The Integration of Particle and Polygon Rendering using an A-buffer Algorithm

Abstract

A particle system, as defined by Reeves, is a collection of particles that together represent a fuzzy object. Over a period of time, particles in the system are born, move, change and die. We have introduced interactive control of procedural models into our extensible director-oriented animation system MIRANIM. With this approach, a user may define his/her own evolution laws in particle systems. Systems may be initialized by interactive commands and are then updated by animation blocks, and the laws may return any state variables. Unlike Reeves' work, particle systems may intersect with other surface-based modeling primitives. Our rendering method is based on a scanline A-buffer algorithm, which is an extension of the processing of translucent polygons. This approach proved to be particularly useful for modelling objects destroyed by a fire with the presence of a wind.