How can you make particles look good without instancing?

Beginners
1

Hey there!

I started a project where I plan to create a generative music set in ableton and have it feed information to some sort of floating ‘dust’ field. Think ambient, bokeh, relaxing.

I decided to take up touch designer to peruse this concept and have found myself stuck between hardware constraints and a deadline (this friday).

Does anyone know how to make particles look good without using the GEO components instancing? as I’m on an iris-540 and it is NVIDIA dependant. I have the movement in a good place, and by Tuesday should have the internal midi feed working too.

I’m pretty new to visual programming so please be gentle.

Jedd

Edit: typo

2

Particles get expensive very quickly - especially the particle SOP.

Some things to consider would be using a collision plane to kill particles once they’re out of your camera’s view. Controlling the duration of particles is also pretty important - as particles with long lives can really get you. Using a point sprite material for your particles is another way to get around instancing.

You could get some variety into your particles by using a 3D texture, and a lookup map for your point sprites.

derivative.ca/wiki099/index. … Sprite_MAT