FakeParticleBlow problems

Troubleshooting graphics
1

I’ve followed the shader tutorial as closely as I could, but I had to get a bit creative since the main links for the fakeparticleblow are broken. I found the test classes and used the code from one of them.
This is how they should look from most angles:

But as soon as the camera tilts, problems appear:

This gets really bad when looking from the rear, which is especially bad for me since that’s where the player will be looking from mostly.


The front looks pretty glitchy too.

Code used:

    final Spatial fire = CPU.game.getAssetManager().loadModel("assets/shaders/models/FakeParticleBlow.j3o");
    fire.setLocalScale(2f);
    final Material mat = CPU.game.getAssetManager().loadMaterial("assets/shaders/materials/FakeParticleBlow_2.j3m");
    mat.getAdditionalRenderState().setFaceCullMode(FaceCullMode.Off);
    mat.getAdditionalRenderState().setDepthTest(true);
    mat.getAdditionalRenderState().setDepthWrite(true);        
    fire.setMaterial(mat);
    TangentBinormalGenerator.generate(fire);
    fire.setQueueBucket(Bucket.Transparent);      
    fire.lookAt(Vector3f.UNIT_Y,Vector3f.UNIT_Y);

I have corrected the paths in all of the reqired files since my file structure is a bit different, but I didn’t touch anything else. I used the provided test material, model and textures. Note that I am not rotating the particles on the long axis since that is pretty much the point of using so many quads for each right?

Making the particles rotate so they always face the camera along the long axis removes the problems from picture 2,3 and 4 but the front and back still stay the same.

Any ideas? I’m sure a lot of you do this stuff on a daily basis.

2

I think your problem is that your game is in 3d and the particles is an 2d effect.
I would recommend you to use particles just for explosions for example.
For bullets use some basic geometries, some small cubes with glow effect are working very well for me in my spacial game.

3

That is how I had it done previously and I thought I could do better, since the geometrical shape is really noticable.

You see the difference between a standard bilboard for use in a 2D game and this particle is a lot more quads which should correct any viewing problems.
http://wiki.jmonkeyengine.org/lib/exe/fetch.php/sdk:plugin:fakeobject.png?w=100&tok=726c98

And as @mifth, the guy who made these shaders says they should look more like this. See how that works from all angles.

Effect for fire or engine of a ship. Such an effect is used in the “Eve Online” game for ship engines.

4

So I tried out some random stuff to see if anything would change and I found this interesting thing after applying a fully colored material:


Some particle quads don’t even render sometimes! How is this even possible? This makes no sense at all.

5

Particles use quads but for 2D effects not 3D, they are sprites, you need geometries.
If cubes are not enough for your effects, just build some better geometries using blender, I had build objects with 16 vertices that are still small and effective, put some alpha textures on it using light materials + glow, and you will have even bether effect.

6

Do you have a material file for the particle?

You could also try to use a normal particleemitter, I could get the same effect with some settings.

7

@wagfeliz You don’t really need geometries but since this isn’t Unity and this shader isn’t good enough I guess I’ll just have to use them :confused:

@mathiasj Well I guess I could but I don’t want to use particle emitters for this since they’re too limited this funciton.

tl;dr; Imma use geometries, case closed -.-

There, made those in blender, works pretty well I think.