modular-particle-system-webgl-renderer

Simple WebGL 2 renderer package for modular-particle-system.

Minified size 9 kB. Capable of rendering up to 100 000 particles with smooth FPS (60 times per second).

Available as:

• IIFE

<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/modular-particle-system-webgl-renderer@1.0.0/index.iife.js"></script>

By using the IIFE build, you can even embed a fully functional particle system + renderer with pure HTML code, for example like this.

• NPM package

npm install modular-particle-system-webgl-renderer

NOTE: Usage from NPM package is currently untested.

// IIFE
const { Renderer } = modularParticleSystemWebglRenderer;

// NPM
import { Renderer } from "modular-particle-system-webgl-renderer";

const imgCloudTexture = new Image();
imgCloudTexture.src = `my-assets/generic/cloud.png`
const textures = {
  "generic/cloud.png": imgCloudTexture,
};

const renderer = Renderer({
  particleSystem,
  container: document.body,
  textures,
});

Extended usage

Renderer Options

Required particleSystem

Reference to a modular ParticleSystem object.

Required container

Reference to a HTML element that will contain the renderer.

Required textures

Texture sources for rendering particles.

This is a object where each property key describes the name of a texture and the value is a texture source. Several types of values are supported:

• ArrayBufferView
• ImageData
• HTMLImageElement
• ImageBitmap
• Or any other type supported by WebGL texImage2D pixels parameter.

Optional autoUpdate

If omitted or true, the renderer will automatically update the ParticleSystem between each frame.

Optional coordinateSystem

Defaults to 'pixels'. Can be one of:

• 'pixels': Particle positions are in pixels, {x:0, y: 0} is at top left corner of container, positive X is right, positive Y is down..

• 'pixels-centered': Particle positions are in pixels, {x:0, y: 0} is at center of container, positive X is right, positive Y is down.

Optional maxParticlesCount

Defaults to 50000, can be used to set a limit for particle rendering. When number of particles exceeds this, the renderer will render some subset of the particles but not all.

Destroy Renderer

const renderer = Renderer({ ... });
renderer.destroy()

Known limitations

The renderer currently only supports rendering with 1 texture source.

The vision is to allow rendering with a relatively small number of relatively small textures, let's say 10 textures each smaller than 200x200px, since this is within the limits of keeping things simple and performant.

Development

cd modular-particle-system-webgl-renderer
npm i
npm start