OGRE Manual v1.6 ('Shoggoth'): Standard Particle Emitters

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### 3.3.4 Standard Particle Emitters

Ogre comes preconfigured with a few particle emitters. New ones can be added by creating plugins: see the Plugin_ParticleFX project as an example of how you would do this (this is where these emitters are implemented).

- Point Emitter
- Box Emitter
- Cylinder Emitter
- Ellipsoid Emitter
- Hollow Ellipsoid Emitter
- Ring Emitter

### Point Emitter

This emitter emits particles from a single point, which is it's position. This emitter has no additional attributes over an above the standard emitter attributes.

To create a point emitter, include a section like this within your particle system script:

    emitter Point
    {
        // Settings go here
    }

Please note that the name of the emitter ('Point') is case-sensitive.

### Box Emitter

This emitter emits particles from a random location within a 3-dimensional box. It's extra attributes are:

width
  Sets the width of the box (this is the size of the box along it's local X axis, which is dependent on the 'direction' attribute which forms the box's local Z).
  format: width <units>
  example: width 250
  default: 100
height
  Sets the height of the box (this is the size of the box along it's local Y axis, which is dependent on the 'direction' attribute which forms the box's local Z).
  format: height <units>
  example: height 250
  default: 100
depth
  Sets the depth of the box (this is the size of the box along it's local Z axis, which is the same as the 'direction' attribute).
  format: depth <units>
  example: depth 250
  default: 100

To create a box emitter, include a section like this within your particle system script:

    emitter Box
    {
        // Settings go here
    }

### Cylinder Emitter

This emitter emits particles in a random direction from within a cylinder area, where the cylinder is oriented along the Z-axis. This emitter has exactly the same parameters as the Box Emitter so there are no additional parameters to consider here - the width and height determine the shape of the cylinder along it's axis (if they are different it is an ellipsoid cylinder), the depth determines the length of the cylinder.

### Ellipsoid Emitter

This emitter emits particles from within an ellipsoid shaped area, ie a sphere or squashed-sphere area. The parameters are again identical to the Box Emitter, except that the dimensions describe the widest points along each of the axes.

### Hollow Ellipsoid Emitter

This emitter is just like Ellipsoid Emitter except that there is a hollow area in the centre of the ellipsoid from which no particles are emitted. Therefore it has 3 extra parameters in order to define this area:

inner_width
  The width of the inner area which does not emit any particles.
inner_height
  The height of the inner area which does not emit any particles.
inner_depth
  The depth of the inner area which does not emit any particles.

### Ring Emitter

This emitter emits particles from a ring-shaped area, ie a little like Hollow Ellipsoid Emitter except only in 2 dimensions.

inner_width
  The width of the inner area which does not emit any particles.
inner_height
  The height of the inner area which does not emit any particles.

See also: 3.3 Particle Scripts, 3.3.2 Particle Emitters

### Emitting Emitters

It is possible to spawn new emitters on the expiry of particles, for example to product 'firework' style effects. This is controlled via the following directives:

emit_emitter_quota
  This parameter is a system-level parameter telling the system how many emitted emitters may be in use at any one time. This is just to allow for the space allocation process.
name
  This parameter is an emitter-level parameter, giving a name to an emitter. This can then be referred to in another emitter as the new emitter type to spawn when an emitted particle dies.
emit_emitter
  This is an emitter-level parameter, and if specified, it means that when particles emitted by this emitter die, they spawn a new emitter of the named type.

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This document was generated by Steve Streeting on July 26 2009 using texi2html