Silverlight Particle Generator
I’ve been experimenting with particle generation a little bit over the weekend. I guess that if I were a gamer, particle effects may seem kind of ordinary. They’re first draft fodder for game guys. For me, though, there is still a lot of allure and new here.
The result: I’ve got myself a new effect crush. I still have a ways to go toward ideal implementation though. The basics seem to be there, it does emit particles after all. Most of the issues that I’ve been running into are related to performance. There really isn’t a “lightweight” way to generate all those particles, so I end up just creating hundreds of ellipses and moving them around the screen. Given what I’m doing, I think that Silverlight’s doing a pretty outstanding job keeping up…but I wish there were a lighter-weight way to handle these kinds of drawing operations. In WPF, I would override OnRender for the control and then just issue drawing commands.
Well, in the meantime, you can check out a full screen version of the demo or download the source. This isn’t final, though, so stay tuned for some updates. Planned changes may include: gravity, directional momentum, some simulated 3D, support for multiple colors and some more perf tweaking. You can, of course, always get the most current version from the labs page.
Finally, as always, if you do end up doing something with this I would really love to know about it. Please send email to hello@nerdplusart.com. Knowing that people use it is the fun part of putting stuff out there.
28 Comments
Jay Solomon / AUG 19 2008
Fantastic work. Very very impressive.
Jay
dongin.lee / AUG 19 2008
It’s good! It’s funny.
Sameer C Thiruthikad / AUG 19 2008
Wow! Super cool app in Silverlight.
The control panel looks very cute as well… I liked its colors and layout a lot.
Mariusz / AUG 19 2008
Hi Robby, your particle generator looks very hot, especialy the magic wand effect :-)
I like it, keep it up ;-)
james / AUG 19 2008
Awesome work! What are you using for your primary IDE … Blend, Visual Studio, etc.?
Tom / AUG 19 2008
That’s a wonderful demo! And surprisingly polished – I really like the UI. Aren’t particles fun? My first DirectDraw app was a configurable particle system, but it wasn’t nearly as cool as this. It’s just a shame that Silverlight is so CPU intensive. This kind of stuff will be a lot more practical if/when Silverlight gets some hardware acceleration. They had better do it, eh? Maybe in version 2 or 3.
John / AUG 19 2008
Very, very cool. Thanks (especially for the source)!!!!!!
senkwe / AUG 19 2008
Awesome…
Jeremiah Morrill / AUG 19 2008
Very sick! Awesome even!!
I was a little bummed about the lack of any raster-type API in SL2, but seeing this made me remember that there’s a lot of visual effects you still can do with vectors.
Looking forward to seeing more!
-Jer
Robby Ingebretsen / AUG 19 2008
Wow! Just logged in to find ten (yup 10) comments waiting for approval. Nice! Thanks guys.
@james: This was mostly done in Visual Studio. I have a weird workflow for things that require visual attention / detail (like the control templates). For those, I actually use a hybrid of Blend and Kaxaml. I really should do a post about this…more details in that (future) post.
@sameer / Tom: Glad you like the property panel UI. BTW, the control templates are included in the app as well (I guess that’s obvious) so get ‘em while they’re hot.
Thanks again to all who commented.
2008 August 20 - Links for today « My (almost) Daily Links / AUG 19 2008
[...] Wahlin updates his SL articles – REALLY worth a looksee A flyout stackpanel menu control Vector based particle generator engine An awesome tutorial on Messagebox functionality in SL2 Creating a Silverlight 2 Client Access [...]
Ervin / AUG 20 2008
This is awesome job. Thanks for sharing it
Jahedur Rahman / AUG 20 2008
Wow!!! Fantastic, amazing!!! :)
Page Brooks / AUG 20 2008
This is awesome! Nice work!
Dew Drop - August 21, 2008 | Alvin Ashcraft's Morning Dew / AUG 21 2008
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techwizard / AUG 22 2008
Awesome…
Designer WPF » Blog Archive » Color Picker In Action (In The Silverlight Particle Project) / SEP 29 2008
[...] for fun, I took my color picker and plugged into Robbie Ingebretsen’s Silverlight Particle Generator. I had to make some tweaks to the XAML to alter the look to just what I wanted it to be, but you [...]
Mark / OCT 17 2008
Hi
Can you please update to latest version now. i just found your article but can;t view it.
Cheers
Bookmarks about Silverlight / JAN 18 2009
[...] – bookmarked by 2 members originally found by getbetterhealth on 2008-12-25 Silverlight Particle Generator http://blog.nerdplusart.com/archives/silverlight-particle-generator – bookmarked by 3 members [...]
Aaron / JAN 19 2009
I was inspired a while back by the L&F of your particle generator, and this weekend decided to build something fun and similar:
http://www.wiredprairie.us/blog/index.php/archives/668
Silverlight for Flex developers: Part 1 - Basic Layout in Blend « Justin J. Moses : Blog / MAR 30 2009
[...] so I just needed something to guide me the last few steps towards a parley with Silverlight. I saw this example by Robby Ingebretsen last year and decided that there was more to Silverlight than meets the [...]
Hidden Object: Episode 4 – Adding Particles with a Behavior | SHAZAML! / SEP 17 2009
[...] want to make sure that I give tons of credit to Robby Ingebretsen from nerdplusart for his Silverlight Particle Generator. If you haven’t had a chance to play with it before (and I do mean play) then take a few [...]
Silverlight Screensaver « Sigurd Snørteland / SEP 21 2009
[...] grafiske animasjonen som benyttes i denne løsningen bygger på prosjektet ‘Silverlight Particle Generator‘ til [...]
Mike Greenway / SEP 26 2009
An Insipation as always
Thank You
Posty / DEC 02 2009
I’m not a programmer, but I feel like I can still use it during my playtime.
Well done & thanks for posting!
Michael / FEB 17 2011
I remember seeing this within the last six months and i came across and decided that I should have our devs look into what you did since we they had to create a WPF particle generator
Robby Ingebretsen / FEB 18 2011
@Michael. Great! I hope it turns out. Sounds intriguing :)