The term particle system refers to a computer graphics technique that uses a large number of very small sprites or other graphic objects to simulate certain kinds of "fuzzy" phenomena, which are otherwise very hard to reproduce with conventional rendering techniques - usually highly chaotic systems, natural phenomena, and/or processes caused by chemical reactions.
Examples of such phenomena which are commonly replicated using particle systems include fire, explosions, smoke, moving water (such as a waterfall), sparks, falling leaves, clouds, fog, snow, dust, meteor tails, stars and galaxies, or abstract visual effects like glowing trails, magic spells, etc. - these use particles that fade out quickly and are then re-emitted from the effect's source. Another technique can be used for things that contain many strands - such as fur, hair, and grass - involving rendering an entire particle's lifetime at once, which can then be drawn and manipulated as a single strand of the material in question.
Particle systems may be two-dimensional or three-dimensional.
Read more about Particle System: Typical Implementation, "Snowflakes" Versus "Hair", Artist-friendly Particle System Tools, Developer-friendly Particle System Tools
Famous quotes containing the words particle and/or system:
“You don’t hold any mystery for me, darling, do you mind? There isn’t a particle of you that I don’t know, remember, and want.”
—Noël Coward (1899–1973)
“Such is the remorseless progression of human society, shedding lives and souls as it goes on its way. It is an ocean into which men sink who have been cast out by the law and consigned, with help most cruelly withheld, to moral death. The sea is the pitiless social darkness into which the penal system casts those it has condemned, an unfathomable waste of misery. The human soul, lost in those depths, may become a corpse. Who shall revive it?”
—Victor Hugo (1802–1885)