Particle Systems

The term "particle systems" has been used to describe a huge class of animation techniques, but in general it refers to the animation of a large number of very simple objects, frequently using physical simulation. Water, fire, and smoke are frequently animated as simple particle systems.

Example 1

Example 2

Example 3

Below is an animated example of a simple liquid fountain made from spheres:

Source Code

In the excerpt below from the above example, it can be seen that each frame particles are generated, updated, removed and drawn.

  (while (< time duration)
    (begin
      (world
	...
        (generate-particles)
        (update-particles)
        (remove-dead-particles *particles*)
        (draw-particles)
        )
      ...
      (set-time! (+ time 1))
     ))


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