Upcoming PhotonDust to support BOIDS

[989onan]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

PhotonDust is right around the corner, and I would like to suggest (doesn't have to be implemented, just an idea) being able to use BOIDS

Right now, PhotonDust isn't planned to use BOIDS in it's design

Describe the solution you'd like

This is an article from blender that talks about BOIDS: https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/physics/particles/emitter/physics/boids.html

Doesn't have to be exactly the same, but similar concepts could be used.

Describe alternatives you've considered

Trying to change the properties and equations used on particles in PhotonDust systems as new particles are emitted to try to mimic Boids

Additional Context

No response

Requesters

989onan

[Frooxius]

What are your usecases for this kind of thing? Why do you want it to be part of the particle system specifically?

We generally strongly advise against making feature requests too technically specific, because that makes it way more likely we'll just deny it - doubly so if it's for a system that's not even out yet (e.g. you're making assumptions about what's planned and what's not).

Like right now, I'm unsure about a number of things:

• What are the use-cases for this? This generally affects how such system will be designed, so without knowing how you plan to use it, it's hard to evaluate this
• Why do you want it to be part of PhotonDust specifically? Why not a separate system that might be more specialized for this?

[TisFoolish]

Boids are a subset of Blender's particle physics system. They are particles controlled by a limited ai and through editing the parameters of the boids, you can easily simulate flocks, swarms, herds and schools of various kind of animals, insects and fishes or predators vs. preys simulations.

I think part of their reason for wanting this be apart of PD is that the number of entities possible with the particle system would likely be much greater than if it was a more generic system.

[Frooxius]

I understand that part, but it doesn't really answer my question. Generally we do not "The other software has it" consider a sufficient reasoning - it we need to understand how it'll fit in Resonite and how do you plan to use it within Resonite.

Similarly - PhotonDust is in development - you don't know its performance. You don't know performance of a separate system - perhaps dedicated BOIDS system could have even better performance than PhotonDust implementation - it's way to early to make that kind of call when neither of the systems really exist.

[989onan]

Oh, I'm not sure if it would be part of another system or not, but I was thinking it would be useful for a magic system.

Basically it would be used to do things like send particles towards a point with an arching motion. Kind of like the healing beam from TF2 medics medigun. It could also be used to be like a swarm of bugs attacking a point. Just general ways of controlling particles that would need edge case logic

But there may be other ways to implement these without BOIDs. Was just the best idea I had at the time

[Frooxius]

Ah I see. Thank you for the context, it helps me understand this a bit better.

I'll see if this ends up fitting at some point. Very unlikely that this would get considered for MVP for PhotonDust, but adding new modules to it is relatively easy, so it's a possibility we might include this at some point.