Aligning particles to the mesh surface

In this recipe, we are going to use a 3D version of the particles' code base from the Creating a particle system in 2D recipe. To navigate in 3D space, we will use MayaCamUI covered in the Using MayaCamUI recipe in Chapter 2, Preparing for Development.

Getting ready

To simulate repulsion, we are using the code from the Applying repulsion and attraction forces recipe with slight modifications for three-dimensional space. For this example, we are using the ducky.mesh mesh file that you can find in the resources directory of the Picking3D sample inside the Cinder package. Please copy this file to the assets folder in your project.

How to do it…

We will create particles aligned to the mesh. Perform the following steps to do so:

1. Add an anchor property to the Particle class in the Particle.h file.

   ci::Vec3f anchor;

2. Set the anchor value at the end of the Particle class constructor in the Particle.cpp source file.

   anchor = position;

3. Add the necessary headers in your...