Where's the particle system file in SceneKit in Xcode 11.3.1

Question

Recently I updated my Xcode to 11.3.1. But while working with SceneKit, I found that I can't create a particle system file.

• Before

• After

How can I create a particle system in a file now?

Answer 1

SceneKit Library

In Xcode 13 / 12 / 11 you have no preconfigured .scnp particle system files anymore. Instead, you can use a Particle System object coming from a Xcode Library (with the same settings in Attributes Inspector as they were in Xcode 10).

If you manually placed a Particle System from library into SceneKit's Scene graph you can then retrieve it and setup programmatically. Let's see how it looks like:

let particlesNode = sceneView.scene?.rootNode.childNode(withName: "particles", 
                                                     recursively: true)

particlesNode?.particleSystems?.first?.isAffectedByGravity = true
particlesNode?.particleSystems?.first?.acceleration.z = 5.0

Creating particles programmatically

Or you can easily create a Particle System from scratch using just code:

let particleSystem = SCNParticleSystem()
    
particleSystem.birthRate = 1000
particleSystem.particleSize = 1.45
particleSystem.particleLifeSpan = 2
particleSystem.particleColor = .yellow

let particlesNode = SCNNode()
particlesNode.addParticleSystem(particleSystem)

sceneView.scene!.rootNode.addChildNode(particlesNode)

Creating .scnz file containing Particle System

• Select a .scn file in Project Navigator (left pane) and choose File – Export...
• In drop-down menu choose Compressed Scenekit Scene Document .scnz

Or you can create .scnp file by renaming .scn – the same way @ycao proposed.

Answer 2

Particle System moved to Scene Kit Scene File as a library object:

Answer 3

While creating a new file, select SceneKit SceneFile. Edit the suffix to .scnp, and everything is OK.