This project was done in 2003. It was a coincidence that I was doing related research and experimentation in my personal projects, Learning MFC and working with particles. I presented what I’d been working on in my spare time and requested to step away from AI, animation, game-play, after I had fleshed out all of my systems and laid the groundwork, to focus on graphics, special-effects, and tools for our team.

I was given free reign to do the research, design, gather requirements and feature requests from artists, and build a solo project. Except for the custom spline and gradient controls, preview windows, and live editing, the front-end wasn’t very sophisticated. It met all of the needs of the artist who were excited to use it. The back end was a little bulky under the hood because a particle could do everything and everything could be animated. It worked extremely well for us but that’s what inspired me to start researching ways to modularize these kinds of features in future projects. In any case, I learned a lot.

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
•