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UIEffectDesignerView

A native Particle Systems effect view for iOS and OSX powered by QuartzCore.

This is a companion Objective-C class to the UIEffectDesigner app.

UIEffectDesigner

You can download the UIEffectDesigner app from here and design visually your effects:

When you are happy with the effect click File/Save... and save the effect as [name_of_your_choice].ped.

Usage

To include a particle system effect in your iOS or OSX app is very easy.

Follow these 4 easy steps:

Add the .ped file to your Xcode project.
Add the QuartzCore.framework to your project.
Add to your project the UIEffectDesignerView folder from the UIEffectDesignerView repository (aka this repo you are looking at)
Show the effect on the screen:

For iOS add in your ViewController code:

#import "UIEffectDesignerView.h"
...
UIEffectDesignerView* effectView = [UIEffectDesignerView effectWithFile:@"[name_of_your_choice].ped"];
[self.view addSubview:effectView];

For OSX add to your AppDelegate code:

#import "UIEffectDesignerView.h"
...
UIEffectDesignerView* effectView = [UIEffectDesignerView effectWithFile:@"[name_of_your_choice].ped"];
[self.window.contentView addSubview: effectView];

That's it. You can work normally with the view - for example adjust its center property on iOS or change the frame, animate the effect around the screen, etc.

For a full walk-through on creating particle systems and displaying them in a UIKit game for the iPhone check out this 2 part tutorial series:

Samples

On the UIEffectDesigner page you can also download sample effects:

Go to UIEffectDesigner page with sample effect files for download.