Hey Sandboxers,
Time to generate some smoke! Well... maybe we should start building a factory first. But thanks to modern technology, this is pretty easy.
And here it is: a small factory
The only thing left is to put some smoke to the chimney. Fortunately the last update of the Mercury Particle Sandbox consists of a layer system. So we don't really have to think about if the smoke should emit in the foreground or rather in the background. We can simply tell the sandbox to put our smokey particle effect on both layers and place the factory in the middle of them. Yeah! 😎
Let's see it in action:
As you can see we also worked on a "visibility system" which makes it possible to show or hide specific elements in the render view. This should help keeping the overview of your creation and by that it's also possible to select which elements or entities should be included in the final rendering.
Terrain Mesh
Another construction site is our terrain- or mesh system, which makes it possible to draw physical structures with your mouse cursor. Or like in the case of the video above with an alpha image. Everything which is black in the image, will be included in the physics system (mesh generation on). Everything which is white, will be excluded (mesh generation off).
This makes it possible to quickly generate "level" environments for your project.
You just need to inverse the alpha image to have either a closed level like mesh, or an open like shape like the factory one in the video
You ask why this is important?
Well, we are developing not just a particle effect editor. We are developing a particle sandbox! So it's possible to create your own objects and logic to create what ever you want. It could even be a small game inside the sandbox itself. Put a physical object into the scene, connect it with keyboard, mouse or gamepad functionallity and move it around in your very own level!
Things like that are really not a problem for this sandbox. This is the main reason why our particle sandbox is different from other particle editors out there. You want full customization and workshop support? Feel happy, because this is already on our list!
Just in case you missed our first news article on the steam platform, you can catch up on this by reading it here: #001 - Welcome to your Sandbox! In this article we ask us the following question:
Particles, Physics, Creativity - the ingredients of life!?
Maybe you are interested in this too. However, we are leaving this link here - just in case! 😉
Thanks for reading and watching this and have a sparkling & sunny weekend! 🌞
:: Sandbox Blizz 💖
Thank you 👌
