TiXL Meetup 2026-06-29 / Particles: Transparency, Sorting & FilterPoints

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A 4h06m TiXL 4.2-alpha developer meet-up with live Q&A, almost entirely hands-on particle work: why transparent particles get black outlines and how the z-buffer fights blending, sorting points back-to-front, the deep mechanics of FilterPoints and the particle buffer, building particle trails and branches, plus a long detour into snapshots/looks for live performance, I/O recording, video playback and a batch of operator-naming cleanups.

🆕 new feature · 🛠️ improvement · 📘 operator · 📝 walkthrough · 🧠 deep dive · 🍿 showcase · 🎯 planned · 💬 discussion · ⚠️ heads-up

Chapters

• 0:00 🆕 Dropped-frame intro + a forces/emit-velocity question (ParticleSystem, TurbulenceForce)
• 5:00 💬 Release plans and feature creep for 4.2
• 7:00 🆕 New help window with AI-summarized video references (deep-link index)
• 13:00 💬 Hover-to-show docs: useful or annoying?
• 18:00 ⚠️ Live render previews: bugs when editing values
• 22:00 🛠️ Restyling the settings windows
• 28:00 💬 Effective transparency on particles
• 30:00 🧠 Z-buffer vs. blending: why particles get black outlines (DrawPoints)
• 36:00 🧠 Order-independent transparency and the alpha cutoff
• 40:00 📝 Generate-mipmaps for crisp, fast particle textures
• 41:00 🍿 Sorting points back-to-front (SortPoints, cloud sprites)
• 50:00 🎯 SortPoints as a DrawPoints option; rebuilding op graphs in C#
• 58:00 📝 Particle trails by chaining particle systems (ParticleSystem, MaxParticleCount)
• 1:03:00 📘 MapPointAttributes for fading trails
• 1:05:00 📝 Staggered emission with FilterPoints + CountInt
• 1:11:00 📝 Bypass vs. disconnect; click-to-insert auto-layout tips
• 1:20:00 📘 CountInt: how it counts by itself every frame
• 1:23:00 🧠 Inside the particle buffer: terminator points and wrap-around
• 1:29:00 📝 Fixed-size buffers, emit-once and ReconstructForce
• 1:33:00 🧠 FilterPoints deep dive: count, start index, step, scatter
• 1:46:00 🍿 Audio-visual OSC live setup
• 1:49:00 📝 Connecting an emitted point back to its trail (PairPointsForLines)
• 2:09:00 📝 A simpler trail: emit the same point into a second small system
• 2:12:00 🎯 Sorting by custom property (camera distance vs. plane, F1/F2)
• 2:15:00 🛠️ FirstValidBuffer + removing the awkward camera reference (TransformConstBuffer)
• 2:26:00 ⚠️ Bug: reconnecting multiple wires at once scrambles inputs
• 2:44:00 🛠️ Operator-name cleanup (AddInts, IntAdd, IntDiff)
• 2:49:00 🛠️ Custom blend states + fixing operator output color (RenderTargetBlendDescription)
• 2:56:00 🧠 SDF ray-marching internals and overshoot tricks
• 3:00:00 🎯 Outputting color/material from a custom SDF
• 3:11:00 💬 New user from Touch Designer / Blender; live workflow
• 3:14:00 🆕 Snapshots & looks: a live-performance pitch
• 3:21:00 💬 Macro controls, summaries and blending scenes
• 3:32:00 🆕 Media clips and I/O recording; importing MIDI files
• 3:44:00 💬 Feature request: soft shadows (DrawMeshWithShadow)
• 3:49:00 ⚠️ Read-only operator dialog bug; running on Linux
• 3:53:00 🆕 Nightly builds and the safe parallel-install workflow
• 3:56:00 🆕 Video playback: proxy videos, fast-seeking vs. GPU decode
• 4:05:00 💬 Wrap-up + a SortPoints fix from the chat