Particles on the light background

Dendroid

How to make bright effects (fire, explosions) on the light backgrounds?

Particles are blending good only on the black background. On the bright color particles look blended with the white, colors faded. Yes, it's possible to choose in particle editor "one-source" blending, but in this case particles are blending unnaturally between each other (more particles - darker color).

How to fix it?

particles on the black (good):

particles on the white (bad)

particles with "one-alpha" blending (not so good)

henke37

What blending formula are you using? Additive, Max or Multiplicative blend modes might give better results.

Dendroid

I'm using standart modes for particle editor: http://onebyonedesign.com/flash/particleeditor/ (PDParticleSystem class in Starling): one, src, one-src, src-alpha, dst-alpha, src-color and so on.

In theory the best way is to blend particles together with default mode and then blend it to the scene with "normal" or "multiplicate" blending. But I have no idea how to do it with Starling ParticleSystem.

bobby

I'm also curious about this, my game will have multiple background colors depending on the level, is there any way to render the multiple particle systems to a black image, and then somehow take out the rest of the black to leave just the particles? That way it would use a black background for blending purposes, but wouldn't display the actual background.

Thanks

jonathanhart

We solved this by re-illustrating our particle pngs to have higher alpha (100% opaqueness with light feathering) and a screen blend mode rather than additive.

bobby

Thanks Jonathan, do you set the blend mode on each of the particle systems directly in starling, or through the particle blend properties on the emitter? I'm using Particle Designer 2.0, which allows you to set the blend types for the emitter.

jonathanhart

We set it in the designer itself..

bobby

Which program do you use to design your particles? I don't see an option to change the blend modes other than the GL_One type settings, is that the ones you use?

Thanks

ouksal

@Jonathan: I read some of your posts and none of them are useful. You just post trash rather than sharing your code or useful info. You don't have to share anything but please don't post trash as well.

IonSwitz

@ouksal : Are you for real? Jonathan is one of the top contributors to these pages.

The last time I saw you post on here, it was in this highly odd thread:

http://forum.starling-framework.org/topic/optimization

Your fingers are writing checks that your skill set can't cash. Please stop.

Phantamoss

@ouksal That's really uncalled for. And what he says is a valid solution. I design all of my particles with high alphas for light colored scenes as well. There is no code for him to post on here.

@bobby on the particle editor website, at the bottom right that is all of the blend modes you can use. You can also edit the .pex file by hand, as it is just a .xml file renamed.

jonathanhart

ouksal, wow. I didn't realize that I had to spoon feed people actual code and files around here.

If you'd like to steal the particle effects that I'm talking about, you can always download and unpackage Video Poker Tour from the iOS store, which I was lead engineer on and contain the particle effects built in the exact manner I described above.

The PEX files and pngs are there for the taking. I can't condone that you actually do that because it's neither my property nor yours. Which is why you don't see me sharing a bunch of code or files that were made on my company's clock.

If you'd like more code, please see my github. I contributed to the Starling Framework with an extension, created the native extension for connecting AIR to Oculus Rift, and recently a native extension for connecting MIDI sources to AIR as well. All opensource.

http://www.github.com/jonathanhart

If you think I'm full of shit, that's up to you to decide. I just hope you are taking all of my contributions to the AIR community into consideration before calling me out like you did.

Shaun_Max

I have the same problem with Particle Designer : -

on light background : -

on dark background: -

how do I fix it on light back grounds?
I tried playing around with the combinations of blend source & blend destination but no luck.

Appreciate you support.
Thanks

DrNeroCF

Definiltey play around with blend modes, I've been revisiting some old issues and using additive blend mode has helped get rid of the flat 'Flash' look when trying to fake lighting in a scene.

Shaun_Max

DrNeroCF actually I moved on to Stardust particles.