Particle Universe 1.5 is out

[Xplodwild]

Found the culprit: Deferred Shading.

Happens on stable too if you're using Deferred Shading as per the Deferred Shading sample. Disabling Deferred Shading rendering fixes it. I'll investigate and report if I found what's causing this to happen. It's still weird because as I said, BillboardChain works fine.

Edit: A simple BillboardSet works fine too with Deferred enabled, so it's something in the plugin.

Edit2: Billboards seems to face main directional light... Is it taking the wrong camera? Setting camera to the PS using setMainCamera doesn't change anything.

Edit3: For unknown reasons it's taking the Shadow cam as source instead of the actual rendering camera. Is there a way to prevent it from picking a camera automatically?

Edit4: Added this in ParticleSystem::_notifyCurrentCamera as a workaround:

Code: Select all

		if (cam->getName().find_first_of("Shadow") != std::string::npos)
		{
			return;
		}

I hope you can find a proper fix now that you know what's going on

[Xplodwild]

Also, the editor is VERY unstable:

- Randomly but often, the settings panel in the Edit tab gets stuck
- When I attach another Technique to an Emitter (Emitter emits Technique), and when I attach an affector to the other technique, I have to save, load another PS, and get back to be able to see an updated preview in the Edit tab. The Render tab updates fine.
- There are token errors when opening a .pu
- When adding multiple resource paths, a space gets put in front of all of them, and only the first one seems to be oaded

[spookyboo]

I look into the camera issue, but your fix is very specific for your situation. It should be more generic

There are token errors when opening a .pu

This is because Ogre scriptcompiler detects non-Ogre tokens and logs them. This was added to Ogre 1.8. These are no real errors. Compiling works just fine.

[spookyboo]

- When adding multiple resource paths, a space gets put in front of all of them, and only the first one seems to be oaded

Depending where you installed PU, but sometimes it is needed to change the security rights to your folder ("\Particle Universe Editor"). Your user must have full access, otherwise PU cannot write its config file.

When I attach another Technique to an Emitter (Emitter emits Technique), and when I attach an affector to the other technique, I have to save, load another PS, and get back to be able to see an updated preview in the Edit tab. The Render tab updates fine.

That is an known bug: "Changes in emitted techniques or its subcomponents do not come into effect in realtime, if the graphical editor (EditTab) is used."

[jj]

Hi!

I wanted to try Particle Universe, but just downloaded the demo (1.5.1) and installed, and when running it I get the error that it cannot load the dynamic library RenderSystem_Direct3D9.dll (the file is in the installation folder, so not sure what happens).

Any idea? or can I just download a demo of a previous stable version? We really want to try it, but impossible so far.

Thanks!
jj

[spookyboo]

you probably haven't installed Direct3d on your computer. I think you have the same problem with Ogre samplebrowser (using the direct3d renderer)

[jj]

totally right! thanks!

[zadirion]

I have recently purchased Particle Universe 1.5.1, however I am not able to save particle system settings. They seem to revert to their previous values and the preview in the Edit tab doesn't get updated with the new values. It's almost impossible to do anything under these circumstances. I'm aware this may be a bug, however is there any way I can trigger the save so it gets updated?

Anyone any ideas how I can work around this? Switching to another particle system and then back to mine doesn't work, the settings get lost instead of saved.

[spookyboo]

This may be a Windows security setting. If you don't have the rights to write, it does not give you a warning, but the file is not saved. Try a different directory or change your access rights.

[zadirion]

Hey spookyboo, thanks for the prompt reply.

I don't think the issue is the writing on the filesystem. It's just that values in the edit fields don't really get updated in the previews, so I think the backend also doesn't take the front end values into consideration, thus it doesn't try to save them. From what I've noticed, I think, the issue comes up when editing collapsible fields like for example:
+--Vector: (40, 43, 20)
+-x: 40
+-y: 43
+-z: 20

From what I gathered, if I change the coordinate directly from its' appropriate field (say for example the y field), the preview updates correctly. But if I try to edit the y coordinate directly from the Vector field, it doesn't apply, preview doesn't update, the new value doesn't get saved to the file.

Also, when adding a new affector, after that if I immediately try to save the project then reload, the affector wasn't saved. The problem is similar with the first one.

Also, on a side note, Particle Universe is an awesome product, thanks for your work on it. Definitely worth its price. Though it is sad to see its forum is plagued by spam bots. Such a great product should have clean forums, and feedback activity such as this one directed there. Also, I highly recommend putting the documentation on the website. Both online documentation and activity on forums provide great search ranking boosts.

Also a feature request: something I feel is really missing in PU is the ability to attach multiple particle systems to a loaded mesh in the PU editor. I hope this isn't a hassle to implement.

[spookyboo]

The property editor is an external wxwidgets addon, but it isn't flawless I'm afraid.
Regarding adding the affector, if it is not linked to a technique it will not be saved.
It is true that the forum gets spammed. I will clean it up.
iI will look into your suggestion about the docs.

[zadirion]

Thanks for the fast reply.

Regarding the wxwidgets property editor, there must be something that can be done. If it can't be fixed because of it being a third party, maybe you can disable editing values from the root node (Vector in my example), or maybe you can create individual fields like VectorX, VectorY and VectorZ instead of grouping them under a Vector. As it is now, editing something and losing that setting later can get very frustrating very quick.

Regarding the affector, it doesn't get saved even if it is linked to a technique. I'll try to find the exact repro steps when I get back home, but I believe it can be reproduced consistently in 1.5.1.

Regarding the feature request, is there any chance attaching more than one particle system to a mesh can get implemented?

[SufferinPup]

There are token errors when opening a .pu

This is because Ogre scriptcompiler detects non-Ogre tokens and logs them. This was added to Ogre 1.8. These are no real errors. Compiling works just fine.

Is it possible to suppress these warnings? There are so many they are actually slowing down the load time of our game. I noticed they aren't in the particle universe editor log, so there must be some way to not show them?

[Mind Calamity]

Is it possible to suppress these warnings? There are so many they are actually slowing down the load time of our game. I noticed they aren't in the particle universe editor log, so there must be some way to not show them?

I've traced the error to OgreMain/src/OgreScriptTranslator.cpp - lines 83 and 84.

Code: Select all

		// Retrieve the translator to use
		ScriptTranslator *translator = 
			ScriptCompilerManager::getSingleton().getTranslator(node);
		
		if(translator)
			translator->translate(compiler, node);
		else
			compiler->addError(ScriptCompiler::CE_UNEXPECTEDTOKEN, node->file, node->line,
				"token \"" + reinterpret_cast<ObjectAbstractNode*>(node.get())->cls + "\" is not recognized");

It seems to be due to OGRE failing to find a (registered ?) script translator in the ScriptCompilerManager, not sure how you'd register a translator, but that would be a proper solution to the problem. The other would be to simply remove the addError call in the statement.

If you manage to solve this, please post how you did it, since me and every other PU user are facing the same problem.

[Mind Calamity]

Hello guys, I wanted to tell you that I've updated Particle Universe 1.5 to be compatible with OGRE 1.9 and also ported it to Linux.

I've changed the old build system for CMake (not a proper generic one yet).

If anyone needs a complete Linux port, feel free to contact me.

Note: I am not infringing any licensing by providing this port to people (you're going to need to prove to me that you own a copy of PU) since I'm not providing the full source, but a patch and an additional file (the CMake script).

I have contacted Spooky Boo by mail, but no reply yet.

[spookyboo]

I've managed to miss your e-mail. Good to hear that it runs under Linux.

[Mind Calamity]

Spooky would you mind if I posted the updated files here publicly ?

It's a CMakeScript and a refactored ParticleUniverse::Any implementation.

[spookyboo]

of course. No problem

[Herb]

@Mind Calamity - Do you mind posting those files for the Linux 1.9 port? That'll save me some time as I have that on my todo list for my project. Thanks spookyboo for not minding the public post on the patch!

[Mind Calamity]

@Mind Calamity - Do you mind posting those files for the Linux 1.9 port? That'll save me some time as I have that on my todo list for my project. Thanks spookyboo for not minding the public post on the patch!

Sure thing, I was a bit busy, so sorry for the delayed reply. I also re-wrote the CMake script because it was dependent on my engine setup before.

I only tested it on Windows, but there's no reason why it wouldn't work on Linux as well. (The source is fixed).

PU_Patch.zip

[DarkScythe]

i got the latest version(1.6) and just linked this to my application(ogre 1.9), even if not a single line is called, it crashes at exit, at the function below. any clues?

Code: Select all

void ParticleUniversePlugin::shutdown()
{
	// Delete the manager.
	// The manager must be deleted before all factories are deleted (also the factories of other plugins)
	PU_DELETE_T(mParticleSystemManager, ParticleSystemManager, MEMCATEGORY_SCENE_CONTROL);
}

and.. these are from ogre.log but the particle works ok.

13:38:59: Parsing script mp_torch.pu
13:38:59: Compiler error: unknown error in mp_torch.pu(1): token class, system, unrecognized.
13:38:59: Compiler error: unknown error in mp_torch.pu(8): token class, renderer, unrecognized.
13:38:59: Compiler error: unknown error in mp_torch.pu(17): token class, time_to_live, unrecognized.
13:38:59: Compiler error: unknown error in mp_torch.pu(22): token class, velocity, unrecognized.
13:38:59: Compiler error: unknown error in mp_torch.pu(27): token class, all_particle_dimensions, unrecognized.
13:38:59: Compiler error: unknown error in mp_torch.pu(43): token class, x_scale, unrecognized.
13:38:59: Compiler error: unknown error in mp_torch.pu(49): token class, y_scale, unrecognized.
13:38:59: ParticleUniverse: Particle System Template 'mp_torch' registered

btw good to be back to ogre after 2 years...

[DarkScythe]

answer to my first problem, calling ogreroot::shutdown + delete ogreroot results a crash so just calling delete solves the problem.

[fractile]

Does anyone know if the latest PU editor works (well enough for actual use) with Wine on Ubuntu?

Edit: Just noticed that there is a demo version available, so I can try it myself..

Edit: In case someone else is wondering about this: It didn't work (fails to start with some D3D related error). Ogre OpenGL render system usually works fine on Wine, but the editor only allows Direct3D render system.