly one to feel good about being a part of.

mark

Dear Raganmd,

Thanks for the blog post... totally great that you did it!

Best Wishes,

Mark

Skulpture

Yeah thanks for putting it online @raganmd

It's always good to see more Isadora tutorials online!

Bill Cottman

Thanks Raganmd. You moved my investigation forward in a huge leap!

raganmd

Glad this was useful vanderzee.