✨┃vfx-and-particles

[fast scroll]

this

oh shoot, its under the rendering tab, sry

[warm torrent]

I think light layers operate by gameobject layer, not "rendering layer mask" which is for rendering

Though I don't know why they're named light layers

[fast scroll]

no im pretty sure they dont, i dont have them set up like that

why is my fog shiny lol

[winged basalt]

Hey is there a way to reuse a sample curve in visual effect graph for set scale.xyz over Life? (I want to use the same curve for x and y but not for z)

[ashen robin]

Add them as properties instead of putting inline on the graph, then throw them into a curve node somewhere else

[winged basalt]

what is the property name? (type)

[ashen robin]

You're looking for a gradient value, right

I think they're in there, I may be wrong though

[winged basalt]

i found it animation curve

[ashen robin]

ah nice

Oh, I was reading that wrong. Yeah, there's curves in there, also just checked and there is gradients too ;p

[warm torrent]

It seems URP which I'm using uses object layers as light layers, whereas HDRP uses rendering layers instead

[prime dome]

why im not able to have add shape node in vfx graph

only node i see is set position shape

anyone knows what wrong im doing

[prime dome]

https://youtu.be/Jj8UHGe5Aps?t=225

I've been trying to follow this tutorial

However the materials step hasn't come to fruition

I made a material from a png with a white circle

And a transparent material

But it doesn't quite work

What's the proper way to set them up?

It ends up looking like this for me

[novel kayak]

i need help making realistic splashes and ripples can anybody help

me

[daring loom]

Hello, does anyone have a problem with HDR colors in Unity (URP)?
After some intensity the color goes white. I check the Quality HDR from URP Asset but still got this problem, any solutions?

[warm torrent]

Why is it a problem?

[daring loom]

well i high intensity i understand that the color would be white, but at intensity 4-6 i still wanna see some color (on the videos that i watch he use intensity 6 and still got the color, for mine at 4 is already white)

[zenith grove]

Do you have bloom in your scene?

[gaunt idol]

How can I make the sub emitter splashes stay on the ground instead of following me around?

[atomic storm]

I think make them world space

[zenith grove]

Is there a way to make bools in VFX graph enable/disable specific blocks? For examaple I would like to use VFX property binder with a bool to enable/disable Turbulence block with a button press.

[ashen robin]

Not 100% sure but disabling nodes throughout the graph seems like something that needs to be resolved before compilement. May need to create system variants to obtain something like that.

some nodes you can just zero out, but that's probably not that doable with turbulence node?

Oh, here's something

https://portal.productboard.com/unity/1-unity-platform-rendering-visual-effects/c/99-boolean-ports-to-enable-disable-blocks

[zenith grove]

ohh, seems like it is the time to update the Unity version, thanks for finding it

[prime dome]

do any one knows whats the best way to populate vegations in unity? is it possible to use vfx graph to populate vegetation on a generated mesh through vfx graph?

[zenith grove]

You may want to take a look at point caches

[signal condor]

here is my current game version how it looks
i am using VFX graph and particles to do this

and here is a problem: i dont know how to exactly know how to pull material from object to the VFX graph

[ashen robin]

Oh, that's pretty cool

Not sure what you mean by pull material though, if you mean expose the shader properties on the vfx then the shader properties themselves must also be exposed via shader graph

[manic shore]

Hey, I’m looking to make a sort of Sonic boom looking effect. I think I could make it with Vfx graph,
However, I was wondering if anyone has a different suggestion thst might be less performance intensive. Thanks

[ashen robin]

Would work fine with vfx graph

[chrome wren]

I’m trying to create sand that stand in place and falls is it possible with the particle system?(if it is how)

[zenith grove]

It probably is, however, depending on magniutude and your exact needs you may be looking at hundreds of thousands or maybe even milions of particles

[still maple]

hello everyone, someone have some tips how to do Smoke effect in Mixed Reality? I try to do something but I notice that the Smoke it's hardly visible

or some reference

I'm using URP

[obtuse summit]

Is it hardly visible because there isn't enough contrast? Would it help to put a darker background behind the smoke

[tame belfry]

Hi, does anyone know why my cloudy fog is just disappearing instantly despite me using particle system to fade out?

You can see Ive tried to attach the alpha of the output to the colour, and animate the colour output in the Particle System gradient editor for Color over Lifetime

Ive set it to gradually fade out, but, as you can see from the video, it just disappears instantly rather than fading nicely (the same is for appearing too)

[ashen robin]

Could be a bounding box issues and it's being culled

[tame belfry]

I dont think so, it seems to last as long as I specify for the lifetime 🤔

[ashen robin]

Hmm, are you using alpha clipping or is this completely transparent

[tame belfry]

Yes alpha clipping

Is that incorrect?

[ashen robin]

Alpha clipping can be a little snappy even with a linear curve

[tame belfry]

It seems to default to 0.3 if I remove it as a param

Is there a way to remove it?

[ashen robin]

You can disable it, but I was wondering if the clouds are using clipout

and if it's not using transparency then it is

but you do got alpha in there

Perhaps just removing it from the system and try that maybe

[tame belfry]

I removed alpha clipping completely, still similar effect

[ashen robin]

HMMM

[tame belfry]

It seems that the material isnt respecting the the colours that I set in the particle system component

Ive set the only colour param as the "Main colour"

[ashen robin]

Not exactly sure too much with the shuriken system, but I assume the main colour is in the material section, right

otherwise you'll probably have to change that there

material/rendering

[tame belfry]

This is the material

[ashen robin]

The system itself probably also changes the color so doing it on the material may get overriden

[tame belfry]

Hmm

[ashen robin]

Ah, pulled it up. It does actually just use the material params

I thought there would be more support with it for the particle system , but I guess that's only been implemented with the vfx graph

[tame belfry]

Ive dmd you

[ashen robin]

Better to post it here so others can see anyway. Spazi's probably got the better idea when they're around

[tame belfry]

Ok ty

[ashen robin]

It looks to be more of a shader problem though, mostly alpha clipping (if it were) honestly lol. But if it's not smoothly dissipating, may consider lessening the reduction in the alpha over time (if possible)

otherwise your particles are timing out quicker than it dissipates

[tame belfry]

I dont think the particle system is effecting the colour at all 😦

Ive changed the graph to take alpha from the main colour

So I can change the alpha on the material and see it come and go

But the particle system still has it pop in even when Ive reduced the alpha reduction

My blend here is basically 255 in the centre, 0 at the start and beginning

[tame belfry]

Ive fixed it

Using Vertex Color in the shader graph rather than a normal colour

[ashen robin]

Yeah, so how do you use the gradient editor on the shuriken system then

I would assume you have to add it all to the shader itself, there doesn't seem to be support for that

[tame belfry]

This seems to work for me

[ashen robin]

Ah, ok I see

[tame belfry]

It seems the strength has reduced compared to the last clip

But ultimately has the effect Im looking for, Ill tweak the shader more somehow

Importantly you cant see the clouds pop in and out of existence like the original clip

[ashen robin]

Much better than before though that's for sure

[tame belfry]

Yeah

Ty for your help regardless!

[ashen robin]

^^

[signal condor]

ey, guess what

[ashen robin]

Haha, hey that's not that bad

[signal condor]

jaa

[surreal gorge]

I found this video of an effect someone made that has ribbons of magic flowing towards a point, I was wondering if anyone knows if those ribbons are generated when you activate the effect or if they were manually modelled.
and if they were generated, how do you do this? all I can think of is making a plane deform to a randomly generated spline (no idea if that's a thing though)
this is the effect: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilHdthe4v4M

[ashen robin]

Line renderers / particle trail probably easiest. Perhaps you can also cheat by letting the shader progressively render it from front to end.

[surreal gorge]

thanks

[ashen robin]

https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.visualeffectgraph@10.2/manual/Operator-SampleBezier.html
https://forum.unity.com/threads/sample-bezier-operator-improvements.833035/

^For the vfx graph... you could also just do the position stuff via gameobject

[dusty willow]

hey, I have a shader that essentially materializes an object, starting from the bottom (similar to the ones in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzyLWXTr3Io) and I came up with the idea to emit particles from that glowing part - is it somehow possible using either the VFX Graph or the Shuriken particle system?

[hard geyser]

I would like to ask is it possible to make a "curve" in the simulation speed in particle system? I want the speed to be 2.0 at the first half part of the play and trun the speed back to 1.0 at the latter part. How to do it?

[surreal gorge]

in VFXgraph I am trying to set the spawnrate of another system in relation to the lifetime of another system. but this ends up not spawning anything.
any suggestions?

[surreal gorge]

can you just not change that value?

[prime dome]

is it possible to use a mesh and rgb texture to spawn particle on a mesh plane/terrain on red vertex colours in vfx graph?

[surreal gorge]

I have found out that it doesn't work for any of the inputs, is it simply impossible to use the lifetime of one spawn system in inputs for another?

[zenith grove]

Can't you just use the same float for the lifetime and spawn rate?

[surreal gorge]

that's not what I'm trying to do, I'm trying to use the lifetime of the main effect as the input to a sample curve node

thought maybe I can multiply it by 1 and then drag it over, gonna try that

nope

and as far as I know, I can't set custom parameters either

[zenith grove]

So you have a single burst system, and all particles will spawn and die at the same time, and you need to get a float from their age at the current time for a spawning rate in the other system, right?

[surreal gorge]

I have a burst system that only spawns 1 particle, I want to control constant spawning systems with curves that use the burst system's age over lifetime, mainly their alpha to make sure all the particles disappear when the burst particle does

[zenith grove]

and have you considered using Gpu event?

[surreal gorge]

what's that

[zenith grove]

You can put it in the Update of the single particle burst and set the spawn rate over time. The pro of using it is that it will only spawn particles over time as long as the main particle is alive

Looks like this

[surreal gorge]

I also have particles that live for quite a while, can I use this to get rid of them too?

[surreal gorge]

what is the Rate in this context?

[zenith grove]

Gpu event is a spawner. It can spawn particles either over time/distance, on death of particle or always

[zenith grove]

Spawn rate

Just remember to check the Experimental blocks in the preferences if you want to use it

[surreal gorge]

I have it on

it works O:

now I just have to fix the long lived particles disappearing earlier

[zenith grove]

nice, and now you should be able to connect get attribute age to control the spawnrate

[surreal gorge]

get attribute age?

oh to put it in the rate

that's genius O:

[zenith grove]

yeah, to controll spawn rate with the age of the main particle

[surreal gorge]

then with the long lived particles I can do the same but with a straight curve that cuts off early

you're a life saver

omg it looks so cool

[ashen robin]

Still waiting for more gpu trigger events :(

[sinful badger]

I'm trying to animate a blast effect, but in order to make it look good, I need to set the emission to 3 particles per second, and the cap to 10 particles. How do I make the velocity of all of these particles syncronize with that of the first spawned particle?

[ashen robin]

Why would the next particles have different velocity than the previous particle?

Unless you mean you're trying to sync all three systems together when you play the vfx, but assuming they all start with the same property info, it's not likely they would differ from each other.

[sinful badger]

they're all part of the same system but I put velocity over lifetime from 0 to 1 at .3

I want them to all start moving at the same time

basically I have the particles spawn in one by one to overlap each other and make a nice effect before launching the blast, but it's launching them one by one

[ashen robin]

Ah, maybe the idea then is to try multiple system then perhaps, otherwise maybe need more of a burst emission effect?

[zealous ore]

I'm having issues with layering my particles over the rest of my gameobjects in unity2d

anyone have any ideas?

[ashen robin]

The layering order of the particle systems should respect the layer order of the sprite renderers

[zealous ore]

the sprite layer is set to a far higher value than the surrounding sprits

but its still getting overlapped by some

however, it does overlap others...

its almost random tbh

[zealous ore]

any ideas?

[ashen robin]

Uh, if you're using sorting groups then you have to make sure those follow ordering correctly too. Another idea is you've got particles traveling via z axis, but I would expect the ordering to still work correctly with that. Maybe I'm wrong though.

Beyond that, maybe some material you're using overriding the rendering queue.

If this is shuriken too, and you're just using unity's default particle material, you can also turn on debug and change the rendering queue inside of each system

[zealous ore]

changing the z scale of the gameobject with the particle renderer worke

*worked

idk

¯_(ツ)_/¯

it was 0 but i changed it to 1 and it magically worked

[ashen robin]

Haha, yeah that's another way to sort too

[zealous ore]

why did they make 420,691,337 ways to order particles

[ashen robin]

z changing is more the traditional way

but I'd assume sorting groups get some use out of them for larger projects. I've not really made much in 2D to really put use to them.

[hushed blaze]

Hey there! I'm trying to create a basic particle animation and I'm trying to change the Size Over Lifetime curve, but can't seem to figure out how to do it. For reference, I'm using Unity version 2021.3.16f1. Thanks for any help!

[ashen robin]

Shuriken system? Size should just be a scale multiplier of your particle, so the growth depends on the set size.

And it's over the whole particle duration

[hushed blaze]

I understand that part. For reference, I want the particles to shrink over the course of their life time, or start to shrink towards the end I'm not sure what yet. I figured using the Size Over Lifetime curve would be easiest, but I can't change it. If I click on it the line just turns red and no observable change occurs

[ashen robin]

Actually, it doesnt say scale in the docs, but that's strange that it would be of a specific size

[hushed blaze]

I think there's a way to do it with scripts but I'd like to avoid it if possible

The curve works, but its opposite what I want

And I'm trying to interact with it to no avail

[ashen robin]

You can drag the curve on the UI and positional points

Hmm

[hushed blaze]

oh really?

hold on lemme try

nope nothing

just the red change

[ashen robin]

Let me take a look. Been a while using this haha

[hushed blaze]

no worries

now for some reason when i turn it on it shrinks the particles like crazy

i was trying the dragging thing you suggested and i didnt see any change on the ui but it changed something ig

[ashen robin]

Ah, I know what's wrong. The window may not be expanded for the curve

Go to the bottom of the particle system in the inspector and it should say particle system curves

[hushed blaze]

i dont see that option

i mean i could just be blind idk

lemme send a screenshot

nvm

im blind

lmao

yup there it is

thanks!

[ashen robin]

oh, and it does seem like it affects the scale of it all (a multiplier to the start size)

[hushed blaze]

ahh alr

gotcha

thanks! probably will be back lol

[inland seal]

Hey everyone so I am making a 3d game and have a pixel shader graph on the camera to make it look retro yk. I was wondering how I can have it look retro but certain things show up a lot clearer to see without changing everything else

[ashen robin]

You'll have to change rendering order on the stuff you want unaffected

Such that render after you apply the mask

[inland seal]

oh ok got it

[ashen robin]

You can do it a few ways, one by using URP render objects and doing it via layer

otherwise the stuff you want to render later need to have their own custom material

If you can't do it with render ordering, then you can try some stencils with your shaders

[inland seal]

ok thank you!

[prime dome]

so im trying to spawn particles on a mesh via red channel and mesh have vertex colors rgba but its not working as it should be am i doing some mistake in vfx graph

[sinful badger]

is there a way to make audio happen every time my sub emitter producer a particle? I have a lightning attack that produces an explosion on impact, but for some reason, the sound spawns when the base system spawns instead of spawning when and where the particle system it's attached to triggers

[sinful badger]

when I learned how to do it I just went into the "shape" and selected mesh, or skinned mesh renderer, I think there's an option to use vertex colors as emission as well

[prime dome]

Yeah thats what im asking how? I couldnt found a solution

[sinful badger]

I'm not sure but I see "use mesh colors" in my version of unity, 2010.4.31f1

[sinful badger]

is there some kind of way to convert a c# script into something I can use in my vrchat avatar?

[warm torrent]

!vrchat

[gleaming flicker]

Join the growing VRChat community as you explore, play, and create the future of social VR! https://discord.com/invite/vrchat

[rapid latch]

Hello everyone, how would i make my particles be circles rather than rectangles (squares, more specifically)?

[warm torrent]

Usually you'd give them a circular texture with alpha transparency

[rapid latch]

any other way?

is there a way to remove the edges, making it circular

[warm torrent]

Why are alternatives necessary?

I assume since you're asking for that, there's some constraints in your specific use case that make the first solution incompatible, or there's some misunderstanding about how it works

[surreal gorge]

I have another question about this effect, how do I change the texture over only the hand and arm like it does in the video?

[ashen robin]

Second system of effects instantiated onto the hand I'd reckon

[surreal gorge]

I'm making mine a bit more simple with just the arm changing texture, but I don't know how to only target the arm and make it grow from the hand to the arm. though that might be more of a shader than a vfx

[ashen robin]

In that case yeah, you'd do all of it on the shader

[prime dome]

@warm torrent any solution?

[glossy maple]

hello, how do i limit emission > rate over distance to spawn particles only if the distance**.y** is positive for example

[warm torrent]

Not familiar with it
I'd have replied if I knew
Can't see anything that looks like using vertex color for spawning as you say

[sinful bone]

anyone knows how I can make particle trails not be aliased?

[warm torrent]

Does their texture have mip maps enabled?

[sinful bone]

yes

tried trilinear filtering too

in case that helped

and tried increasing the aniso level

[zenith grove]

Is there a way to get attributes of a specific system in the case where there is more than 1 system in a single VFX graph?

[ashen robin]

You can set custom attributes, and retrieve them from systems you extend into

[ocean jetty]

I'm not sure if there's an easier way but find something useful and wanted to share it, I want someone' experienced in shaders and vfx explained what's the difference between this approach and using multi layers shaders/dynamic shader variants ?

https://tryfinally.dev/unity-custom-srp-volume-components#global-shader-properties

additionally found an asset which kinda do what I wanted but it's for vegetation /terrain system

[ocean jetty]

I think what I'm trying to do is reconstructing the camera depth - to world position (inverseDepthInverseProjection) and then find the normal vector values and do something with it like add vetrex distortion or rpg split but perhaps probably I can archive something similar with camera stacking system ?

[carmine ether]

Hi. Does anyone know if there's a way to remove the particles spawning with separation between them please? (using vfx graph)
Like here, I would like a continuous kinda line of particles, not just separate particles

[ashen robin]

Increase the particle emission if you want to continue using those same particles, otherwise look into line renderers

particle trails

[warm torrent]

VFX graph supports trails I believe

Simple Trail Renderers likely would work well for an effect like that

Emission frequency is ultimately limited by framerate, as Sub Frame Interpolation isn't supported yet

(Which is kinda crazy big missing part imo)

[carmine ether]

Like, I said line of particles because I would like them to look like the particle system does😅

[carmine ether]

oh so then the difference between how it looks with the default particle system and the vfx graph is that sub frame interpolation?

[carmine ether]

already tried to increase it but it didn't work (I'm using the spawn over distance block)

like this is how it spawns the particles

[warm torrent]

Mostly yea
Pretty sure PS does have sub frame interpolation
The advantage of VFX Graph is performance at very high particle counts, without it PS will often work just as well if not better in many cases

[warm torrent]

Rate per unit 0.5 is really not a lot

It'd leave a 2 meter gap between every particle

[carmine ether]

lemme increase it rq and see if something changes, but last time I tried it with rate per unity at 5 nothing changed

[ashen robin]

I notice there's some limitation on spawning with it

Could be better off just continously spawning them

[carmine ether]

yeah same happens

[carmine ether]

but how do I know how many should I spawn over time?

[ashen robin]

¯_(ツ)_/¯

[carmine ether]

guess I'll just try

[warm torrent]

Sub frame interpolation problem gets worse the faster the object is moving / the lower the framerate is

VFX Graph can't spawn more frequently than each frame

[carmine ether]

yeah objects are moving pretty fast as can be seen there 😅

[warm torrent]

Going at 100 units per second at 60fps each particle would have a whole 1.6 unit gap

[carmine ether]

guess I'll just use the default particle system then

[warm torrent]

Or trails

[carmine ether]

but how do I make trails look like fire and smoke?

[warm torrent]

How do you make anything look like fire or smoke? Hardly any one answer to that

[carmine ether]

but like, with particles you already have a particle image that looks like smoke and you only have to change the size and color of it and spawn it over an area so it seems kinda 3D.
With trails I don't know how to make a trail have that 3D feel

[warm torrent]

Trails look reasonably 3D (or volumetric, rather) (because they're view-aligned) as long as you aren't viewing them directly head-on
In those cases sometimes particles are used in conjunction to mask their nature

Or multiple bundled up trails are used to break up the flatness

Usually you need a new trail-shaped texture for it

[carmine ether]

Well in that case I'll try trails. Thanks for explaining 😄

[dull obsidian]

you could use output particle mesh https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.visualeffectgraph@16.0/manual/Context-OutputParticleMesh.html and a circular geometry. not truly a circle but enough sides to look like a circle anyway. or use the output primitive octagon https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.visualeffectgraph@16.0/manual/Context-OutputPrimitive.html and/or Use Alpha Clipping. https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.visualeffectgraph@16.0/manual/Context-OutputSharedSettings.html

some reasons one may do this is to reduce overdraw for better performance (in some cases). or for a cleaner edge look especially if using, say, forward rendering and multi sampled anti-aliasing.

@warm torrent it would have been nice to know the reason up front, but those are the first that come to mind fwiw

[dull obsidian]

i wonder if six way smoke lit textures can be mapped across particle quad strip trails? https://blog.unity.com/engine-platform/realistic-smoke-with-6-way-lighting-in-vfx-graph

like, a long wisp of baked smoke that would still look natural if it was stretched and deformed.

[warm torrent]

@dull obsidian Indeed
@rapid latch If you're using the Particle System, you can designate a mesh as the particle shape from the Renderer module, or likewise use an alpha clipped material

[ebon shell]

Can anyone help me with 2d particles

They are not showing up on the game

@warm torrent thank you for your help but i haven't fixed anything unfortunately i am a bit lost

[warm torrent]

Can you get a particle system to show through the camera under any circumstances?
For example by disabling everything else, making new particle systems, making a new scene to test, etc

[vernal hollow]

Theres a delay beforee my particle shows how do i show them instantly when played?

[runic thorn]

Hey. Anyone know how to change the mesh of a particle system on runtime from code?

[grand summit]

hey so i just installed the visual effect graph and when i use it, nothing happens
no particles emit and if i put stuff it doesnt work
does anyone know whats happening?

[warm torrent]

Is your project also using URP or HDRP?

[ebon shell]

Yes, but i cannot give it a layer, it is always behind the ui

[grave berry]

Hey everyone, how can I calculate the distance to the camera?
I tried this but it doesn't work. The resulting value is constant.

I think I just found the solution to my problem. I need to use world space instead of local space.

[silent parrot]

ive applied a sorting group to a Sprite Mask so that it gets masked along with another mask within its heirarchy, however whenever the Sorting Group is enabled/added to the mask all of the elements within the sorting layer disappear, how can i fix this?

[remote token]

hello, I tried using Set Position (Shape: AABox) with a box that is 1 x 1 x 0.1 but it seems when my box gets small in any dimension, and I have Position Mode: Volume the particles will always leave a weird hole in the middle:

this doesn't happen if the AABox is thicker, i.e. from 1 x 1 x 0.5 I get the box properly filled with particles.
Has someone seen this before? Can we not have thin bodies as the origins of our VFX?

I mean, we have Set Position Line and Set Position: Box . But we don't have Set Position: Quad so I figured we can use a thin box for that

it gets even weirder when I make the box even smaller

[merry snow]

For the VFX graph, is there a way to send the position of all of the particles to some script?

I'm planning to write a octree-based collision system for them, and all I really need is the positions.

[ashen robin]

You may be better off just using shuriken if you constantly need to read from the VFX graph.

Otherwise, making multiple gameobjects with independent systems would work too, assuming it's less about the performance.

[merry snow]

There's going to be enough particles that I'm pretty sure Shuriken would not be a good idea.

[atomic storm]

It's expensive to transfer data back to CPU, you may try creating the collision system in vfx graph itself, or use shuriken as mentioned

Or create a standalone compute shader for calculating the particles

[merry snow]

Yeah I was about to ask about thatm never really used Compute Shaders before.

[atomic storm]

they are fast but a bit difficult

might be a good idea to look into tho

otherwise you could use burstcompiled jobs on the cpu with shuriken if compute shaders is too big of a rabbit hole

[ebon shell]

@warm torrent Bro i managed to make them show up in the game, they are part of the canvas

although i cannot sort them behind any layer

[warm torrent]

What you needed to do was to position the canvas and particles correctly relative to each other
Still not intended to have a particle system with a rect transform as part of the canvas

The sorting methods are different

[ebon shell]

should i use more than one canvas for the whole game then

Canvas for every layer

[warm torrent]

Canvases have only one sort point relative to other gameobjects, so yes if you want the particle system layered within it

[dull obsidian]

there is a way as @atomic storm mentioned but there are a lot of caveats and limitations with performance and latency, complexity. i agree with peter it's best to keep it on the GPU if possible.

the latest unity 2023.2 alpha added support for custom HLSL nodes, so creating a custom collision system (or other behaviors) without having to do everything in vfx graph nodes or write all the compute shader boilerplate to do something more complex than what you can or would want to do with just nodes is now possible. https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.visualeffectgraph@16.0/manual/CustomHLSL-Common.html

or if you don't have that many particles (say, only in the hundreds or a few thousand depending on target platform) then maybe just stay on the CPU as @ashen robin suggested

then there's also DOTS for doing even more on the CPU but that's typically for more unique cases e.g. where a lot of entities require complex behaviors that affect game logic and synchronization in a critical way.
-or- DOTS / Jobs can sometimes be a suitable option if you've already exhausted a small GPU budget and just have spare CPU cores sitting around with nothing to do like with some XR / VR projects

[waxen iris]

Hi everyone, I am developing a large scale interactive particle system for the Quest 2 in Unity using the Job System and I am getting great feedback for the current protoype so I thought I might share it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7-R1Pw6eaA https://drive.google.com/file/d/18f6oQikGfIT-USqa1x0Ewi8F-1Nsi8uf/view?usp=drive_link

[royal rain]

Hiya folks.

Hoping someone can help me out.
I've got some Particle System goop on the ground and I want to be able to tell when my player is inside said goop (without moving the goop around)...
I've tried using the Collider module in the Particle System but can't figure out how to get it working without moving the goop around and destroying it with my player.
Screenies show the current particle system setup and goop mesh.

Also tried with the Trigger module but I feel like thats more of a control particles than the thing the particles are interacting with kinda thing.

[dark kestrel]

Is there any downside to setting VFX systems to Automatic Bounds? I try to use manual when possible but I have a lot of systems which change their parameters (position and size) during runtime.

This little warning makes it seem like an issue, although I DO want to recompute the bounds when playing them.

[sinful badger]

Any way to stop my particle trails from rotating?

[warm torrent]

Rotating or orbiting? Find out which module is doing it and be rid of it
Perhaps it's simply orbital velocity from velocity over lifetime module

[sinful badger]

it's rotating while orbiting. I want it to orbit with a flat texture

the edges look wonky as is

[hidden jolt]

is it possible to link different weapon slashes to each weapon? for example i have white slashes i wanna use on a white weapon and blue slashes on a blue weapon

if so how would i link it with my attack system/left click

[hidden jolt]

currently what i have, i linked slash fx to the player attack animation, but that means the same slash will get played for every weapon

its very bad code but it gets the job done for now, i have 4 attacks which i linked to respectively

in the variables i assigned the slash object

[ashen robin]

More of a coding question, but ideally the PlayerWeaponSlash script should change its particle system references depending on the weapon you equip, otherwise what you got there is fine.

[opal star]

Sooo turns out collide with depth buffer is not a very good idea for far away or occluded effects 🤣

I was today years old when I learned this

[hidden jolt]

anyone know why or how the smoke disappeared from my game view?

nvm got it

apparently use depth was enabled

no idea what it does

[dull obsidian]

ah yeah, there's signed distance field / SDF colliders that can be baked for static meshes or generated in real-time for dynamic meshes. it's a bit of a pain to set up but gives you true world space collision not just screen space depth collision.

info for baked / static SDFs (edit time or runtime) and general info: https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.visualeffectgraph@16.0/manual/sdf-in-vfx-graph.html
info for real-time / dynamic SDFs (very experimental package, not yet an official feature)
https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/com.unity.demoteam.mesh-to-sdf

[opal star]

Ah that is a really great idea. I have the mesh to sdf package already in the project was doing some funky volumetric material things. I wonder if I can use it to bake once in a volume around the effect since it wont move

At like edit time

[prime dome]

How can I set up a particle system to move along the radius of a circle, specifically following the red line? I have attempted some approaches, but they haven't produced the desired result.
my particle component = https://imgur.com/a/OkGdwmN

[stray talon]

Any way to have particles move towards a point w/o manually iterating over particles?

e.g. particles emit from a circle, move towards the sky and I want them to move towards the center of the circle as well

but not overshoot the center

[warm torrent]

Particle System or VFX Graph?

[stray talon]

good ol legacy ps

[warm torrent]

You have "Radial" velocity in Velocity over Lifetime module which acts as gravity (or repulsion) towards the point defined by Offset above it

And also you have Particle System Force Field component which does the same but with more options, such as applying drag only within a range

Limit Velocity over Lifetime lets you add drag or damping if you need something to prevent overshooting

You could also use Radial velocity over lifetime combined with a Force Field that only applies drag, if you only need it for preventing overshoot
But overshoot might not be a problem, give it a try

Velocity over Lifetime can also be set as curves each, as can External Forces Multiplier, in case you want the velocity to only apply at a specific time of the particle's lifetime

[stray talon]

Ok, so this is working as intended, thanks to you @warm torrent

[warm torrent]

[stray talon]

There's a little tweak I'd like to do, any idea how I could achieve the following :

I'd like the particles to feel more like they're hugging the glass rather than this linear conversion towards the center.

So essentially, I'd like the Y(so speed I guess?) to be modelled a bit like the image(green curve is Y, horizontal is time), multiplied by how far a particle was emitted from the center.

Any idea how I can achieve this?

[warm torrent]

If you make the Radial force a curve of that shape (or an inverse of it), then they probably will follow that shape when traveling up

[stray talon]

Bit of vertex displacement on the baked particles in the barrel and it'll look outstanding, esp since this is viewed from a top-down ish angle.

I'm happy with the results and it's all thanks to you @warm torrent

[warm torrent]

Looks great!

[prime dome]

anyone have any idea why the gizmo moves with vfx graph particles

[zenith grove]

Any idea on how to get a current color of a particle in VFX graph that uses "color over life" gradient and then use it as current color of a particle strip spawned by GPU event over? For example, let's say that main system spawns particles that have a life time of 2 seconds and "color over life" blue for the first second and red for the second. So, now I want the particle strip to also be completely blue in the first second and completely red in the second.

I have tried different Get color attributes but couldn't get any of them to work, they would just render the particle strip grey

[spiral moth]

Is there not an Inherit block for color?

[zenith grove]

Yep, I couldn't get it to work at first and that is why I thought I need to Get an attribute first but all I had to do is replace set color over life from output to the Update and now it works

[spiral moth]

Ahh so it was only setting color on Output which was happening after the Update + gpu event?

[zenith grove]

Well, technically particles update for the whole duration of their life, so I don't think that was the issue. To my understanding from this and my previous expiriences, the GPU events don't read output of main system at all, but I can't tell for sure

[spiral moth]

i think maybe when it does set color in output it's not writing to any particle attribute it's just applying the color in the shader, or something 🤷

[zenith grove]

Perhaps, but most importantly, it works now

[opal star]

What would the stretched billboard render mode from shuriken be in vfx graph? Orient face camera + scale xy by speed?

[stray talon]

Is there a clever way for me to emit particles (with legacy system) from a mesh's surface but add some sort of logic pass to determine whether or not a face can be used (e.g. dot product of (0, -1, 0) and the face's normal > X)?

other than rebuilding a version of the mesh that meets the criteria

[grave berry]

Hi everyone, how can I create a realistic looking dust vortex like this one without millions of particles?
It should also look good when viewed from above from an angle (RTS camera).
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/54/VFW_614_ATTAS_Wingtip_vortices_at_start.jpg

[warm torrent]

Instead of individual dust grains, use small dust clouds as particles instead
Or trails, or a funnel or helix shaped mesh with an animated dust texture

[grave berry]

The mesh approach sounds really interesting. Thanks for the suggestions!

Is alpha clipping currently not supported when using Shader Graph + VFX Graph in HDRP? I can't get it to work.

[junior thistle]

So I have a top down shooter game with realistic graphics. I need some kind of indication of where the bullets are going. I'm focusing on the shotgun which doesn't actually fire bullets, it simply activates (an invisible) trigger mesh, then disables it shortly after

How should I go about making it somehwat visible but not going cartoony?

best I can think of some trails. Multiple trails which stop at max range for the shotgun

I tried a distortion effect but it doesn't clearly define a cone shape and doesn't work as intended

any suggestions?

[night path]

Any ideas why particles are invisible when importing from a package? I converted the materials to URP, still doesn't show up

[mortal vessel]

Hi using vfxgraph and some effects wont render on my machine in the editor for some reason

[iron oracle]

why do my particles have delay from stopping to starting again

[fierce gorge]

how can i stretch particles in vfx graph?

[opaque knoll]

Hmm
It seems with different VFX version, the types of available Collide with nodes also differs
12.1 don't have Collide with Cylinder/Capsule...

Is there an easy way to direct a vfx graph to collide with in-scene colliders (selected or whole layer of colliders), like the Shuriken version?

[vestal solar]

No, the closest you could get is using depth collision

[opaque knoll]

Update Particle.compute: Kernel at index (0) is invalid spam when having the Collide with depth buffer
Unity...

Oh it says only for HDRP. Right

[half aurora]

Is there a way for me to manipulate a single particle (with collider) like I would with a rigidbody? Say I want to make a particle move in a specific direction via script. Is that possible or no?

[warm torrent]

Not practically
What's the intended effect?

Usually the simplest way to get a particular particle to do something different from collision is to spawn a child particle system, or to instantiate a GO with a rigidbody at that point

[half aurora]

I was trying to see if I could "deflect" a particle to a specific direction via script. I've been doing it so far with rigidbodies, but liked certain movement controls with the particle system

[warm torrent]

Far as I know particle physics and life cycle are handled totally internally by the particle system, and reading/writing to them isn't easy if it's possible at all

Maybe you can find some way to do it but I recommend to use child emitters, GO instantiation on collision or stick to rigidbodies

[frank badger]

can i spawn particles`(shuriken) from moving points using vat? textures are not possible (animated) so i thought of limiting the max particle amount and just changethe position of the vat points

[iron oracle]

im using stop() and start() to start and stop particles. but when i stop it, i have to wait 5-8 seconds before restarting it, and trying to do so before that does nothing. ayone know why?

[warm torrent]

Assuming you mean vertex animation textures, then maybe
The emission mesh shape has to be modified on the CPU, rather than on the GPU where vertex deformation is usually done

And even then there might be some extra steps to get it to read the updated mesh
Probably will have to use skinned mesh renderer at least

[broken quest]

Hello. Please help me how to achieve this smoke effect? I twist the particles, but it doesn't work

my result

I got something like this at most, and then on the basis of the mesh, and the particles here are all the same, there is no randomness

[frank badger]

hmm i wonder if it makes sense to use flipbooks on the particles i spawn in houdiny. problem there is that i cant controll how many flipbooks to spawn in unity, once they are baked to vat they are fixed.

also would need to modify the houdiny shadergraph to play the flipbooks

[warm torrent]

Hard to give opinions without necessary context of the intended visual effect
Though I'm not familiar with Houdini, maybe someone else is

[frank badger]

just some breaking buildings that spawn some smoke at the fractured pieces

[fallow star]

i'm having difficulties with getting the custom particle data system to work properly.

i have this code which creates 2 set of custom data, each one of them used with the particle system custom data module, i do have the renderer's enable vertex stream and assigneed the first custom data to UV1 and the second custom data to UV2

the issue is that i'm getting an index out of range exception when i try to do customData[customData.Count - 1] = custom1Data

            var custom1Data = CreateCustomData(texCords);
            var custom2Data = CreateCustomData(texCords, 12);

            var emitParams = new ParticleSystem.EmitParams
            {
                startColor = color,
                position = position,
                applyShapeToPosition = true,
                startSize3D = new Vector3(messageLenght, 1, 1)
            };

            _particleSystem.GetCustomParticleData(customData, ParticleSystemCustomData.Custom1);
            customData[customData.Count - 1] = custom1Data;
            _particleSystem.SetCustomParticleData(customData, ParticleSystemCustomData.Custom1);


            _particleSystem.GetCustomParticleData(customData, ParticleSystemCustomData.Custom2);
            customData[customData.Count - 1] = custom2Data;
            _particleSystem.SetCustomParticleData(customData, ParticleSystemCustomData.Custom2);

            _particleSystem.Emit(emitParams, 1);```

does anyone know what could be going wrong with this?

i'm fairly new to toying around with particle systems and their capabilities

[warm torrent]

I wonder what's it for exactly?

[fallow star]

i'm following a guide i posted on #archived-shaders to make particle based text displays

turns out i was emitting after ttrying to get the custom particle data

all other example usages of that method show the Emit method going first

so i'll try that

#archived-shaders message

this is the guide if anyone's interested

[light island]

anybody know how to lock a trail renderer to a straight line?

[warm torrent]

I'm not familiar with it but it's very interesting ^^

[ashen robin]

ah, I was thinking about something like that since my pooled 3D text does actually impact some performance.

ill put that on the ever growing list of things I need to optimize

[vital eagle]

i've been working on this visual effect and I have this nice prototype but I'm a bit stuck with where to go with it and how I'd like it to look. If anyone has any suggestions or references that would be really helpful

i'm also trying to figure out how to incorporate emmissives here

[warm torrent]

Always think about your design goals
What information is its appearance meant to convey? What feelings is it meant to evoke?

[stuck gyro]

Hello friends.
I need a particle system that emits particles from one object and goes to another object, that is, one is the source and the other is the target. The particle flow must be updated when the target object and source object be moved.

[fluid lagoon]

Make it with VFX graph and expose the two positions as properties

Then set those properties whenever you need to (each frame for example)

Or even use the property binder to bind those properties to the transform position of the objects in question:
https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.visualeffectgraph@16.0/manual/PropertyBinders.html

[stuck gyro]

Thank you but we can't. We are working on a mobile app and VFX Graph is not fully supported for that. Any other solution?

[warm torrent]

Particle System with either Particle System Force Field to suck them towards a point or Velocity Over Lifetime with a negative radial velocity and Offset position to define the point

Or use a line renderer curved between two points using bezier math with a shader-animated scrolling texture instead of particles

[stuck gyro]

Thank you for your reply.
I have not worked with this module before and I am working on it right now.

By the way our scene is a 3D scene and I am not talking about moving in just two x and y axis.

[vital horizon]

Unsure the best place to ask but. How would one go about making this circle, but also making it so the line collides/breaks up when it hits a wall?

https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/939356795980361848/1122646665287979110/image.png

[warm torrent]

There's countless ways to draw circles
This one in particular looks like it might effectively a line renderer with many points

Or just a sprite if its size doesn't need to change

For collision detection you could do an OverlapCircle centered on the character to also catch any colliders within the circle, or if you have the points that make up the circle you could do raycasts or linecasts from each point to the next sequentially

[vital horizon]

Technically in my case it's a 3D game.

But yeah I'm just not sure. I thought about doing a line render, but breaking it up/having it stop on walls I don't think would work very well/be a lot of work for very little Gain

[sinful badger]

can somebody help me? I'm trying to add a feature to change the color of particle effects as part of an animation. I click record, and change the "color over trail" in my particle systems but it's not sticking

[warm torrent]

I think the animator cannot modify gradients

Gradients are arrays of alterable length
Animator lacks the methods to create new color keys and to check how many there are

[sinful badger]

unfortunate

[orchid geyser]

I'm having trouble with my VFX Graph particles and Depth of Field in URP.
Particles that have nothing behind them are treated as max distance and get full blur. My guess is my particles are not writing to the depth buffer or perhaps there are some settings I need to enable in URP pipeline or something, not sure.
Does anyone have any ideas of why this isn't working?

[hybrid tiger]

my particle's sprte looks glitched. I am using a multiple sprite inside a texture sheet animation in a particle system to get random sprites but the sprites look weird i do not know why

[hybrid tiger]

where there is empty space in the sliced sprites it is strectehd and glitched for some reason

wait i might have fixed it

[autumn umbra]

I want to create magical trail particle animation in unity canvas so i followed some tutorials but they are using URP but i have doubt that it will not work in canvas. Any Suggestion guys

just asking if anybody tried it before so they can suggest me something

[warm torrent]

Post only in one relevant channel at a time please

Normally only UI renderers can render on UI
There are probably some third party solutions for UI particles, but you can also just render the particles in front or behind a canvas

[zenith grove]

Is there a way to prevent particle strips from being this kind of see through for themselves?

[tiny quarry]

Looks like they're being drawn in the transparent pass. Make them opaque or cutout and they'll write to the Zbuffer which will block out the occluded blades.

[zenith grove]

I don't seem to have cutout mode in my Unity version and opaque makes them invisible

[tiny quarry]

Hmm. Need to know how you've set it up in the editor...

[zenith grove]

In editor I haven't done much other than increasing order in layer

[tiny quarry]

Can't help if you don't share the particle editor settings that create this effect.

[zenith grove]

ohh you mean the graph?

[tiny quarry]

Whatever you did that makes that stuff appear on screen. IDK how you made it!

[zenith grove]

Sorry I forgot to mention that I am using VFX graph. But that's how it looks, or at least the output part

I tried removing block of Alpha over life but it doesn't do much

[tiny quarry]

OK I've not used this before but I would suggest (as a test) removing Soft Particles as that definitely requires alpha. IDK what shader it is going to use but you need that shader to draw in the opaque pass and fill the Zbuffer - you might have to make a bespoke Shader Graph asset if it's defaulting to an alpha pass shader.

[zenith grove]

Will try that but I don't think it is an alpha issue, because otherwise it should probably let me see everything that passes through thsese particles which, if you look at the screenshot is not the case

[zenith grove]

This approach technically works, but its a bit of a pity that this kind of minor bug will require to move onto the shader graph instead. But thanks for finding some solution

[tiny quarry]

Yeah I guess the default shader is transparent because, for the vast majority of use cases, nice blending trumps accurate sorting. Grass is a bit of a corner case :/

[ashen robin]

Opaque and alpha clipping should be what you need here, no clue why it would go invisible though. I'd try it in another project perhaps.

[ashen robin]

Doesn't look like the opacity is lowered here though, and regardless of it, it would still create rendering issues between the different sources.

[solar trellis]

could be the buffer you set it to "always"? but by default they should be LEqual, if you didnt touch it then porbaby it's not

[winter parrot]

hello
i have been trying to animate the Opacity property of a URP Decal Projector but it just doesnt work
the slider for opacity moves thanks to the animation
but visually there are no changes

[ashen robin]

There's more option for the decals inside of your pipeline's renderer asset you can probably play around with

[junior thistle]

Hey I'm struggling with something. I have portals that the player can create at will. It's a horizontal portal with a flat base right now. The issue is when the player spawns it on uneven terrain, it looks bad with the flat base. I'm looking into making some kind of magic cloud or something that has 3d volume to cover up for this.

I can't seem to find anything on yt or on the asset store. Anyone have any recommendations? Could be a shader or particle effect

[ashen robin]

There's a lot of tutorials on the web to create smoke if you want to try your hands at that. If you need more depth, then probably some mesh/shader approach could be what you're looking for.

[junior thistle]

Ye I looked into smoke, it doesn't rly look right to me. I'd want something a bit more complicated and I agree a shader approach would probably be better but I'm a noob

maybe some kind of magical fire fx could work

[warm torrent]

@zenith grove Particle System has options for depth sorting within the system's particles, I'd expect VFX Graph has something similar but I don't know
If it doesn't, one option might be to use a shader with ZWrite and Alpha Clipping enabled

[winter parrot]

there rly isnt, i can only change the MaxDrawDistance and Technique, nether of the techniques do much to solve the issue

[tiny quarry]

Simplest fix: make the portal hover slightly above the ground. It's magic 🤷🏻‍♂️

[misty rock]

Anyone knows why the bullet is always going sideways towards the Enemy?

https://hastebin.com/share/yesakirufu.java

[tough arch]

As I said, the problem is not with code. You need to make sure that the particle system aligns with game object's forward axis.

[junior thistle]

I fixed it and made what I wanted. It looks a bit worse artistically but it's more functional

[misty rock]

@tough arch I tried and it still spawns sideways

[tiny quarry]

Are you orienting the bullet to point in the direction it moves?

transform.LookAt( targetPos ) ;

[misty rock]

@tiny quarry I'll try right now

[sharp quartz]

Hey everyone! I'm using the visual effect graph to make a slash effect for one of my characters. I'm using a simple Set Angle (-90, 0, 180) at particle initialisation to orientate the particle properly as it is inversed if I don't. It works fine if I just input it in the Vector3 node or in the Set Angle.XYZ. I'd like to be able to offset that however and if I create a property, give it a value of 180 and link it to the Z of the Vector3, it doesn't give me a 180 degrees rotation at all. I tried to convert the property to radians just in case there is a hidden conversion but it doesn't help. Here are some screenshots. First is no rotation applied to the Z-axis, second is rotation applied wihtout the property (expected result), third is using the property (wrong rotation).

[sharp quartz]

For the LookAt to work, you need to have the particle oriented towards the forward of the system. This is usually the Z axis. You need to align the particle system with the Z for this to work

It seems to just be a 90 degree rotation around the y axis

if the particle system is the top level object of the prefab, your code will overwrite the rotation you set in the editor, you'd need to compensate for that by adding some rotation to align

Instead of modifying the code, I'd rather modify the particle system to output the particle properly or nest the particle system inside an object and align the bullet with the new parent's Z axis

[misty rock]

It doesn't matter what I do to the frostbolt (particle system) it still goes the same sideway direction

[sharp quartz]

that means you need to modify the particle system itself

I don't know how it works tho, I can't really help with that as is

[ashen robin]

Maybe try recompiling in the graph, otherwise maybe the value is being changed on object's system itself?

[sharp quartz]

ooooh thanks I'm an idiot, it was overriden on the object

[ashen robin]

^^

[sharp quartz]

The particle system may set the rotation of the particle according to world coordinates, which would ignore any rotation you set to the actual game object. I'd still try to nest the particle system just to see?

[sharp quartz]

I've got another question, I've been using age over lifetime to animate my particle's shader but when I set the playRate to 0 or the pause value to true through scripting, my effect isn't stopped. What's the right way to just pause a particle system so that I can pause that animation?

I can pause the effect neatly using the controls in the scene but using a script to set vfx.pause doesn't do anything

[heavy elk]

hey there, ive created this simple fog particle system, but for some odd reason my fps goes from 80 to 60, is there is any possible sulotion for that?

[misty rock]

Maybe this helps?

[warm torrent]

Overdraw issue most likely
Don't spawn many, huge transparent particles that overlay each other from the camera's perspective

[heavy elk]

I spawn ,3 only

[sharp quartz]

I don't have the time to inspect all this, sorry

[misty rock]

@sharp quartz I think the same, the particle system is stuck and can't rotate for some reason no matter the code.

[sharp quartz]

did you make your own?

[misty rock]

yes, it's mine

code/particle

[sharp quartz]

do you ever set the particle's rotation in the particle system?

or do any computation linked to world coordinates?

for the particle system I mean

[misty rock]

All I touched in the particle system.

if (isHoming)
        {
            // Calculate the direction towards the target
            Vector3 direction = target.position - transform.position;

            // Calculate the velocity needed to reach the target
            Vector3 velocity = direction.normalized * speed;

            // Move the bullet towards the target
            transform.Translate(velocity * Time.deltaTime, Space.World);

            // Check if the bullet has reached the target
            float distance = Vector3.Distance(transform.position, target.position);
            if (distance <= 0.1f) // Adjust the value as needed
            {
                HitTarget();
                return;
            }

// Calculate direction towards the target
            Vector3 direction = target.position - transform.position;
            Quaternion rotation = Quaternion.LookRotation(direction);

            // Instantiate frostbolt particle effect
            if (frostboltPrefab != null)
            {
                GameObject frostbolt = Instantiate(frostboltPrefab, transform.position, rotation);

                // Set the forward direction of the particle system to match the target direction
                frostbolt.transform.forward = direction.normalized;

                // Get the main module of the particle system
                ParticleSystem particleSystem = frostbolt.GetComponent<ParticleSystem>();
                ParticleSystem.MainModule mainModule = particleSystem.main;

                // Set the particle system's start speed to move towards the target
                mainModule.startSpeed = speed;
            }

[warm torrent]

It looks like you spawn 3 every second and they last for 50 seconds
So you eventually would end up with 150
Even 3 overlapping sprites can be costly on some platforms if they're really big

[heavy elk]

so I should lower the scale and increase emmision rate? am i correct?

[warm torrent]

If it really is an overdraw problem then anything you can do to reduce the number of particles covering each other and their effective screen size in pixels will help
Though, all solutions culminate towards "don't try to make fog with particles" because it's a kind of fundamentally a problematic effect

[heavy elk]

well, I tried creating one with VFX and shader graph, all of them equally terribly

[warm torrent]

Right, because none of them can automatically solve the overdraw problem

[heavy elk]

Then well, how should I create the fog for 2d mobile game? cause well I dont have much ideas?

[warm torrent]

One option is to keep a track of your overdraw very carefully and avoid it
Never place more than one or two fog sprites/particles over anything else, see if that's performant enough
Or do the fog effect entirely within shaders, using a blend or lerp operation to apply a color or a texture to anything with that shader, depending on position for example

Though shader operations and texture lookups aren't free, it could be cheaper than overdraw

[heavy elk]

May I know how can keep track that theres no overdraw in the sprites?

[warm torrent]

Anything that uses transparent blending (such as sprite shaders) will be drawn over each other
The simple way is to just look and select objects in the scene with the help of scene view wireframe mode to see where there's a lot of overlapping stuff
For more precise analysis the frame debugger and tools like RenderDoc can tell you precisely what's going on

[heavy elk]

Alright thank you for your help and clearing things up!

[misty rock]

If I manually change rotation X Y Z, the particle won't rotate at all. Anyone knows why?

[misty rock]

It was the renderer alignment - set on world

[zenith grove]

Will look it up

[quartz pumice]

Not sure where is better to ask in shaders group or Urp group. Can anyone guide me what should I use for to get this effect?
#archived-urp message

[ashen robin]

Mostly shader work. Could do something easy like stencils, but the gradual change to the vertices seems a little more complicated.

It's some vertex shader stuff

[quartz pumice]

So that means each object I want to do it to, must have specific shader. Instead of having shader on object that hides stuff

[ashen robin]

You have two types of materials mostly, one that is to be dissolved, and one that dissolves it.

otherwise you can apply it to specific layers via render object feature

[quartz pumice]

Layers method would be perfect. Similar to how outline is done on URP. But I don't thinkg it is possible to make some layer to be invisible and hide other object. Or my brains cant connect how rendering should work for them. Thank you for you help!

[ashen robin]

https://glowfishinteractive.com/dissolving-the-world-part-1/

Some similar method using stencils

https://glowfishinteractive.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/DissolveTheWorld_Part02_09_PlayerWorldReveal_Small.gif

[quartz pumice]

Thank you, will read this! ❤️

[ashen robin]

Pretty sure they use two different materials, and in this gif the character applies it in the proximity of them

[dull obsidian]

I can help but notice how strange the vfx graph ui looks in these screenshots. the outlines around the contexts appear slanted? is this a bug?

[quartz pumice]

thank you, thanks to your guidlines I implemented simple version of wanted, thank you again.

[ashen robin]

Ayee that was quick

pretty good

[quartz pumice]

maybe you know if stencils is already available on shader graph? as Manual shaders is not my thing at all 🙂 as from what I found in forums it is not in shader graph, but that information is several years old

[ashen robin]

I dont think shader graph has stencils implemented with it yet

so yeah, either hlsl or render objects, or a mix of both

[quartz pumice]

thank you

[eager dew]

Hey guys, is there a way to use a particle system like a mask? Like you can see in the picture I want to have a static image (on the left) but it's only visible through the particles (on the right)

[sharp quartz]

It’s done that randomly, sometimes you connect a node and the UI goes to shit, I’ve solved my problems though but thanks
I think it’s another one of Unity’s system being a bit fucked

[sharp quartz]

You could make a shader that samples the texture according to the particle’s position and spawn objects that use that shader

If its vertical movement is tied to its age, you could also use the age with an offset

[eager dew]

I found another way that works pretty well for me. I set the image to only be visible inside masks and spawn a few mask sprites, manipulating the movement, size and lifetime. I suck at shaders, no option for now 😄

[sharp quartz]

That’s really cool! Well done!

[eager dew]

Thank you! 🙂

[ashen robin]

Aye, that's pretty cool

If you want to make it a little more trippy can add some relative screen position coordinates to the logic

[eager dew]

I tried adding some uv scrolling, not sure what looks better tho

[ashen robin]

Haha, I was thinking about that too

looks legit

[eager dew]

maybe setting the scrolling direction to the dash direciton would look cool

[open terrace]

hi, somebody know how can I make the water move, cause it only moves when I touch the asset, thx

[mental fiber]

Hey guys! I'm struggling with vfx. I have started doing it since 2 weeks. I watched some tutorials and I'm stuck... I cant even replicate this single effect. How should I learn this skill as a complete beginner?

[warm torrent]

VFX Graph or Particle Systems?

[mental fiber]

Mostly VFX graph because its more modern i guess. I mean I wanna learn the latest technologies

[warm torrent]

They're different tools for different purposes, not a direct lineage of succession

If you want to really learn how particle effects work, I recommend starting with Particle System
It has less settings to worry about and unlike VFX Graph it exposes those settings and doesn't start by assuming you know every step of the process already

[mental fiber]

Alright. So I should start with Particle system. Are you a VFX designer? I mean are you working as vfx designer?

[warm torrent]

The technical difference of the tools is that VFX are simulated on the GPU, while PS are simulated on the CPU
This determines how and where they can be used

[mental fiber]

Ahh soo its decided by if we wanna burden our video card or, our processor

We can continue this conversation in DM if u want

[warm torrent]

It's relevant to the channel so this is fine ^^

[warm torrent]

Indeed
The GPU is incredibly efficient for mass-particle simulations but it doesn't have access to the kind of data the CPU particles have which most notably means scene colliders and collision events
CPU particle systems have less of an overhead cost and you don't need to worry about pooling them for optimization for that reason
GPU particles can in many ways still interact with the CPU side (such as when needing to pass coordinates into or out of the VFX Graph) but this has an extra cost and complexity to worry about
I've done particles and visuals for studios, but it's just a part of what I do so I wouldn't call myself a dedicated VFX artist, yet anyway!

You can jump into learning VFX Graph directly by all means, especially if you know for a fact that you do need its GPU simulation capabilities, but it's going to be a rockier road

In my experience it's tough learning and using VFX Graph even if particles and their lifecycle are a familiar concept since there's so many more moving parts

[mental fiber]

Yeah I will start with Particle System. But what can I do if I want to replicate a particle effect on my own?

I want to deeply understand it not just copy and paste a solution

[warm torrent]

I think understanding of effects comes through understanding of tools, I think that's likewise true for all art, and code too
Particle Systems is helpful with that since the modules it gives you are enough to make some 80% of all types of effects
Sometimes it's tricky though since skilled artists tend to hide the marks of manufacture on purpose, and complex effects can be composed of many different particle effects, some being easy to miss just by blinking, and may include non-particle parts like mesh geometry with shaders

You may be able to start creating interesting effects already just by creating a particle system gameobject and tweaking its settings from the defaults

Old and indie games often have simple particle effects for you to look at and analyze, then try to replicate accurately, or partially to make something new
Youtube has period and comma hotkeys for going frame per frame which is very useful here

[mental fiber]

So you say if I only "brainlessly" tweaking some stuff in Particle System it will help me?

[warm torrent]

Worth a try
It did help me to understand what the options are

[heady haven]

That's how I learnt too. Poke every button, pull every slider.

[mental fiber]

Okey

[warm torrent]

VFX Graph doesn't quite in the same way have buttons or sliders so trialing and erroring it is way harder
It's all nodes and you kinda have to start by knowing what nodes to use and how to chain them together

But at the end of the day it's the same deal of spawning particles and controlling their individual properties

[heady haven]

Oh yeah. I've only touched that a little bit. Tutorials are great for VFX graph since a lot of things aren't as straight forward.

[graceful cape]

Hello! I'm trying to create a particle system with some sort of "cascade order" I have a rectangular shape and I'd like to start the first particle from the left side of the shape and keep spawing particles until reaching the right side and then back to the start on the left side. There's any option that I'm missing? I can't figure it out how to achieve it

[heady haven]

I'm not sure it's the best solution but I would use an animation.

Is it something like this you mean?

[graceful cape]

yeah, something like this but controlled from the particle system

[heady haven]

Don't think that's an option.

[warm torrent]

I don't know one either
Radial shapes have the "loop" option but other ones do not, so an edge shape animated to move might be the closest thing
Using an animated RT texture as the shape texture could work but I've never tried it

RT textures do not seem to work for it

[rugged shadow]

I have a very basic question on particles. If I have say a bunch of large cloud particles that move slightly, but I do not want them instanced in view of the camera and I want the despawned once they are out of camera.... Is that something you would do with a particle system or is there some other way I should be doing it..

[zenith grove]

In VFX graph there is something called bounds where you can set a box or make it automatically adjust to the size of vfx and once this box get out of camera view, effect stops rendering , however this is is not a complete despawning

[vital eagle]

how would I give a particle system emmissive properties? I'm using the VFX graph.

[ashen robin]

Add intensity from any color node

[vital eagle]

I have done that but it doesn't appear quite as intense as some of the videos I am referencing

video vs what mine look like

[ashen robin]

You may be seeing bloom via post processing amplifying the effect

Seems like it's working for you, no?

[vital eagle]

the intensity increase does work to some extent, it's just ones from videos look a lot brighter than what I've got

[ashen robin]

Ah, you mean those smaller particles, eh? They seem rather dim. This is the default particle texture too right

Try something with a little more surface area perhaps

Otherwise make sure the color isn't being overriden any later in the graph

[toxic umbra]

I'm in the built in render pipeline. What would be the most effective way to make a custom renderer that draws a single pixel to the screen with depth?

it needs to always render a single pixel regardless of scale or position, but only if the center of the renderer is not obscured

[fast scroll]

any idea why my lit dust particles reflect light

[warm torrent]

Lit materials are meant to reflect light

[fast scroll]

i just want something that is affected by other lights

is there a way to do that?

[warm torrent]

Reflecting light is how lit materials are affected by light

It could help to explain in greater detail what the problem is exactly

[fast scroll]

i need a particle system that can lighten/brighten based on the lights around it. the problem is that the particles also reflect the light source

[fast scroll]

i get the same effect on my particles as having the smoothness set to max on a normal material. the problem is that theres no smoothness slider for particle materials

never mind, apparently there is a slider for that in the shadergraph

[warm torrent]

They do have it

[fast scroll]

its fixed

[fast scroll]

in the shadergraph

[warm torrent]

Not just in the shader graph

[fast scroll]

i dont see anything here

[warm torrent]

Of course since it's a shader graph material the graph is responsible for exposing that property
BiRP's Standard Surface particle shader and URP's lit particle shader have it by default

[dense compass]

How can I run a Vfx Graph from a script?
Naive try was: _explosionVfxAsset.GetComponent<VisualEffect>().Play();
But I get: "The specified method is not supported."

And I can't find anything related to that in the Unity docs.

[warm torrent]

https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.visualeffectgraph@14.0/manual/ComponentAPI.html

[twin basalt]

Hi can you tell me what Class used for curves insdie ParticleSystem? I try to copy from AnimationCurve and paste to ParticleSystem curve and it is not working. Also templates different insdie both type.

[burnt coral]

It's https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/ParticleSystem.MinMaxCurve.html
There's constuctors that use AnimationCurve though.

[twin basalt]

Probably right click on AnimationCurve is ovverided inside particles editor... In simple AnimationCurve it is open 3 options, insdie particle system 2 options, inside MinMaxCurve it is opening AnimationCurve editor instead.

[sinful badger]

Is there a way to make a particle mesh copy of a skinned mesh renderer, which abides by all of the bones of the skinned mesh renderer it's copying?

[dull obsidian]

if i understand your question and vfx graph is supported on your platform, this block will do that: https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.visualeffectgraph@16.0/manual/Block-SetPosition(SkinnedMesh).html

[sinful badger]

is that like a coding thing? my platform doesnt support custom code

[tame crane]

anybody knows why my materials don't update when i change them in the inspector?

[warm torrent]

All platforms support custom scripts
If you're modding a game we can't practically help you with that

[dull obsidian]

visual effect (vfx) graph is mainly a node graph / block based workflow, not code. like visual lego blocks you connect together.

diagram from the docs https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.visualeffectgraph@16.0/manual/GraphLogicAndPhilosophy.html

[dull obsidian]

but yeah also like @warm torrent mentioned. i'm not sure what you mean by your platform not supporting code as they all do from a developer standpoint. or even if it is a legal "mod" like vrchat you should be asking in their discord / community. even "no code / low code" tools like vfx graph may not be supported in these situations, but i have no idea the specifics. or maybe there is a misunderstanding, idk.

[onyx lake]

Hey yall 🙂 I'm using VFX Graph for the first time and I'm getting this error message. Anybody got a clue what this means or where I could look for a solution? I'm using the Output Particle Unlit Mesh output in my graph with a custom shader made in shader graph.
I'm even getting this error when nothing in my shader is connected to the output. So it seems to be some general setting?

I'm in Unity 2021.3.16f1 with HDRP.

Okay, looks like the error message is gone when I disable "enable support vfx graph" and add visual effect as a target, which is deprecated. What the heck?

[halcyon zealot]

how do i make a light (that doesn't illuminate, just for UI) for a far away object like a planet that disappears once you get close to it? For example I have here Billboard from Space Graphics Toolkit

however i have no idea how to use it

i just want something simple

[halcyon zealot]

(i did fix this because my billboard transform didn't have 0,0,0 coords although another way of doing this would be cool stil)

[frozen sinew]

how do i change how my particles look like

i wanna make them look like this sprite i have

[bold herald]

drop down material

on the button

click that

or the rendere

renderer

@frozen sinew

[frozen sinew]

no worries i got it

i want some particles on the screen as soon as the game starts , how do i do that?

game starts like this

but i want to have a couple clouds like this

[opaque knoll]

Hi all
I wanna recreate this and kinda figuring out, which part is vfx, which is shaders?
https://www.reddit.com/r/Unity3D/comments/pmbhcg/digiscape_forest_an_interactive_installation_made/

Unless there's already a breakdown somewhere?

I have more experience with vfx graph and less with shaders. Currently doing crash course for Amplify editor n ready to try stuff out

So i have a bamboo forest entirely made of vfx, that can handle "falling leaf" mode. Wind effect etc can also be added
So i guess the "turn into vortex" mode is pretty much about creating everything with vfx particles/lines and have a global "warp in circles" function?

[spare bear]

Anyone have experience with Houdini VATs and Unity? I have an effect/animation that's working well and all sorted, but when the center of the effect isnt visble, it's culled. Is there a way I can expand the bounds of this visible part, or something else I can do?

[misty rock]

Anyone knows why my arrow is not rotating?

[zenith grove]

Do you have any angles in output?

[misty rock]

yes, that was messing it up

[sinful badger]

is there a way to go into the particle system and make the particles emitted by the skinned mesh render move when the part of the mesh they spawned at moves?

[warm torrent]

If Shape is Skinned Mesh Renderer with a reference to the specific skinned mesh renderer that's moving, the emission point should move with it
But I don't think it's possible to "attach" them to the part of the skinned mesh renderer they were emitted from, at least not with what the PS offers

[sinful badger]

okay

[spare bear]

Hey all, does anyone know how I can prevent this from happening?

It's a Vertex Animated Texture effect.

[low aurora]

how big the renderer bounding box? it seems the box are quite tiny around the pivot position. You can try to modify the renderer bounds

[spare bear]

Thank you, I will try this

[viral star]

Hello folks, I'm a bit stuck while trying to understand the vfx shader graph, in the VisualEffectGraph-Samples-Master project, in the bonFire vfx:
I can see that they've defined a shader graph to use for the output.

But I don't see where that option when adding a new output.
These two outputs are the same? But I don't have blend mode in the 2nd.

I'm using Unity 2021.2.9f1 for the VisualEffectGraph-Samples-Master project.

EDIT:
Had to enable Experimental features in the Preferences->Visual Effects.

[onyx lake]

Anybody got a good solution to stop VFX Graph from auto playing on awake? The only option I found online is to enable Initial Event Name and leave it blank, but that feels hacky.

[unkempt peak]

hello, so I have an issue where I got 2 particle generators that generate a sphere from the same origin, one sphere a bigger than the other, but for some reason, the smaller sphere looks as if it's cutting trough the bigger one and rendering over the larger one

when I move the larger one forward, only the forward side isn't eclipsed by the smaller sphere

so it has to do w how they decide to render them or smth

b4 it worked fine but I played w the renderer settings and now it's broken and idk what I changed

fixed it by changing the rendering layer of the bigger sphere to 1 so it renders on top

[civic surge]

how can i go about recreating this on the VFX graph? At least the rough idea of it (Mainly just the stab effect)? Do I need something like a cylinder mesh and have the particles run through there or something else?

[fluid lagoon]

can't the particles just spawn in a circle (built into VFXG) and move forward? Hard to say really from a still image because it's unclear what the particles do

[civic surge]

basically the lines move along side the direction you see

i want to believe it's just particles that are moving alongside a cylinder

@fluid lagoon here's another reference that does similar to what the pic is doing (The third hit of the character's normal attack)

[fluid lagoon]

just looks like they're just spawned in a position and move forward

it's a bit too fast to really see but they probably also kinda scale

[civic surge]

gotcha so i presume they used different sizes of the same particle, generate a bunch of them and have them move forward?

seems like one particle outlived the rest so i wonder if it's like a two layer thing where there's a second particle generated that has a longer lifetime than the particles surrounding it

[ashen robin]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Er99e0OOBgc

Genshin's particle effects seem to be mostly very stylized quads, which makes sense since that game can run on a toaster

The mesh idea is fine too if you just want to go with that since it's easier to just add that depth to the effect than to create an illusion of it all.

[civic surge]

funny enough i already did that for my sword slash this afternoon

[ashen robin]

Ah, you actually want that stab effect. A cylinder sounds like a good idea in that case with some cutout. Otherwise multiple different systems in combination with similar effect

[civic surge]

i actually tried just pure velocity with the sprites

ended up creating this (let me boot up unity first)

[ashen robin]

aye, looks like the right idea

[civic surge]

i thought they were moving at first but upon creating a looping gif

realized it actually mostly just closed in on itself

which was what i tried to recreate

[ashen robin]

Yeah, if you localize the system I can see it working if the player is the one moving

[civic surge]

unsure though how to recreate that particle density

[ashen robin]

Can probably get away with throwing on some emissions

[civic surge]

tru

i do wonder dough how they make their slash effect

seems like sprite sheet

given how uniform the slash is

[kind hedge]

Trying to make a rain volume follow the camera, but I end up with this rainless strip, not sure where it's coming from, any ideas?

[karmic bay]

just wanted to ask, I am following a muzzle flash tutorial but their VFX graph looks like this while mine does not have any of these particle nodes at all

is this some version difference or am i missing something
I am using URP and VFX graph

nvm figured it out

[fair plover]

I'm trying to put wingtip trails on a plane, but for some reason, unless I set the time to a ludicrously low value, the trail just goes on and on and on and doesn't give me the effect I'm looking for. Can anyone tell me what setting I might have screwed with or value in script I might have set that might have caused this?

This is happening in 3D space btw.

The only thing that I can think of might be the fact that I'm using 1 unit = 1 meter, which I read is the common scale to use.

[drowsy coral]

ah this should be the right place

I'm working on a lightning dash vfx graph. Every time i add the 'set position' node to my 'update particle strip' context, all my particle strips stop showing

can i send a short video on it?

[spice hollow]

I'm looking for a vfx effect where particles continously 'flow' outwards from a central point. Any chance someone can recommend something for this?

[tiny patrol]

anyone know where i can get a 2d steam effect

like coming off food

[inland tusk]

if I have a VFX graph output cube unlit, is there a way I can put a texture on it where not all faces are 0-1? What I want to do is have a bit of 'fake lighting' in the texture of the cube - the upward face is brighter than the lower face etc

[warm torrent]

I think you'd use output mesh with your custom cube that has the kind of UV map you need
Could also use a custom shader if you need the brighter parts to be above regardless of particle rotation

[inland tusk]

oh damn I didn't even know VFX graph had output mesh is that quite new?

hmm shader sounds great actually... and I guess would be more efficient? I'm targetting VR

hmm looks like custom shaders are only on quads

nm output mesh has it, just not particle cube for some reason

thanks for the pointers

[warm torrent]

Hard to say
Unlit materials with just a texture are very cheap, especially if many meshes in the scene share the material
A shader could do it without texture sampling but then you'd be doing different shader calculations instead
Neither should be a big expense

[inland tusk]

Thanks. I have another question:

what's the best way to apply a 0-1 destaturation to a vector3 color in VFX Graph? I know there's some funky maths but it involves quite a lot of operations and such, is there a combo of nodes that could simplify that?

[warm torrent]

https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.visualeffectgraph@16.0/manual/Operator-ColorLuma.html perhaps this?

For example you could lerp the particle's color to its luma instead based on some factor

[inland tusk]

oh that's perfect

a bit better than my entirely incorrect r + g + b / 3 😅 thanks again!

[near remnant]

how do i view a trail renderer in unity? is there a way to make it play?

[cloud plinth]

Evening guys, how would I go about creating a Unity 2D project where the background is recognised as transparent by OBS? I'm trying to create particles that can be used as stream overlay effects and from what I can see there are no tutorials on how to achieve this very specific effect. Something like Stream Avatars is a perfect example of what I'm trying to achieve.

[misty rock]

Anyone might know why the light from a shader graph goes through the ground?

[fierce onyx]

how to make particles collide using visual effects graph

[prime dome]

hi is there something like elbow node in vfx graph for wire management like shadergraph?

any one knows any tips or solution for that

[zenith grove]

If you are looking for a simple collisions check the "Collide with.." blocks in Update

[cloud plinth]

Anyone know anything about this?

[keen delta]

i have my white sprite in under texture sheet animation but its still purple boxes, also how do i change the size of them?

[sudden mist]

Anyone know how I can mask a VFX? Im trying to make these small particles only appear where the red is. Currently, the particles spawn outside of the red. The particles are a visual graph and not a particle effect, so I cant sprite mask it like how I would a particle effect.

[warm torrent]

What do you mean by "unlock"

To be precise they are not attached to any sprite, but if set to local simulation mode only exist relative to the particle system's gameobject's transform component

You can use a script to control emission based on gameobject velocity, or use the emission over distance option in the particle system if applicable

[clear spruce]

#archived-shaders is the right channel

[warm torrent]

Looking at it suggests the question should be "why do particles clip through the ground"
No idea what lights or shader graphs would have to do with it

[sudden mist]

Im trying to make the particle effect match whatever the "fill" of the health bar is. Can anyone help with a solution for this?

[ashen robin]

It looks like you solved the previous step, so what would be different about resolving this now?

[sudden mist]

@ashen robin Well, Ive been looking into shaders but Im a complete beginner in unity, but I have a lot of programming experience. But the next step Id say is making a sort of "fill" for the particles that I can match to the UI fill statistic.

[ashen robin]

Is this all on the UI? Are any of the particles being hidden at all by the UI border there?

I've not really played around with particles for the UI, but I hear there's some issues with screen space canvas, and I believe there's a community package to help with that.

I think I remember reading about using multiple cameras, one to render the canvas, and another to overlay the particles

If you don't manage to make it work with particles, using shaders here would work fine too

[dull obsidian]

@sudden mist you mentioned this is vfx graph, so you don't need a custom shader or shader graph to do this though you could do it either way, it's the same basic concept dealing with the same attributes either way.

seems like the simplest way would be to (in the output context) use a compare node to set the particles alpha to 0.0 if the value of the fill bar is greater than local position or set alpha to 1.0 if the particles are less than the fill value. the fill value can just be an exposed float parameter. this assumes these values are all normalized between 0.0 and 1.0 and the bounds of the system are set to the total size of the fill bar.

[sudden mist]

@dull obsidian That sounds like an awesome and simple solution, thank you so muucch.

[sudden mist]

Yeah, I have a mask on the UI.

[sudden mist]

Been trying shaders, still learning. I have to watch a ton of vids 😵‍💫

[dull obsidian]

@prime dome it depends on the fov of the camera and other factors. but forget about that for now, as this generally isn't how one would go about these things.

instead of the attempted method to achieve a unknown goal, it would be more helpful to know what the end goal is here: a heads up display, a pause menu / user interface, a screenspace status effect like damage / healing?

i also recommend #💻┃code-beginner and possibly #💥┃post-processing or #📲┃ui-ux depending on what the end goal is here.

also, this channel's name starts with vfx-which is short for visual effect graph which at this time is mostly for gpu particle effects. so it practically means gpu-particles-and-cpu-particles. sorry it is a bit confusing

in that case i recommend #🖼️┃2d-tools #💻┃code-beginner #archived-code-general

@prime dome no problem! also feel free to come back to this channel for chatting about 2d particle effects for your game

[grizzled turret]

I'm trying to make a simple jumping particle effect. Particles moving to both the left and right of the player, growing in size over time and decreasing in speed, but the particle system is proving to be quite unintuitive for me. Could someone reference me to a place to learn more or to help walk me through it?

[safe peak]

the particle is looping idk why

[inland tusk]

VFX Graph : Can anyone think of a way to have a block in the initialise of a VFX graph that kills X % of the particles? So I can have a float for a percentage of the total particles I want?

altnernatively, to when you are creating particles from a point cache sequentially you only take every n vertex

[mental fiber]

Hey guys! Do you have any videos or advice how should I recreate a visual effect from a game for learning purposes? I think this would be the way to learn the most in a short period of time.

[warm torrent]

If there are child or parent emitters, they may have looping setting enabled

[granite arch]

Hey guys I'm trying to make a spike impaling vfx but I can't seem to get the movement right... I'm using Orient: Look at Position to get them to all point in the center and then using Lerp to go from the starting position to the target one but close to the end of the lerp the particle spazzes out and it "disappears".
If I change the target position and look at position from 0,0,0 to 0,1,0 it doesn't disappear but at the same time just points all of the spikes downwards. Here's a video if it helps https://youtu.be/A1pAnR5Z50c
EDIT: It is not the size over life node you can see it work in the video.

[midnight marsh]

I can't seem to figure out how to pass a position via the EventAttribute to the VFX graph with an event. How do I expose a property to EventAttribute?

Any help much appreciated

[solemn granite]

Why my particle with sphere bounce after hit first enemy?

[ashen robin]

Are you meaning to have collision on it? Not too sure what you're aiming for with it

And you've got bounce set to 1 there

[opaque knoll]

Hi all
Anyone have some resource on constructing trees/plants entirely out of particle/strips?
I've made it (with sways, growth) but wondering if there's a better/simpler way to do it

[opaque knoll]

I think 1 of the hassle here is that the "sub-emitted" particles don't have real-time/most up-to-date info of the particle that it spawned from, only the info right at the moment of the spawn event triggered
So i had to include certain "seed" info into some custom attribute and pass it to the spawned sub-emitted particle

Then in cases of "swaying", the child parts (leaf attached to branch, branch attached to trunk) each individually have to simulate from the trunk-onwards up til that leaf itself

[opaque knoll]

So simplifying the question:
Is there any mechanics/feature that can "parent/attach" a particle to another? In terms of movement?

[opaque knoll]

I get these humongous gizmo in Scene window when selecting the SDF node in VFXG
Anyone know how to turn this off?

[warm torrent]

Gizmo toggle button should hide all gizmos, and I expect there's a specific setting for that one in the dropdown

[opaque knoll]

Nope doesnt

But anyways it's apparently affected by transform's scale

[prime dome]

does anyone have a actual working tutorial for lighting material in 2023

[warm torrent]

What does "lighting material" mean?
Lighting a material, or lighting and materials, or a material that emits light, or materials applied to lights in some way

[prime dome]

like a cube that provides light

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dvst-lbx1Y&t=215s

[prime dome]

like this

[warm torrent]

There are many types of "glows"
This one in particular is post processing bloom

Instructions how to set it up per render pipeline can be found in pinned messages of #💥┃post-processing

[fading helm]

how do i adda sprite to a particle generator?

[vocal nexus]

Hi, I'm having issues with soft particles working in URP, I've enabled depth textures, and soft particles in my material, but it doesn't seem to do anything.

[worn fable]

guys

i need

help

i am new on unity

and idk why the vfx

is coming like this

can someone help me fix it

[warm torrent]

You will need to describe the problem in precise terms

[worn fable]

idk how to explain what rn

i am new on unity

[warm torrent]

When you say "like this" we cannot know what "this" refers to, and don't really like to guess

[worn fable]

i see

alright

[warm torrent]

We can still help if we know what the issue is

[vocal nexus]

Is there any way to do a weighted random for particle system ranges?

It's what I hoped curve did, but sadly not

[warm torrent]

I don't think that's possible
You can drive the modules with scripts to some extent, but what's exposed through the API is the same stuff you can set through the inspector

[vocal nexus]

Shame I wanted some fast particles and some slow ones, which seems like it may require two particle systems

[warm torrent]

It's not a terrible solution

If you want complete control over particles you would use VFX Graph, though its technical back-end is also very different

And its learning curve which I despise

[chilly dagger]

you can definitely do this easily with vfx graph
set velocity on init from a curve, with a uniform distribution, many options

[vocal nexus]

Yeah I havent delved into vfx graphs yet, I've got a bit of gamedev experience but not in unity yet

Thanks

[pastel orchid]

is there a way to change the direction in which the particles fly off without rotating the GameObject it is attached to, or do I just have to make a new empty GameObject inside it and move the to particles there and rotate the new GameObject?

Like for example if I have a GameObject with a particle emitter, can I change it to shoot particles in any direction other than the forward direction of the GameObject?

[ashen robin]

That should all be doable inside of the particle system itself.

You can also change the locality of it, so the direction can be relative to the GO or in world coords

[warm torrent]

If you're using particle systems then the Shape module has a rotation property for the chosen shape

[pastel orchid]

Yeah, I tried changing it and the little blue cylinder in there rotated, but it was still emitted in the same direction. I already realised that I can do another thing to achieve this tho

[warm torrent]

The actual direction your particles will move towards is a sum of all the velocities and forces applied to them by the modules, not just the shape module

[pastel orchid]

it is not moving

just stands there, emitting

[pastel orchid]

anyways I got it working

well, not me, I got help

[opaque knoll]

Hi all
The Position (SDF) gets a random position?
Arc Sequencer is only an arc
Is it possible to make it "spawn from a random pos but Y pos be around 10" ?

[gentle seal]

https://gyazo.com/d23858095dbdd64d36abef477ca398e4

How do I make the radius smaller so it shoots those way closer to each other instead of spread out? I tried changing every setting under shape including the radius and its local size and NOTHING SEEMS TO BE WORKING

[lusty pier]

the speed maybe?

[safe vigil]

I wonder is there some way to let particles live out their life even if particle system is disabled for example enemy dies with its ps emitting so what do I do?

[opal star]

Detach the ps from the enemy and let it do what it needs to do

[safe vigil]

ive got lots of enemies so I use pooling if I detach then it kinda breaks that enemy tho I know what im gonna do ill try to make enemies request correct particle system to start emitting and follow them for effect duration if its ok enemies wouldnt even need to have child ps for each effect

[warm torrent]

I would look into pooling them both separately
The particles are a part of the Particle System so they cannot persist without it

[shadow gust]

Hey guys, i've checked out 5 tutorials for the VFX Graph, but no matter what i try, when i create a VFX Graph etc i just see a teacup, no particles or effects. What am i doing wrong?

[warm torrent]

Does your project / render pipeline support VFX Graph?
https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.visualeffectgraph@14.0/manual/System-Requirements.html

[shadow gust]

i just realised i did NOT initiate my project with URP. so im installing universal RP from package manager and will add it in the graphics settings (according to chatgpt) 8))

[warm torrent]

Use real instructions from pinned messages of #archived-urp
Chatgpt cannot be trusted to not make up false information

[shadow gust]

after installing URP package and restarting unity, i still cant find it and select it in the graphics settings

[warm torrent]

Well it's not supposed to be there yet

[shadow gust]

thanks, checking the docs

@warm torrent It works! except my game turned purple 🤔

[warm torrent]

https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.render-pipelines.universal@14.0/manual/upgrading-your-shaders.html
There's more steps to do

[shadow gust]

@warm torrent Perfect, everything works now, thank you a lot 🙂

[shadow gust]

i've followed a tutorial to create lightning, but the author never mentioned how to increase the thickness / width of the "trail bodies", how can i achieve this?

[ashen robin]

Usually the size/scale nodes of the particle itself

[fallow kestrel]

my particle system wont play even though it should start playing at the location of the flameExit transform, does anyone know why?

    {
        if (!isShooting)
        {
            //Enable the flamethrower particle system and begin shooting.
            flamethrowerParticles.Play(flameExit);
            isShooting = true;
            Invoke("StopFlamethrower", shootDuration);
        }
    }```

[shadow gust]

i've imported an FBX mesh to use with my VFX graph. However its casting a shadow which i dont want. i cant disable the mesh renderer in the fbx object either, what can i do?

[warm torrent]

Clicking on the output particle unlit mesh Context should show its settings in the inspector, including Cast Shadows

[shadow gust]

here? i see no shadows

okey i see the info text, hmm

fixed 👌

ty

[shadow gust]

whats the best method of adding light to your VFX graph & particles? For this slash above and also another lightning bolt effect

[warm torrent]

For VFX Graph the best is: don't
Output Events can be used to call script methods to create lights, but only from Spawn Context
It's better to to create lights separately using the script that also starts the VFX
With Particle Systems you can use the Lights module

[shadow gust]

i have 9 identical vfx fires with particle system lights, they are clones of a prefab. how come only 3/9 lights up?

[warm torrent]

You have 4 pixel lights affecting the floor mesh, which is the default limit per object

[shadow gust]

oh.. can i remove that limit? why is it so low? Found the setting. Additional Lights -> Per Object Limit. Max is 8? How do i solve this?

[warm torrent]

Ideally you limit light ranges and split meshes into smaller segments to reduce the number of meshes affected by each light
Deferred rendering path supports infinite lights but has drawbacks like no transparency or hardware AA
Forward+ rendering path supports a lot of lights with no drawbacks, but it's new and can be buggy
Baked lights have no light limits, but it's a whole different workflow and has its own drawbacks, mainly being entirely static and limited specular reflections

[shadow gust]

I guess the simplest solution would be for me to have multiple grounds with max 8 lights per ground object

[warm torrent]

Likely

[hushed nova]

Hello y'all, I got a question about the Unity Particle Pack from the asset store, why is it when I look at the particle effects for bullet holes, the decal seems to stretch according to the object, but when I use it it doesn't, does anyone know how to fix?

[warm torrent]

You need to orient the effect along the surface normal when you instantiate it in code

[tall remnant]

How should i begin learning everything related to visuals (i have only done coding)? I have some fragmentary knowledge but it's better to start from zero, I dont even know what some things in Material tab are. Right now i want to make some visuals for spell like abilities, so fire, wind, barriers, explosions, smoke etc... I work in 3D

[warm torrent]

I guess the important questions are how many tech art topics do you want to learn, and how deep understanding do you want of them?

Particles, 3D art and shaders are all different disciplines, but you'll find they're very deeply intertwined once you start digging in

[tall remnant]

i need to learn the base on most of them so i can understand where they are intertwined as you said

[warm torrent]

A hands-on approach I'd recommend is to make some stuff following basic Particle System and Shader Graph tutorials

You can make cool and useful stuff with them without knowing any theory, but by using them more you start seeing opportunities to combine particles and shaders, which is when it gets technical

[tall remnant]

i do have some to follow but it will not be easy

[warm torrent]

If you're not allergic to studying and not so concerned with getting instant results then you could read resources like the Shader Quest series, and start learning what VFX Graph can do

[tall remnant]

thanks i'll look into it

[warm torrent]

Usually only one of these two learning techniques works for a person depending on how they learn

[sudden mist]

Would love anyone who has very very good experience with masking particles and shaders to help me find a solution that mask the particles according to the fill size of the health bar. Private message is preferred for me so just DM if you are able to help, thanks!

[dull obsidian]

@sudden mist did you give these previous suggestions a shot or have trouble along the way?

(btw, private message kinda defeats the point of this asking for assistance in the discord server here. unless you're trying to hire someone as a consultant. [which you can do by job posting on the unity forum if you want.] one of the reasons why i and others provide "free" assistance here is that everyone/anyone in the community gets to benefit from it and contribute to it.)

[sudden mist]

I agree with the last part, my bad. I did have trouble using that one, I actually changed from a vfx graph to a particle effect so. Its probably still possible with the particle effect though. It was easier for me to mask the particles with a sprite mask to stay in the health bar but yeah the fill part is really difficult for me to solve.

[dull obsidian]

no worries! and you are using URP? or HDRP? it doesn't matter too much but might. maybe you can use two sprite masks (if possible, idk) or make a composite sprite mask that has everything you need all in one.

[sudden mist]

Im using URP, but this does not sound bad at all either. I tried something like this before though. I read something like particles are world view and UI images are not so a sprite mask couldn't work. I could be wrong though, I just read it online while researching.

Thanks for the help btw.

[dull obsidian]

if need be there are ways to convert between world space and local / object space (the object being this status bar). or get the particle system to be in local / object space, might be simpler.

[sudden mist]

I will look this up and message you again about it because you might be onto something haha. Thanks again.

[dull obsidian]

@sudden mist sure. another way is if you can put this part of the project into it's own example project and post a link here or on the forums then i or someone can take a look

[tawdry jacinth]

hi all, having problems referencing visual effects, i dont want to have the actual vfx under the gameobject like is shown in the (hierarchy) picture, i would prefer just to drag and drop a vfx from my project into the inspector and 'spawn/play' it on the parent gameobjects start, but it wont let me not have the vfx be a child of the parent to reference it.

i hope that makes sense

[sudden mist]

@dull obsidian This is the code I did for a solution but it still doesn't work... I feel that I am super close to what I need though. If you could give your input, I would really appreciate it!

[rugged mural]

I just started using Unity 2021.3 and having a weird issue in my viewport on one particle system when I zoom with the mouse wheel, the particles seem to scale in the opposite size? Is this a bug or a setting I'm missing somewhere?

[dull obsidian]

cool, i'll take a look tomorrow, getting late where i am right now.

does it look any different now in this state? even if it's not exactly how it is desired.

[sudden mist]

It actually doesnt do anything atm but I feel the logic is there. I feel like Im just missing one thing thats making it not actually work.

What I mean is that Im not getitng the desired effect, it still looks the same so the code is probably doing something wrong.

[random stream]

Sorting Layers don't seem to work for my particles. They are either behind everything when I set the position to 0 or in front of everything when I set the position to -5. The Sorting Layer ID and Order in the Renderer module doesn't seem to do anything?
My game is 2D

[warm torrent]

Particle Systems obey sorting layers and order in layer relative to sprite renderers, but they are all sorted together as one mesh

[random stream]

I use sprite renderer. So if I have one SpriteRenderer at sorting order -1, another one at 1 and my particle system at 0 the particles should be behind one and in front of the other, correct?

[warm torrent]

The particle system should appear between them
The particle material should be transparent for that to happen

Otherwise they use opaque sorting that's unaffected by any sorting layers

[random stream]

ah setting the material to transparent fixed it, thanks

[rapid hornet]

Hey so I am making the game and one of the enemys of my game I want to kind of be warped and staticy kind like a mimic from "Into the radius" and the closer you get the more disooreted and staticy the screen gets. I have no idea how to go about this since I don't really mess with shaders, 3d models, particles, etc. So my question is how would I go about this? Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[gaunt blade]

wanna make this beam as a particle effect hiw would 1 do that?

[solar trellis]

.... unity,why?, why did we need to insert it by ourself?

[hushed nova]

Hello, i was able to fix my bullet hole oreintation, but it does nothing for my Particals, does anyone know how to fix this?

[ashen robin]

Change the direction relative to the normal instead of a forward direction?

Actually I'm not sure what you're aiming for here. I'd assume you'd want to particles to go outwards, towards where the bullet spawns, but it looks correct if you want it to appear behind the object.

[warm torrent]

Do the same thing to the splinter particles as you did to the decal particles

[sudden mist]

this is really cool.

[north acorn]

I'm new to VFX/Particles and I am trying to achieve an effect where a projectile can collide against a wall and disperse the particles. I am creating the projectile animation in blender, I have very little experience working with these types of graphics.

Example of fire shooting from a flame thrower hitting against a wall, and or sphere and dispersing based on the shape of the object.

Does anyone have any ideas or resources that might help?

[ashen robin]

Similar to the issue above, you need to do your calculations using the projectile direction relative to the normals of the meshes that it collides with

if you want that sort of ricocheting logic

The shuriken system does have some built-in logic for that if you prefer to just bind everything to it and use its collider events, but otherwise you'd make your own projectile controller and sprinkle the vfx on it

[north acorn]

Thanks, this skuriken system is perfect.

[analog sorrel]

Hello, how do you make a particle spawn from a fixed position?
I want all my particles to spawn at the local zero vector but in the Shape module there is no point option, only shapes. I tried to disable the module but then the particle has no direction or speed. It just stays there

It would be great if there is a solution in which a custom script is not needed

[warm torrent]

Why not simply place the particle system into the fixed position?

[analog sorrel]

I think I solved the problem, I just picked the "Edge" option and it seems to work

[analog sorrel]

I did

the problem was that the particles spawned in a random place within the shape

[warm torrent]

Oh I think I misread
You can get many shape options to act as a point if you decrease their radius / length / etc to zero or close to it

[analog sorrel]

hm alright

thanks

[warm torrent]

A sphere with 0 radius just emits in all directions, a cone with 0 radius just emits towards the angle

[analog sorrel]

oh ok

thanks again

[brave snow]

hey how do i prevent particles to be overwritten by depth of field/blurry too (built in rp) i don't want to create a second render camera because for example bloom should still affect the particles too

[warm torrent]

You must use an opaque shader

[wooden ruin]

I am having this weird issue of black patches around my particles in ar! Would anyone have any clue about this.
I am using Mobile/Particles/Additive shader here with AR camera backdrop. Currently my camera clear flag is set to solid black color with 0 alpha... which is required for compositing with ar camera image later. My guess is Unity's particle system uses the camera clear flag for filling the destination render texture, but particle system is not using the alpha value!
Or am I doing any wrong here??

I am referring to these fiery particles which renders nicely over plane (the lava surface) but as soon as it exits that you can see the black border (quad mesh or billboard) around the fire particle.

And if I use normal Particles/Additive then the particle are simply not visible outside of the plane surface.

[warm torrent]

Some kind of issue with your AR camera backdrop
I haven't got a clue how it works but usually you get these kind of rendering problems if the camera background material has wrong shader settings

[wooden ruin]

Thanks, the compositing of camera background is actually a bit more intricate than background material, which works by passing camera's render texture to native rendering plugin which does the job of compositing and presenting to the view.
So I still think it's something on Unity side/shader.

[opaque knoll]

Vfx can't do "inherit custom attribute" it seems.. gotta put some value on some unused builtin param?

[wooden ruin]

Sorted... seems like the Unity particle system was always setting alpha value to 1 with default additive shader. A bit of customization around alpha did the job 🙂

[warm torrent]

It looks like your background doesn't support additive blending at all
The flames are dark and opaque against the sky

[analog sorrel]

is there a way to make an instant laser with the particle system?
I tried to just shoot a particle and make a trail but it doesn't have the "instant effect". if I crank up the speed, then the particle goes through walls sometimes (I have the trigger module enabled to detect if it hit an enemy). Maybe make a custom script where I shoot a ray, get the distance, and spawn a particle with that length? Maybe there's an easier way to do it. If so, can someone tell me or direct me to a source?

[ashen robin]

If it doesn't need to travel, then getting the length of the laser from the point of impact is probably the idea. As for the effect, you could just use a curve to increase/decrease an emissions value over the particle.

[ashen robin]

As for the particle itself, you could go about scaling a cylinder, otherwise try a particle strip

manipulating emissions seems to be uniform over the whole particle, so I believe it shouldn't matter that much when scaling

well, I guess that would make sense if you're just using textures consisting of a single color

[warm torrent]

The line renderer is better designed for that

[eager dew]

Is there any way to render particles above the ui without setting up multiple cameras?

[warm torrent]

Set UI to Screen Space - Camera or World Space and then move the particle system in front of the Canvas

A Canvas has one sort point relative to other gameobjects, which is the center of its elements

In 3D space

[eager dew]

So I would have to create a new canvas for the particles?

on a higher sorting layer?

[warm torrent]

Only UI gameobjects should go on Canvases
When the Canvas is in Screen Space - Camera or World Space it can be sorted both by sorting layers/order and distance from camera, just the same as any other objects

Whichever you prefer

[eager dew]

ahh okay got you so just screenspace overlay is not working for that

[warm torrent]

At least I don't know of any way to make it work in that mode
Overlay would be rendered on top of and after everything, even including post processing

[eager dew]

alright, I might be able to work it out with screenspace-cam, thanks!

[obsidian parcel]

is there a channel for help

cuz idk what software to use

to make vfx and 3d models

[ashen robin]

blender/photoshop usually what I use for basic assets

[analog sorrel]

@ashen robin @warm torrent Thanks for the suggestions

[rocky lichen]

Hello, is it possible to create a fire propagation effect with particle systems by using particle collision?

Actually i did it to some extent but i ran into some serious issues, which i'm not sure if that they are fixable but there may be some workarounds

[warm torrent]

Unlikely with just particle systems alone

A fire propagation system usually needs some kind of logic when or where the fire should spread

[rocky lichen]

no, i wrote a script too. The logic is when a fire particle collides with another fire particle, the other one is played and this will create like a chain reaction that will play all adjacent particles, thus creating a propagation effect of some sort. I managed to play the adjacent particle with particle collision but i have some problems with the way collision works. Which i demosntrate in the shared video

[rugged shard]

Hi all! I'm trying to make a background of stars via particle effect, and overall I'm already happy with my results. But I'd like to make it so that the distribution of particles isn't entirely uniform or random, but weighted towards the ecliptic plane. Is there any elegant way of accomplishing this?

[junior creek]

what I'm doing wrong? my particles are not slowing down at the end of their life. I use MultiplyVelocity over life in the output particle quad, but it doesn't affect the speed anyhow.

[warm torrent]

Shouldn't you be testing collision of fire particle against trees, not fire particles against other fire particles?

(Please use mp4, it embeds)

[warm torrent]

It looks like you have Set Velocity in Update context that ignores previous velocity and sets a new one

[junior creek]

but my Update is empty

[warm torrent]

Oh I misread

What values do the curves have?

[junior creek]

1->0.0 I want text to slow down at the end.

[warm torrent]

What if you move that to Update

[junior creek]

not sure that it's right , as I saw that it affect performance. as it CPU bound.

I had similar error with color. so I did that nodes (left to right) before particle quad. as suggested on the forum. By the way I use URP

[warm torrent]

Why would it be CPU bound?

[junior creek]

I moved it to Update, and it works.

[rocky lichen]

How do you mean? Making the fire particle a child object of the tree and when the particle collides with the object tagged "Tree" the child particle will play? I tried that, it didn't work

[junior creek]

IDK, I just started with VFX graph, so still struggle to understand when what happens.

[warm torrent]

Do you have any info source on it being CPU bound?
I just started too but based on my knowledge 100% of VFX Graph is GPU, except events and properties going in/out of the graph

Output context does not work for this purpose because it only operates on copies of particle data and doesn't create any changes that can persist to the next frame (the docs do not tell you this)

[junior creek]

I'll try to find this. but also probably I'll try to read generated code (first time) 🙂

[warm torrent]

What generated code?

[junior creek]

VFX graph generate shader code right?

[warm torrent]

I have not heard of that ever being a necessary step

They don't look very human readable, and probably don't tell you things the Graphs don't already

[warm torrent]

logic is when a fire particle collides with another fire particle, the other one is played and this will create like a chain reaction
How can you get the collision against another fire particle to play the effect, unless it is already playing the effect?

Intuitively you'd want to check when fire particles make contact with unburned trees, which is more how it works in reality

[rocky lichen]

"How can you get the collision against another fire particle to play the effect, unless it is already playing the effect?" one particle is set to play on awake, the other one is not. I did that, i played the next particle, that is not the problem i am having. The problem is that the particle is stuck on tree's collider. I added a code to make the particle ignore tree's collider with layermask but it didn't work very well

[analog sorrel]

Is this possible to do with the Particle System? I feel like I saw this being done but I don't know where to look. When I scale the particles, I want the texture to stretch only horizontally

[rocky lichen]

how do i determine whether a tree is burned or unburned?