Particle System

Particle systems represent smoke, fire, rain, fireworks... Usually phenomena composed of many small discrete elements that combined appear as a single entity or follow some common dynamics.

The emitter is a location where the particles are created. Usually each particle has a time counter. When the timer expires the particle is recycled and eventually reemitted as a new particle.

We can render particles in multiple ways. This example uses individual quads. This results in a drawcall per particle which is very inefficient but keeps the code simple for illustration purposes.

Draw Calls: 0

Particles Texture

Apply a texture to a particle to change its appereance and simulate the desired effect.

This example renders the quads using a technique called instanced drawing to reduce the number of draw calls. Compare the number with the previous example.

Draw Calls: 0

Combine Particle Systems

This is a simple representation of the SpaceX Raptor engine exhaust. It combines 3 particle systems: One for the brighter exhaust coming out from the nozzle, one for the purple plume and a last one to represent the shock diamonds