Simulating smoke with particles
Smoke is characterized by many small particles that float away from the source, and spread out as they move through the air. We can simulate the floatation effect with particles by using a small upwards acceleration (or constant velocity), but simulating the diffusion of each small smoke particle would be too expensive. Instead, we can simulate the diffusion of many small particles by making our simulated particles change their size (grow) over time.
The following image shows an example of the results:
The texture for each particle is a very light "smudge" of grey or black color.
To make the particles grow over time, ...
Get OpenGL – Build high performance graphics now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
