In the previous chapters, we animated only a few objects. If we have to animate a large number of graphical objects in a patch individually, it will require a lot of effort. In the GEM library, the particle system enables us to streamline the process. If we want to animate a large group of similar shapes with similar movements, we can take advantage of the particle system to do the job.
When we model everyday life objects, we use primitive shapes, such as sphere, cone, and cube to construct more sophisticated forms. It can be easy to use this approach to model a chair, a car, or even a human figure. It can be very difficult if we want to model natural phenomena such as fire, fountain, or smoke. Those phenomena do not have very precise geometrical forms and yet we have fuzzy descriptions about their physical appearance and behaviors over time. Particle system is the modeling method to describe and generate those fuzzy forms. This chapter will include...