The process can be broken down like so:Ĭreate your overall desired effect.
#Particle designer windows full#
The following section will go over the intended design flow for creating particle systems will full LOD support. When the Delete LOD button is pressed, the currently selected static LOD level will be deleted from the particle system. When the Jump to Highest LOD button is pressed, the system will be set to the highest available static LOD. When the Jump to Higher LOD button is pressed, the system will be set to the next available higher static LOD than the current LOD setting. When the Add LOD after current button is pressed, the system will insert a new static LOD level after the currently loaded LOD. The current LOD info boxes show which LOD is currently loaded as well as how many LODs exist in the particle system.
When the Add LOD before current button is pressed, the system will insert a new static LOD level before the currently loaded LOD. When the Jump Lower to LOD button is pressed, the system will be set to the next available lower static LOD than the current LOD setting. When the Jump to Lowest LOD button is pressed, the system will be set to the lowest available static LOD. When the Regen Lowest LOD button is pressed, the particle system will remove all existing lower LOD levels and regenerate a new the lowest. When the Regenerate Lowest LOD Duplicating Highest button is pressed, the particle system will remove all existing lower LOD levels and regenerate a new the lowest that is an exact copy of the highest level. Regenerate Lowest LOD Duplicating Highest Button The following section of the Cascade toolbar covers the LOD controls. This document will cover the creation of levels-of-detail (LODs) in your particle system as well as the in-game usage of them. LODs allow a particle system to be simplified based on distance, so that emitters and modules within the system can have their setting shut down - or turned off entirely - once the player is too far away to effectively appreciate the effect. However, those particles would still be calculated and processed. In such a case, there would be aspects of the particle system that are too small to render (smaller than a pixel), such as the embers. However, when the player gets far away, it will take up a lot less screen space, like so:
Your system may look something like this when viewed up-close: Consider a particle system of a camp fire: there may be several emitters involved, such as: Levels of detail (LODs) provide a way for effects artists to create particle effects that make the most efficient use of screen space, depending on player range.