Single Animated Particle vs. System

So i am trying to make my game very realistic and the only way i can get realistic particle effects is to have systems with hundreds of small particles. But then i was playing Splinter Cell: Conviction (really fun game, btw) today, and i was looking at their particles and couldnt figure out how they were so incredibly realistic. It looks as if they used a 3D program like Blender to render an explosion or something, then animated a single particle in game to play the entire explosion. (Something along the lines of this but much better, and more frames LINK)The game was made in the Unreal Engine (Unity is better!) and i was just thinking about it and i think it would be totally possible.

So i guess im asking if it would be better to use an animated particle that runs at 30 FPS, or if i should just use a particle system to make my effects. The first would be much more realistic, but i don't know how well that would go over from a preformance point of view.

 

I can work with you if you like on this. I work with 2d particle effects. I know 3d particle effects are great, though 2d particle effects are more realistic I think and simple on the engine. .Gif's. Etc. or .PNG's. If you want to, we can work on a effects web player showing 2d and 3d effects so people can poll them or Forums something a grenade launcher some explosions lasers beams, muzzle effects, bullets decals animate, anything you and think of, grenades also.


I can design 2d animals also to explosions and the animates effects hitting the screen like its glass or something thats simple.

 

Oil Fire Examples:

 

Both if you are going for realism, and texture memory or fill rate is not an issue for you. Animation costs texture memory. Single large quad costs GPU fill. Lots of particles costs CPU/GPU transform potential overdraw depending on size and amount.

You basically want to make an effect using the particle editor as per usual, but use uv animated texture sheets instead of static textures for certain elements. This is supported in the particle editor but is more robust in 3.5 Shuriken.

For example you could have an animating explosion that spawns a few times using staggered bursts, a trail of looping animated smoke, and large numbers of single-frame sparks.

Also you can use shader tricks, such as normal map warping, uv scaling with static alpha mask, fake shading by bending normals etc. Animating meshes with scrolling textures are sometimes used as well.

The big trick is in building these animations of course... Something like Timeline FX editor is good for this as it can do tiling and looping.

For high levels of realism as used in games like Splinter Cell you may want professional tools like Maya's fluid effects, or Fume, things of that nature, to generate realistic images. I am unsure what Blender is like in this regard.

 

Blender got an update to their smoke simulator and it is extremely high quality. My brother has been using this to make some super realistic smoke effects. From what i understand, the best thing you could do is have both a simple particle system (using Shuriken) with larger animated particles. Thanks

@puyaceo Thanks for the offer, and your animation looks pretty realistic, but what program do you use to animate? Because i am looking for effects that look like they are in 3D, so preferably rendered in a 3D program. If anything we could still go for your idea of making particle effect examples and maybe put it up on the asset store. I attached a copy of the kind of animation i'm using right now for my effects (i rendered it in blender).

 

Hey , Yes. I am interested that we can do something for the asset store.

Softwares:
I work with photoshop, make textures grains in paint, and work with different particle software online, its all 2d particle software but I just billboard the effects to face the camera direction, or make a x of the .png animations in unity 3d.

Why I like 2d effects?
Its great for 2d games and 3d games though a 2d graphics following the camera is like uh lol....... duke nukem. I like the style anyways.

Thanks, and yes that smoke is very nice for 3d smoke. I can make smoke like that in 2d.

I already design some emmitters and custom textures for a game with the particle softwares so we can work with those and I work also with video editing to make changes like contrast etc....... I upload them to how to make a gif and post them for the programmers previews with a black background though the actually effect is a transparent quality png. I can only render in around a max of 900 x 900 pixels for effects though.

I dont think that would make problems though considering game quality and all that. I would like to make that preview with you yes and if you need 3d models I can make a few for it, rocket launcher, grenade launcher etc. though the quality would not work great as I model with low poly and the barrels would be like around 12 poly etc. I can texture though too that is simple the modeling software I like to work with, its just that I like 2d graphics and effects more as I can make 10 to 1 2d to 3d effects as its simple.


You can get working on it if you want. If you want anything for me to "start" on I can work on that.


Exmaple: walking 2d animal
exploding animal effects
individual animal exploding effects
hitting screen effects
paint smears
ground splashes of animal exploding
rain like blood splashing for animal exploding


I would need you to explain all of the effects you would like for each. I can also do 3d animals though they would somewhat suck as they are low poly that I make its like that style, also though, I can do a lot of models if you need them. The exploding animals is just a example we dont need to do that though it would be a like wtf thing you know Forums.


I am talking we can make like some kind of Particle Effects shooting range or something to show off the looks, mabey people can poll on the forums about what they like for particle styles I do not know.


I think we should do this.


Particle Types:
[Only if you are up for it.]
2d Effects
2d Effects Billboarding [Example: X and Y Plane's X's of the Graphics.]
3d Effects
2d 3d Hybrid Effects

 

Sounds good, i dont have all that much time to work on anything big until summer, but im also decent at modeling. PM me so we can get talking about this, cause it sounds like a pretty sweet idea.