Alternative Title
GPU-Based Visual Effects System
Subject Area
Computer Science
Abstract
The objective of my thesis is to create a robust and efficient VFX system that can be used to edit and add particle effects to games. This system utilizes a compute shading pipeline to simulate millions of particles in real time. The behavior of particles is widely customizable through many different properties which can be manipulated changed over the lifetime of particles and introduce procedural randomness. There are many ways to customize the motion of the particles with various forces and collision. Additionally, particles can be rendered as billboarded quads, full meshes or partial meshes with different settings to further customize appearance. The behavior of particles is entirely driven by the particle emitter they are spawned from. A collection of one or more of these particle emitters make up particle effects, which is what the end user will control. All particles are simulated entirely on the GPU allowing for all particles to be updated in parallel with minimal data copied from the CPU to GPU.
Degree Date
Spring 5-2025
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
M.I.T.
Department
Programming
Advisor
Matthew Butler
Acknowledgements
Special Thanks to Squirrel Eiserloh
Number of Pages
21
Format
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
Recommended Citation
Jaffe, Matthew, "GPU-Based Visual Effects System" (2025). Programming Theses and Dissertations. 7.
https://scholar.smu.edu/guildhall_programming_etds/7
