Coding a flexible particle system with OpenFrameworks

This workshop teaches concepts involved in the creation of a particle system (i.e: vector maths, data structures, code structure, OpenGL) and also aims to provide an overview of the process of implementing a complex application from scratch.

We’ll be going through several projects, each of them focusing on a different aspect of the particle system. The projets are grouped in three main catergories:

Introduction

Each project presents a basic piece our system. We’ll learn how to use vectors to simulate the forces that drive the motion of our particles. We'll also learn to use clases to organize our code.

Code structure and object-oriented programming

We’ll learn about coding patterns and good practices that help us create code that is modular, reusable and extendable.

Rendering

We’ll learn how to efficiently draw our particles using OpenGL and how to create two renderers.

The last two projects are demos of the completed particle system.

Each project has two versions:

• Finished: (project_name) contains the finished code that can be compiled and run to see the application in action.
• Starting point: (project_name_start) contains an incomplete version of the code. The boilerplate will be already in place (to avoid wasting time with irrelevant typing) and we’ll only code the parts that are relevant to understand the topic.