Particles

Particles in vgai are powered by three.quarks. All systems share a single BatchedRenderer so they draw efficiently (packages/engine/src/setup/setup-particles.ts).

Emitter → behaviors → render mode.

The batched renderer

Setup creates one BatchedRenderer, adds it to the scene, and it’s ticked with batchedRenderer.update(dt) in the preRender phase. Add your particle systems to the batched renderer (not directly to the scene) so they batch together.

Emitter shapes

A system spawns particles from an emitter shape: point, sphere, hemisphere, cone, circle, donut, rectangle, or grid.

Behaviors (over life)

Behaviors modify particles as they age. The factory wires these three.quarks behaviors:

ApplyForce, ColorOverLife, SizeOverLife, SpeedOverLife, RotationOverLife, ForceOverLife, OrbitOverLife, Noise, TurbulenceField, FrameOverLife, LimitSpeedOverLife, ChangeEmitDirection, GravityForce, WidthOverLength.

Render modes

How each particle is drawn: billboard, stretchedBillboard, mesh, trail, horizontalBillboard, verticalBillboard.

Combine behaviors

Stack behaviors for rich effects — e.g. ColorOverLife + SizeOverLife + GravityForce makes a believable spark burst. Each is configured in the particles scene block.

See also

• Instancing, terrain & splines — other geometry features.
• The game loop & phases — the preRender tick.
• Scene Schema reference — every particle field.