Playing With Particles Pt.1

I have recently started playing around with particles in Flash for an upcoming project and thought I might share some of the results I have had with the FLINT particle system. You can click on the examples to move the particles around.

I started by experimenting with the basic behaviours and actions available in FLINT. Combining different actions such attractors, velocity matching, minimum distance, collision and many more allow you to quickly and easily come up with complex particle behaviour and flocking.

I then used some basic filters to create a fluid effect when particles are close to each other, a bit too much like a lava-lamp for what I want, but nice nonetheless! Ultimately I want to create large ‘blobs’ with boundaries that can ripple and respond to collisions in a way that is convincingly fluid-like. I did some quick tests (shown in the video below) to try and achieve this, but the CPU usage is far above what I will have available for this project. Hopefully I can get something similar to this running efficiently enough to work on a Mac Mini. I think I may end up using a combination of what I have here along with an implementation of soft-body physics using Verlet integration, however, that in itself is likely to be rather CPU intensive so I think more research is needed first…