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JaredWyns
Up and Coming
June 30, 2013

Direct X 11 Particles in Unity ?

Hello, Forgive my ignorance as I'm in the process of transitioning into being a Technical Artist.

I'm extremely familiar with Animation/Modeling/Texturing/Etc. However I'm not super familiar withe DirectX 11 shader programming or particle systems.

I've seen a lot of integration in regards to how to use DirectX11 Tessellation in Unity, but thusfar I've been unable to find any reference in my best searches to find a starting point for generating DX11 partiles using the GPU and attractors such as in "The Museum of the Microstar". I'm familiar enough with the math, but the starting point of Unity integration is what's borking me completely.

If anyone could point me in the proper direction or methodology or even reference a good book for reference on getting started with GPGPU / GPU programming to start creating something in the realm of this, and procedural shaders for unity, I'd be forever grateful.

I plan on creating some pretty excellent particle systems and shaders for atmospheric rendering I'd love to share, but until I can start, it'll be hard to do so, haha.

Thank you for your time, if you take it. :)
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    6 replies

    usb420
    Up and Coming
    June 30, 2013
    I feel like you may already know more than I do but if you're looking for info on shaders one place to start would be some OpenGL vertex examples. Which is what I'm familiar with, does it have to be DX11?
    antigravity
    Up and Coming
    June 30, 2013
    Hmm..

    If the particles in Microstar represent your end goal I would probably skip reinventing the wheel and work with whats coded already with Shruiken (the particle system package included with Unity).. At the very least master that first because there's a good deal of creative control there to do exactly what you want.

    Outside of that, I think there's a a fair amount of packages for unity that give you extended particle functionality and possibly procedural mapping support .

    Also since you're coming from the Animation camp like me, You might want to look into exporting point cloud data from your animation package of choice and see if you can do the work externally from another program you are already familiar with.. It's on my list of things to get working.

    I'm only a few weeks into Unity myself, but am very impressed with the ability to import assets of all kinds from external sources.

    best,
    AG
    drash
    Inspiring
    June 30, 2013
    I have to assume it's as simple as using Shuriken (via GameObject -> Create Other -> Particle System), and checking the "Use Direct3D 11" box in Player Settings, but I don't really know for sure.
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    Anonymous
    July 10, 2013
    Did you ever get the info you were looking for on this?

    I've been using unity for just under a year now and to the best of my knowledge, shuriken doesn't have any of the special GPU/DX11 stuff used in MotM, like turbulence etc. Their particles were done by the person responsible for this: http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/172251-TC-Particles-Making-special-effects-special-again.
    JaredWynsAuthor
    Up and Coming
    March 3, 2014
    Took several months to completely find, obviously because I wasn't looking hard enough ;)

    It looks like the particles were created using the TC Particles engine by Tiny Cube Studio: http://tcparticles.tinycubestudio.com/

    Still haven't quite figured out the Attractor part yet, but as they have an API, it shouldn't be too hard.

    Code on! :)


    Edit:

    Figured out the Attractors, it was the forces script that came as part of the API. Damn, that was easy.
    JaredWynsAuthor
    Up and Coming
    March 3, 2014
    "phillipfoshee" wrote:
    Did you ever get the info you were looking for on this?

    I've been using unity for just under a year now and to the best of my knowledge, shuriken doesn't have any of the special GPU/DX11 stuff used in MotM, like turbulence etc. Their particles were done by the person responsible for this: http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/172251-TC-Particles-Making-special-effects-special-again.


    I really wish I had seen your reply back in July :(
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