✨┃vfx-and-particles

[ashen robin]

#✨┃vfx-and-particles message

#✨┃vfx-and-particles message

[tame storm]

thank you

[prime dome]

well well well

@tame storm

I found them

very cool 👍

[carmine bone]

Is this roughly one of the better methods to go about creating ground cracks/splats or is there a better way? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiAiVa0HtyE

He's basically making a model for it, which seems excessive but I don't have extensive knowledge on the matter.

[ashen robin]

models are easier to give depth to effects, but most games will just use decals to render the splats onto other models

decals also have the benefit of rendering onto other nearby geometry (they aren't limited by verticality)

[minor glen]

You can use lens flares. Both the built in render pipeline and the Scriptable render pipeline have their own lens flare systems that are easy to work with

[plush fern]

omg tysm :3

am not at my desk to do anything RN but will keep in mind for later

[jaunty tree]

I have a tornado VFX graph and I want to spawn tornados from code. What is an efficient way to do so? Just always instantiate new Prefabs that have said VFX Component attached?

[ashen robin]

If you care for optimal performance you have a single VFX system that spawns the tornados through events with given parameters

[ashen robin]

Instantiating directly without any pooling can create problems, much like instantiating in general, but if your game is small enough you can probably get away with it.

[jaunty tree]

Thanks! what is the number of seperate vfx graph instances I should be concerned about? hundreds? thousands?

[ashen robin]

Concurrent Instances aren't a problem, it's instantiating multiples in a given frame and garbage collection that's the limiter

[jaunty tree]

Also, to do it all in one VFX graph is manual labor right? There is no nice way to automate this? E.g. collect all vfx assets, make them into one grpah etc

shouldn't nearly all allocations be done on the GPU for VFX graph?

[ashen robin]

What's the behavior of the tornado

[jaunty tree]

Or do you mean the GC for the instances themselves

starts somewhere, will hunt down enemies and do damage

but on the cpu its just a cylinder

I don't know if you've played diablo, something like the cyclones there

and there can be like 40-50 tornados at once at the very max I'd say

[ashen robin]

Instantiating them requires a gameobject, a vfx component, and then the vfx system will have to pool as well, so that's a lot of extra work needed if you were to instantiate then destroy.

so there's some allocations being done on the CPU, that and the CPU is what populates the GPU buffer

[ashen robin]

How are you handling the collision

[jaunty tree]

hmm ok, yeah well maybe I should mention I also am using DOTS/ECS

but I don't think it matters for the discussion

Maybe it matters a bit, since I will have no GOs besides the VFX graph

But yeah, so I ahve an entity (think GO) which has a cylinder as an event collider, it moves around and does damage

[ashen robin]

I'm not sure how the pooling works with DOTs, but I know that every time you create a VFX asset it will do pooling of its own. It's not prewarmed, but they did recently add some pool sharing functionality (but this is more for if a single system goes over the particle limit)

[jaunty tree]

do you know what I need to search to understand this on my own?

[ashen robin]

the forums because the documentation sucks

[jaunty tree]

haha yes classic unity

so this: https://forum.unity.com/threads/pooling-vfx-graphs.1456894/ ?

[ashen robin]

one larger problem though is you want collision with your tornado

[jaunty tree]

keywords are vfx graph and pooling?

[ashen robin]

so you will have controller for that too, which makes continuous updating the gpu buffer a little more complicated

[jaunty tree]

Hmm, how do you mean?
Rn on the CPU all I have is moving cylinders for the tornados, which move around and damage other entities. This already works in DOTS/ECS and is quite performant

[ashen robin]

if you do stick with the idea you have a system for each tornado game object, you will have to pool specifically to those tornados

[jaunty tree]

all that I basically want to do is remove the rendered cylinder mesh (keep cylinder collider) and replace it with a VFX graph who's position I will always update to be equal to the one of the entity

[ashen robin]

which is fine, but it's less reusable if you know what I mean. Requires dynamic pooling if you have a lot of abilities

But I don't know your requirements, and 50 tornados doesn't seem too bad if that's the extent of the project

so

Method #1: Instantiate VFX asset onto the GO then Destroy when it's done (Least performant as it discards any reusability, but less setup or constraints)
Method #2: Instantiate a Single System with set parameters, but the known behavior is set once at the start. This is not bound to any GO. (This could be considered the primary behavior to using the VFX Graph)
Method #3: Individual systems, one for each GO, pooled specifically to that VFX asset type (Similar to #1, but some performance is gained by dynamic pooling)
Method #4: Single VFX system with continuous CPU readback (Similar to the behavior of #1 with the benefit of not being bound to any one GO like method #2, and beyond having a single system per asset, you can pool a single type of "ability" prefab object not specific to any VFX asset which would be the primary particle controller. Requires the most setup by updating buffers)

Pooling by single systems not bound by a GO means you'd have a single system for each VFX asset type in the scene. I find this usually the better (and cleaner) option than per object instance. The only real drawback of configuring it this way is that you always need to declare a large amount of capacity as it will be handling all individual instances.

[jaunty tree]

Thank you! What exactly do you mean with a system here?

VFX Systems?

no, right?

[ashen robin]

yeah

[jaunty tree]

By a system you just mean some GO or script of any kind that is managing a list of GOs with VFX and reusing them so I have no GC?

[ashen robin]

When I say pooling, this also implies that the VFX systems need to pool on their own, but by pooling the GOs with a VFX asset, you effectively pool both

the asset itself if you load it doesn't prewarm, and it only happens when you instantiate it onto a GO

[jaunty tree]

Hmm ok, I think I am missing some knowledge here to properly understand this. I don't know how I would pool inside the VFX system - the whole thing is automatically compiled to hlsl I thought?

[ashen robin]

VFX system pools itself once you instatiate it aka particle capacity

this cant be changed at runtime

[jaunty tree]

Ah ok

Method #2: Instantiate a Single System with set parameters, but the known behavior is set once at the start. This is not bound to any GO. (This could be considered the primary behavior to using the VFX Graph)
How would I run the System without it being a component on a GO?

[ashen robin]

you give it the parameters at the start

if you know the location it will go on the CPU side, you try to mimick it on the GPU side

not usable if say you update the route somewhere in the middle or stuff like that

[jaunty tree]

But I mean in code. Normally I'd have a GO, add the component and set the parameters that I need in the Inspector, and then do GetComponent<VisualEffect>. Now what you say is, I could instead do new VisualEffect(visualEffectAsset, all parameters that I need) somewhere, to circumvent the GO?

[ashen robin]

https://qriva.github.io/posts/how-to-vfx-graph/

[jaunty tree]

Ah wait by pooling inside VFX you mean I could make the tornado a subgraph, and then a main graph which instantiates the subgraph and has a ParticleCapacity, and then I instantiate it from there?

[ashen robin]

refer to custom attributes with events

also that's a good page to read

[jaunty tree]

Nice thanks the site looks great

the official vfx graph doc from unity really is a new low haha

[ashen robin]

whatever you set the capacity to in the VFX graph is what will be pooled. That's the extent of pooling inside of it, but that cost is not free which is why I said there's extra cost to instantiating a vfx component, but if you have a subgraph, then that will be added to the overall pool of particles needed.

[jaunty tree]

Thank you so much for all the help!

[ashen robin]

yeah np

[jaunty tree]

Are these two right or am I just not there yet?
Method 1: Have GOs with the System, instantiate/destroy as needed.
Method 2: Have a Mother-VFX System which can spawn tornados with given parameters, can do pooling in VFX

Otherwise I should proably go to sleep, will read the page you sent first thing tomorrow

[ashen robin]

Method 1 sounds like what you have, but like general pooling, you shouldn't be destroying if it's going to be reused any time soon

[jaunty tree]

yup

[ashen robin]

and that instantiating say 100 tornados at once is more work than having prewarmed GOs with a tornado vfx asset pooled somewhere

or however dots works ;p

[jaunty tree]

dots actually circumvents all the pooling anyways, and I haven't worked with unity enough to have needed pooling before dots, so therefore I think I am missing stuff there

basically all the preallocation etc is done for you, instantiating is very cheap, destroying is ok-ish, there is no GC

[ashen robin]

Method 2: set buffer once and if you know for sure that the tornado will always run specific path without any updates then it can work, but ideally you use this method for ambient type particles (embers falling from torches, or leaves blowing in the environment you cannot collide with)

[jaunty tree]

But I think I will need objects of type VisualEffect anyways so I need to understand this, because Dots does not support it yet

and hoping for unity to move fast on implementing new features into dots is not a smart route haha

[jaunty tree]

ah ok, yeah thats not the right thing here

The website you sent looks like a god-sent thanks very much

will check it tomorrow, and thanks again for all the other help

[ashen robin]

if you're dealing with collisional events and need continuous readback, then #3 and #4 are ideal but requires more setup

because that itself requires more communication with the CPU

otherwise the Shuriken System is probably similar in performance without the setup, but unfortunately you don't get the neat VFX graph UI with Visual Scripting.

[jaunty tree]

Ok, thanks for the help!

[jaunty tree]

Maybe one last question on that: in general the performance of VFX should be much better than shuriken or not? Since it's on the gpu

And all I would do is only write the positions to the gpu each frame which is not to much data

[ashen robin]

if you're using dots I'd assume by using jobs you can make something similar in performance on the CPU, but I don't know the extent of it all.

Rather, I'm not sure how shuriken is integrated with it, but even if it's not you could probably just write a particle system with jobs.

[jaunty tree]

Shuriken is not integrated at all

Dots is 1.0 but they really only have a 3d renderer and physics

No 2d, no audio, no animation

All this still has to be done with legacy

Or classic unity

[ashen robin]

Ah, ok so yeah compute buffer would be another option then if you don't want to write it yourself via jobs

[jaunty tree]

Yeah no was just thinking about if I understand your statement correct

Since to me gpu is also faster than CPU with jobs for these kind of things

But not an expert

[ashen robin]

The idea of VFX Graph is to generate thousands of particles without much of a change in performance. It's what GPUs are good at, executing a bunch of similar type jobs in parallel.

Unfortunately a lot of the collisional information is on the CPU side, so there needs to be some communication than just setting it once. So, making an ability system out of it isn't the primary usage of this feature.

But you can always go half-way with it and have buffers proliferate downwards in your systems. If you drive a projectile by the cpu, you'll have to feed new coordinates to the buffer, but if the projectile say leaves a trail of fire in its wake, you've already updated the driver with new information so you know where this trail will initially exist, and so whatever that trail of fire does now in its lifetime can be independent such as generating thousands of particles on the gpu freely.

[jaunty tree]

Yeah reading your page it seems That if I want to update the particle position after it is spawned, I'll need graphics buffers right?

The VFXEventAttribute only seems to initialize it onStart

[ashen robin]

Right, that's one-time set parameters

but that also let's you pool to a single vfx system (per asset)

if you like having that singular system and you need to update positional values, then you need to update the buffers

[jaunty tree]

Ah but alternatively I could hack around this by moving the parent GO right

[ashen robin]

yes, in that case you dirty the GO and it will update the buffer automatically (assuming that you're using local coordinates for the particles which is driven by the parent)

[jaunty tree]

So position in some sense is the one thing I can change without doing graphics buffers, for all other properties I'll need them

OK I think I got that now

Actually thought it would. Be easier to change the properties of the VFX while it is running

[ashen robin]

having the system on the GO will allow you to control it without having to deal with buffers as changing those values will be handled by the system itself

[jaunty tree]

Maybe I should leave the graph for now and just work with shaders, they are much better supported also in ECS

Hmm sad really liked how easy it was to get nice VFX

[ashen robin]

it's not free in any sense, but one way to avoid the extra setup if you don't mind them being on individual objects.

[jaunty tree]

Ah OK

So I can change it there too

Ah OK now I get much more of what you've been saying

[ashen robin]

The benefit of having a single system is that you don't need to pool individual objects by asset type

instead you pool by one system on the scene

[jaunty tree]

Yup I got that now

Thank you very much, I've learned a lot

[ashen robin]

yeah, lot of this information through the forums unfortunately so always dig there if you're stuck lol

that website is basically from some dude that actively posts on the forums

[jaunty tree]

Yup will do, thanks

[last tartan]

I just added this new pick-up effect for the item power ups in my game. How does it look? Any critiques?

[warm torrent]

A bit jarring to my eye
It has three parts that all occur simultaneously in different places, so it's a bit hard to visually connect them

I might try pacing them so that the bonus explodes first, the ring expands second and the text appears third
The interval can be very small but I feel it might help

The fireflies from the text are a bit confusing on their own as it's not apparent if they're a non-diegetic UI effect or something happening in the world physically

The blue of the text also clashes with the yellow of the explosions and makes them harder still to connect visually

A rule I follow is to build a hierarchy of visual importance
Anything that stands out should be more important, and usually what stands out is sharper shapes, higher contrasts and saturations
The blue circles read to me as very visually important, but functionally they're not

The yellow stars feel very static and almost disconnected from the initial position of the bonus
Maybe it only looks that way, and the staticness is totally a preferential thing but I'd make them burst out from the very center of the bonus with some velocity

[last tartan]

Thank you. This is a lot to digest. I'm gonna write it down. Do you recommend anything specifically to learn more about the theory of VFXs?

[warm torrent]

These come to mind
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdiateg_U8PFnlScGDJDQeHUX9qmYvsxv

[carmine bone]

If I wanted to make a ring of upward moving shadows similar to Brimstone ultimate's effect, what would be the best method? https://youtu.be/-TQJw8aG_mk?si=9rN7rmlh_PXQ6rZp&t=28

Cylinder with a shader?

Have some sort of dissolve as it moves upward or something?

[viscid bridge]

You mean these rings?

or this effect here?

[carmine bone]

The second

The dark shadowy bits

On the bottom

[viscid bridge]

The latter one looks quite handdrawn, but I believe you can get a pretty similar result using a stack of voronoi-nodes.

if you're using shader-graph that is.

it can get close to flame-looking.

Other than that yeah, as you said - using a cylinder and just slam that shader on it.
Scroll the voronoi up at different speeds to get a similar effect.

A version of this might be good: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyOAk4rlIUY

[carmine bone]

Ty for the response, I'll see what I can figure out.

[viscid bridge]

Clamp values if you want sharp edges too.

I've got a pretty basic question - and something is clearly going over my head:

How do I expose a color in VFX-graph that isn't HDR?

I'm stuck trying to normalize a color just to get the same color in the VFX-graph and in my scene.

[carmine bone]

I'd love to help but I'm only learning things myself.

Sorry fam.

[minor glen]

The tutorial for this is literally on youtube

Theres a guy called gabriel gaprod that makes these vfx graph videos

[prime dome]

Does anyone know how I can make the marked particles have a lifetime longer than the ones spawning afterwards?

[viscid bridge]

set their lifetime when you initialize the particle?

[ashen robin]

Could be an option in the inspector when you have the graph selected, otherwise try just using your own shader without HDR

[carmine bone]

When working with vfxgraph, what's the best way to have it set up so it changes velocity dramatically at the very end of its life span?

ie - I might have a system that doesn't move at all, but at the very end of its life span I have it fly upwards quickly

[last tartan]

Using a modulo is the first thing that comes to mind for me

[prime dome]

I was recreating another vfx for learning purposes and it turned out i was looking for a single burst whoops

[ashen robin]

Velocity over Lifetime node

[carmine bone]

I did try that but it didn't move, oddly.

Maybe I'll try it again when I get back home later.

[ashen robin]

you want to maybe use set velocity

[carmine bone]

I think I tried both add and set?

[ashen robin]

there's multiply/set/add and similar curves

[carmine bone]

I'm not at my pc, but definitely used two different versions

[viscid bridge]

I am using my own shader for it. I've created a really simple one in ShaderGraph:

I'm then using it in a VFX-graph, and I can only use HDR colors for it, even if the original shader has a normal color only.

[carmine bone]

I'll double check it later, thanks

[viscid bridge]

didn't find anything here either that mentions HDR.

[ashen robin]

oh huh thats interesting, and you have HDR off in the shader graph?

[viscid bridge]

yeah.

Does VFX-graph... not support normal colors?
This sounds stupid...

[ashen robin]

I usually prefer HDR so I've not really noticed ;p

[viscid bridge]

Yeah, me too!
I'm doing a full unlit game, so on stuff that I don't want bloom on makes matching colors next to impossible.
There is no good way to translate HDR to the normal colors either.
Just normalizing them doesn't yield the same result >:(

[viscid bridge]

I'll restate my initial question in case anyone peeks here:
Does Unity VFX-Graph support exposing normal (non-HDR) colors?

Currently I cannot seem to get a single color that isn't HDR in the VFX-graph - even when I'm changing the color of my own shader within. This shader doesn't even have an HDR color, yet the menu only supports HDR. Am I doing something wrong here?

[stark crest]

An hdr color is just a color with an additionnal parameter for intensity, so let the intensity to 0 and it is like a normal one

You can even use exposed vector3 to get rgb only

[iron idol]

How would you make a particle spawn when another particle spawns in the same position in VFX graph?

[ashen robin]

if you feed your systems the parameters you could just make multiple different systems, but if you've got some randomization going on it's a little more complicated

rather, you can do the randomization outside of the system then send those values in

[iron idol]

Would be nice if there was something like "Trigger Event On Die" but on spawn instead

[ashen robin]

but say that you have two different systems and do set position randomization inside of the initialize context then that's not possible at that point

yeah, the amount of triggers is laughable

[iron idol]

I guess i could try doing the effect backwards 🤔

But yeah it's random and based on a shape

[ashen robin]

one idea is to start with a particle with 0 lifetime then trigger a bunch of others

[iron idol]

Basically i want the particles to collect around the spawn point

then the effect to go on from there

yeah

i guess thats viable

Then i'd be able to have everything reference that spawn position

[ashen robin]

yeah, as long as you don't need to set the lifetime dynamically

[iron idol]

nope not really

alright thanks

[ashen robin]

ye

[kind hedge]

just wanted to check if anyone knows a workaround for this? https://issuetracker.unity3d.com/issues/outputupdate-extra-space-between-slash-and-newline-warning-is-thrown-when-creating-a-new-vfx

[last tartan]

Does anyone know a good library of alpha mask for free?

[grizzled orbit]

oh i was asking performance wise isn't shuriken better suited and more light weight?

vfx graphs needs higher end hardwares?

[warm torrent]

VFX graph requires a more modern graphics API, and it has an overhead performance cost
But per particle it's much, much more efficient and multiple VFX Graphs can be pooled dynamically

More efficient by a factor of about a thousand

Main difference is that PS is on the CPU, VFX on the GPU

[winged bough]

hi, so I was trying to dowload the e-book "Creating advanced visual effects in Unity" from the page, and it doesn't work, is there any place where I can get it?

[warm torrent]

Do you have the link to the page?

[winged bough]

yup

https://unity.com/es/resources/definitive-guide-to-creating-visual-effects?utm_medium=social&utm_source=youtube&utm_campaign=engine_global_ebook_2022-12-06_retention22-vfxsizzleyt-ebook

when I try to fulfill questions and click the button to send it and gain access, it doesn't do anything

[warm torrent]

Huh that's a lot of personal information and consents required for a free ebook

[winged bough]

yup, and it even doesnt work to get the ebook

like you send your information for nothing, because the button doesn't work

[near socket]

IM new and getting started on vfx animation. For some reason i keep getting this error and and i don't know what to do with it.
Shader error in '[System 1]Initialize Particle': undeclared identifier 'GetWorldToObjectMatrix' at kernel CSMain at Packages/com.unity.visualeffectgraph/Shaders/VFXCommon.hlsl(78) (on d3d11)

[ashen robin]

Not using any custom shaders, right?

Actually that looks like the built-in

https://github.com/keijiro/com.unity.visualeffectgraph-7.1.6-fix/blob/master/Shaders/VFXCommon.hlsl

there's some identical bugs it seems and they're version specific so maybe if you want to update otherwise try just reimporting the packages

[carmine bone]

Is there a way I can make particles spawn in a circle around the outer rim of my vfx graph and move inward to the center over its life time? Having trouble lining up the spawning in an arc circle with the appropriate angle they should be in depending on their spawn position.

I'd like to be able to spawn them around the outer part of the circle but be a direct line to the center and shrink into the middle, effectively.

For reference, if I spawn them just in the center with a random angle and mess with the size over life time, I can make it look like they are kind of shrinking into the middle

but I would like for them to spawn from the outer edges/ring.

[ashen robin]

Two systems with two spheres and similar coordinates not working for ya?

or two circles for that matter

[ashen robin]

Ah, I think I understand what you mean. What you want to do is first spawn them from the random point on the circle on the edges which should be near the top of the spawn context, then you'd Get Attribute: Position and compare it to the center of the circle and angle it accordingly. I believe you can do this all in the spawn context, unless you want to continuously update the angle in update.

[carmine bone]

Nice, I that should solve it

Knew there had to be some functionality like that

Ty

[carmine drum]

i'm trying to use a simple particle system to spawn a bunch of particles when the player dies via Instantiate in a script, but the particles seem to be invisible? if i just have the particle system as a gameobject from the start in the hierarchy, those particles are fine

why might that be?

the particles are set to spawn at the player's location (so at the very least it's not a issue of z coordinates)

okay yeah i'm not sure what's going on. it's clear to me that the particles are in front of the background, but for some reason they are appearing behind the background image under certain camera angles? if i disable the background image, the particles from the instantiated system works fine

[carmine drum]

also my background is one image repeated a few times, and the particles are having the issues at the seems between them?

[ashen robin]

Looks like your background is being rendered last so you've might got some sorting layering values going on, otherwise the material rendering queue for transparent is different values than the particles.

[runic sail]

is it possible to send an output event on a GPUEvent or some way to do something in script when a GPUEvent is called, I am trying to play a noise once something happens in the VFX.

(VFX Graph)

[ashen robin]

cant read back from the vfx graph

[torn jackal]

Haii! Am I being dumb here? Just wanting a basic trigger but I can't get it to work... anyone have any ideas?

[ashen robin]

you can do a GPU event into another particle system

[runic sail]

Alright, thanks for the help. I'll try to figure out a work around

[torn jackal]

GPU event?

[ashen robin]

was part of my previous reply to compile

[torn jackal]

Ahh sorry

[ashen robin]

Hey Compile, I actually went digging around and realized that they did implement C# events (I think I've used them for a scenario quite a while ago so it kinda blew over me)
https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.visualeffectgraph@10.3/manual/whats-new-10.html#outputevent-helpers

I think they may have some buffer readback too but its in their prototype builds

[runic sail]

Thanks, I was just looking into that actually

[ashen robin]

though for your case it does seem like what you want if it's just to trigger an event

the problem with these events is that you can't really get the positional data back and stuff like that

unless you drive the particle system through the cpu

[runic sail]

I figured out how to do what I needed without GPUEvents as it seems there is nothing you can do with those other than spawn more particles. That is just a downside of VFX Graph since it is all mostly on the GPU

[ashen robin]

Yeah, it's a little complicated since a lot of the VFX graph is more about one-time setting data and forgetting

you can modify the buffers the vfx graph does read every update with some work which would allow you to drive more of the particle positional values

[ashen robin]

I don't really use shuriken system much but I can only guess it's some lifetime problem as you've got at least one spawning but it's timing out instantly

documentations suck too so can't really get an idea from that

[warm torrent]

The sub emitter emits once every second, but the main emitter particles live for only 0.1 seconds so there's not nearly enough time

You could add a burst of 1 particle so it starts by immediately emitting one, but then that's all you get

Could also increase the lifetime of your main particle and emission of the sub emitter

[torn jackal]

Never heard of it being refferred to like that lmao, but I tried the lifetime thing, set it to 6 but it still won't subemit

[torn jackal]

It doesn't work if the sub emmitter has emission on or off

[torn jackal]

Even with a burst it doesn't subemit

[warm torrent]

Sub emitter module with mode birth simply creates the defined sub emitter particle system at the location of each of the main system's particles, and kills the sub system along with the particles
I'm not spotting any particular issue but that's the idea
Definitely keep Emission module on for both of them when testing, otherwise the particle system will do nothing

[torn jackal]

The location too? I thought it only did if you told it to inherit the location

[warm torrent]

There's no such option I believe, as it's implied
Not sure why you wouldn't use the sub emitter directly as the main emitter in this case

[torn jackal]

I turned on emission of 1 on the sub and 100 on the main but none of the 100 came through or spawned in, only the 1 that is set on the sub emitter

[warm torrent]

That doesn't quite sound like what I suggested

[torn jackal]

Reason why I'm doing it this way is because my reason for using Unity is for a specific game which has a lot of restrictions. I basiclly want it to be that when I trigger something based on certain criteria, it plays an animation that makes one particle spawn. I was having issues with it normally. If I'd set the emission over time to 1 temporarily, if it didn't co-inside with the exact time of death per loop it wouldn't spawn. The same would happen for bursts. So I thought if I used a trigger, I can control just 1 to spawn and quickly stop them from spawning more

[warm torrent]

It sounds like what you want is a burst of one particle with emission over time at 0, why wouldn't that work

You should be able to keyframe the emission module's enabled status

You speak of triggers but I don't see any type of trigger being used

[torn jackal]

Omg I am so dumb yeah, just enable and disable the whole "emissiuon" part

[torn jackal]

I thought if I made a particle system and had a subemitter then the main would act as a trigger

[near socket]

The effects on my mesh is not show the emissions and the gradients for some reason

[carmine drum]

trying to use a sprite as a particle. i've made a material, set it to particles/standard unlint, and dragged the sprite into the albedo, but it looks like this. idk where the background and whatever else is coming from. the sprite is just the character body with x eyes

okay so setting it to ui/unlit/transparent seems to work

is it possible to change the particle collision box?

yeah it seems like particle collision is just a circle. is there any way to change this?

[warm torrent]

You can use sprites with the Flipbook module
No need to put them into materials, just use the particle shaders

[warm torrent]

No, probably not

Particle colliders are (meant to be) incredibly simple and barely simulate a sphere either

[carmine drum]

not sure what setting particle shaders is. i've looked up a few tutorials and all of them say to put the sprite into a material and then put the material here in the particle system

[carmine drum]

ig i can understand that. would probably be super resource intensive if they could have weird shapes with a high particle count. i suppose if i want a corpse i'll just instantiate a modified version of the player since i only need one anyway

[warm torrent]

If you're making particles, the material used should have a shader meant for particles for particle features to work

[carmine drum]

is that not what i did initially?

shader: particles/standard unlit

[warm torrent]

Initially

[carmine drum]

yes, and that didn't work properly

the particle looked like this and i have no idea why

[warm torrent]

Don't rely on the preview alone, it could still work when used in the particle system

You may also need to click the Apply to Systems button when you're using it in a system

[warm torrent]

Another thing is that you're not really supposed to use sprites in materials

[carmine drum]

that's just what (multiple) tutorials showed and it worked fine in those

[warm torrent]

I wouldn't expect it to cause an issue like that but it could be a relevant factor

@carmine drum Try what I initially suggested
Use the totally default particle material, confirm that transparency works with that, then apply your sprite using the Flipbook module

[carmine drum]

idk what the flipbook module is

and we can already see the transparency with the particle material doesn't work

[warm torrent]

You can try my suggestions or reject them without trying
I won't lose sleep over it

[carmine drum]

bro what??

did i not already try the particle shader????

it has absolutely nothing to do with refusing to try

my screenshots already confirm that the transparency does not work with the particle material

like if what i tried isn't what you're referring to then maybe it'd help if you actually clarified what settings you're talking about

because i have no idea what else you might be referring to

[warm torrent]

I see I was less clear than I thought
When I said "use the totally default particle material, confirm that transparency works with that" I did not mean just default particle shader, but a wholly default material that a new particle system uses when created using the gameobject menu

A material is an asset that refers to a shader, and includes settings for its properties like blend mode, color and texture, they're not fundamentally the same thing

Flipbook is one of the many particle system's Modules, it's used among other things to override the particle's texture with a sprite

Materials should only use textures that are not sprites, while sprites should only be used in fields that accept sprite type references

This does not always cause problems, but sprites characteristically include data specific to their correct rendering which cannot be accessed when the asset is being read as a simple texture

A whole lot of tutorials, especially 2D related are rife with mistakes and misleading info as they are often made by beginners also

Use them as guidelines rather than rules

If even the default particle system with the default white glob particle material fails to have transparency, then we know we are looking for the problem in the wrong place

[near socket]

Should I be concerned with this error text?

'MetaVertexPosition': implicit truncation of vector type
Compiling Fragment program with UNITY_PASS_META
Platform defines: UNITY_ENABLE_REFLECTION_BUFFERS UNITY_USE_DITHER_MASK_FOR_ALPHABLENDED_SHADOWS UNITY_PBS_USE_BRDF1 UNITY_SPECCUBE_BOX_PROJECTION UNITY_SPECCUBE_BLENDING UNITY_ENABLE_DETAIL_NORMALMAP SHADER_API_DESKTOP UNITY_LIGHT_PROBE_PROXY_VOLUME UNITY_LIGHTMAP_RGBM_ENCODING

[ashen robin]

Custom shader?

[ashen robin]

I think i've ran into this error before but it simply went away for whatever reason

it's pretty standard to truncate vectors in shaders so it's pretty odd

[near socket]

oodly enough, it's seems the gradients and the other effects doesn't seem to work

well, mainly when i turn it into a material

[ashen robin]

well, check your shaders and shaders from the shader graph and instead of truncating, make a new Vector

[near socket]

oh, i was actually using Mesh effect

[tame storm]

Hey anyone got vfx references?

[ashen robin]

Gabriel on youtube

[tame storm]

Thank you.

[viral marsh]

Hi, I have a simple VFX graph shown in the picture.
I made it on windows and it ran flawlessly.
I built it for linux and now it's insanely laggy both in the build and when I open it in the linux editor.
I've been also getting some weird vulkan errors and just dragging it in the scene and having the object active make my unity run at like 5fps.
Why is this and is there anything I can do about it?
Afaik, Unity is supposed to be cross platform and vfx graph isn't exactly a small part of it tbh.
I should also mention that the particle count/graph doesn't ever exceed 5k which shouldn't be an issue(I worked with 20+k before)
Thanks in advance!

[idle steeple]

Hey, I want to create this water effect can someone help me. My simple game idea is that we will control a water drop or a patch of water then we will collect water.

[ashen robin]

time to learn vertex shaders

actually that looks more like some fluid simulating. Not entirely sure if you can accomplish that with vfx graph (there are signed distance fields but I'm not too sure about creating something that collisional complex with it, but otherwise you can just do it through gpu buffers yourself)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSKMYc1CQHE
Probably start with that

ah, if you're aiming for mobile then you probably do want to do it all on the cpu

[viral marsh]

bump

[raw torrent]

how can i have particles explode out like a smoke bomb?

[viral marsh]

Just an idea, add a lot of velocity and dampen the velocity over life if you are using the particle system or use an animation curve for velocity which would start high and lower quickly if you are using the vfx graph.
This is just a random idea and probably far from a good solution.

[raw torrent]

Ok thanks

how do i have it so a particle cant go above a certain object

It keeps doing that

[ashen robin]

it keeps doing what

you should still access to the sorting layer so try changing that

[viral marsh]

I am honestly not sure how you'd do that, if the object is always of the same size maybe play around with the speed/damping but that's the best I can do sadly :/

[viral marsh]

bump

[ashen robin]

probably best bet is to dig around the forums or even post there. Have you tried a blank project built on linux with the vfx graph?

[viral marsh]

Can do that rn, I will try posting on forums later today but was hoping somebody had an idea of what the warnings mean or what could be causing the fps drops here.

ok, just having the vfx graph imported causes these and just setting the capacity to something high(even if I keep the count low) causes a massive fps drop

this most certainly never happened on windows and is quite odd tbh

[ashen robin]

vulkan being a poopy head

try openGLCore in the meanwhile

[viral marsh]

I thought it was running on openGL by default, odd, let me try that

ig it might not have been vulkan afterall 💀

still just as laggy if not worse

well now I removed openGL and it seems to be working fine 💀 💀 💀

let me test it in an actual project and thanks for the suggestion

Oh wow, yeah, this completely solved the issue o_0

Should I make the forum post so if somebody runs into this in the future can know how to fix it?

And if yes, how can I mention you there since you pretty much solved it for me?

[ashen robin]

uh lol

all I could think of is the API calls were maybe still using window specifics

[mortal comet]

How can I get the particle position on its shader?

I want to get the y value of where the particle is spawned

im on built in, without shader graph

Okay I've managed with a custom data stream and adding center to pass it down

But now Im wondering, why couldn't I use the position field?

[warm torrent]

The types of position you have access to in a shader are generally vertex position, fragment position and renderer position
In the case of particles they all share the same renderer object as they're procedural geometry created by it
So, particle positions are basically arbitrary and need to be stored in some way, in this case in vertex streams

[mortal comet]

Aaah I see, so the vertex position in the shader, is nothing related to the particle itself, but of the renderer that makes them

[warm torrent]

You can get data about vertices of a particle, but that doesn't let give you the particle's origin point
They're basically loosely floating mesh polygons as far as the shader knows

So you can get a position value, but it changes along the particle's surface

[mortal comet]

i see, thansk!

[shadow scarab]

I have a particle system and basically want to make an small burst effect wherever a particle hits. how do i do this? do i need to have another burst particle system that i instantiate wherever a particle hits through code?

basically, in my case, i have a stream of particles acting as a laser. wherever it hits, i want the particle to bounce of into a random angle, but this is not possible simply using bounce, since then my particle stream acts a ray of light reflecting off a surface.

[ashen robin]

shuriken particle system has collisional trigger events if you just want to do everything in the system, as for the vfx graph you need to develop your own particle controller along side of it to do these type of events

Actually, vfx graph does have these types of trigger binders you can add to gameobjects but I've not used them

[shadow scarab]

I have a particle system, and it has collisions on. Through OnParticleCollision, can i get the particle that was hit, and destroy it specifically based on whether the object hit has a certain tag or not?

[ashen robin]

not too sure but I know you can grab more info via script instead of relying completely on the interface

[gleaming bramble]

hi, i have a particle system that i cant fix

this is the scene view

it has no problem

and this is the game view

i unchecked soft particles

normally it fixes this problem

[deep stone]

How do I make a particle system use all of these randomly? I forget exactly how it's done, vector graphics or something. I've done it before, but I can't find any info on it.

[carmine bone]

There's not a way to use a particle system that lets you make use of HDR colors as well as let you manipulate the color in the particle system itself (say change color over lifetime), is there?

I'm going to have to make a shader to change the color or something myself, aren't I?

[raw torrent]

so im using bursts for my particle system and i want them to spawn more often then they do how can i fix that

thats what i got

[gleaming bramble]

use vfx graph for this

random node can do it

[raw torrent]

im trying to make a sort of trail

[gleaming bramble]

explain more

[raw torrent]

like they spawn to slowly i want them to spawn faster

[gleaming bramble]

lower interval

more

[raw torrent]

the lowest it can go is 0.010

[gleaming bramble]

double the emitter

stack two particle systems each other

@raw torrent

[raw torrent]

ok thanks

[deep stone]

I don't see VFX Graph, and i don't see Visual Effects in the menu when i look for it

also, I didn't use VFX Graph last time i got htis to work, i told ...something to use a 4x4 grid I think, and then the basic particle system started pulling from that picture, the random images

just can't remember clearly what it was

[warm torrent]

Flipbook module of the particle system
With 0 speed and random start frame

No need to swap to VFX Graph just for this

They're different tools for different purposes

[surreal surge]

https://youtu.be/6GskK7eLHlw?si=EYGC0U6vpJM3YeSq

[carmine bone]

Is there a way to use soft particles within a particle system?

[warm torrent]

Sure
Enable the option in the material

[carmine bone]

Do I need to enable an option to do so?

I don't see it on my material.

[warm torrent]

Which shader is that, using which render pipeline and on what unity version?

[carmine bone]

Using URP, a custom shader, 2021.3.23f1

Do I need to add something in my shader in order to utilize it then?

[warm torrent]

Then your custom shader needs to implement the soft particle calculation
Particle shaders support it by default at least on most newer editor versions

[lost prairie]

Does VFX Graph has someting like collide with world?

[warm torrent]

Not directly
It has collide with depth buffer which for some purposes can be as good, and it has collisions with predefined colliders

You can create predefined colliders to match your scene if the VFX is restricted to a specific area, or potentially use a script to translate colliders near the VFX from the world into VFX colliders

[lost prairie]

well thats sad. I have a lot of moving objects, handling them will be painfull. I wonder why particle system has this option and VFX ghaph not...

[warm torrent]

Because Particle System is a CPU particle simulation, whereas VFX is a GPU simulation

Physics and gameobject data are on the CPU and delivering data between CPU and GPU is a huge problem for performance efficiency

Being purely GPU focused is what allows VFX graph to be about a thousand times faster than the Particle System at pure simulation power
But it imposes limitations like this

[remote mortar]

Hey does the Built in RP support VFX Graph? If so, I put in a default visual effect graph and there are no particles. Is there anything that am missing? (first time using it, sorry)

[warm torrent]

Not as far as I know

[remote mortar]

oh so I just cant use it in Built in?

Do you just use the particle system to make VFX?

[warm torrent]

Yes

[remote mortar]

It was the RP, as if you switch to URP it works, just for confirmation.

[warm torrent]

Sure, some SRP features have been backported to the built-in render pipeline but VFX graph is not one of them

[frigid grail]

How can I make it so that my particle system that emits particles through the "rate over distance" parameter only emit particles when the movement is done on the X axis, and not on the Y axis?

[flint cedar]

how would I make the scorch impact rotate with the beam that got shot?

It's always rotated like that and I dont want render alignment to be view because it kinda looks weird, something like local but doesnt rotate when around when the origin moves, the only thing that seems to work a little is align direction if I add a shape but then the render alignment doesnt allow velocity or world

[carmine bone]

Is there a way to set up an animation curve or something to adjust a float slider in a VFXGraph?

I have a shader graph I previously made and it has a slider I'd like to change over a system's lifetime and it'd be easy if there was a simple way to just plug something in.

[ashen robin]

Get Attribute : Lifetime -> Animation Curve ?

Ah, may need to normalize using the max lifetime and current

Age / Lifetime

[carmine bone]

Hrm, not sure that is working.

Ah, I was needing the Sample Curve node. Found it anyway, thanks for the input!

[vagrant sluice]

I have a fire effect made with vfx graph that I want to see reflected on the ground, how can I do it?

[keen saffron]

I'd use a light

[carmine bone]

With particle systems, when you make a trail you can adjust a trail material to customize it a little more. Is there an equivalent for being able to adjust trails with VFXGraph?

All I see is the main texture, which seems to not have an impact on the trail.

[ashen robin]

materials should work similarly with particle strips in vfx graph

make sure the material is vfx graph compatible

[warm torrent]

I'd try screen space reflections or planar reflection probes, if available in your render pipeline

[prime dome]

Hey people,
I'm using the built-in particle system with to achieve a specific affect.
My issue is when I'm trying to use trails and the particle system's subemitter module's on death function.
Now if i enable trail death on particle death, it works as it does on the left of the diagram, but that's what I don't want, What I want is on the right where the trails stay after death.
However, if the trails do stay after death the subemitter's on death function no longer works properly and only activates once the trail and the particle is gone, resulting in weird ghost particles

Any ways I can keep the trails while keeping the on death function?

the dotted black lines are trails, the dots are the particles and its sperated into 3 stages

should I even continue to use trails?

[ashen robin]

Not sure but you can always do a recursive approach using a script and spawn another system where the previous one had timed out

of course that's what these subemitters are probably for but I've not really done much with them

there are also trigger events I recall so perhaps something similar with those

[prime dome]

Do you have any links to the documentation that could help?

I'm not sure where to look for particles

[ashen robin]

Ah, I've created my own particle controller (with some vfx graph integration) to control the particles more to how I want

but previously I was just doing a lot through the script with the shuriken system similar to what I've mentioned above

[jaunty tree]

Hello, I have a question about the normal VFX workflow. I recently started and really enjoy doing shaders/particle systems. They look quite bad, I think I am also just still strongly missing on the "creative" part (which colors or textures would look good on this effect etc.)
I have a quite technical background, so I enjoy doing things more from a technical aspect. I'd love nothing more than be able to draw but I'm just not that good

Now I saw this video which looks really really nice to me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMajNO4CqG0
I have seen many effect tutorials already which I can also follow, and the effects look like what they are, but the ones in the video are just looking leagues better

Now after every video they say they've used houdini. Now I wanted to know in which way they use it. I get it, that they sometimes make textures or vector fields in houdini based on physics and then import it into the engine (unreal in their case but doesn't matter I guess) and just use these "prebaked" physics to have nice effects

Is this the normal way to do things? Many of the tutorials I see do everything inside of unity. Basically, do most VFX artists stay inside their engine, or do most vfx artists use some other texture creation/fluid tool and then import stuff?

Somehow most tutorials I have seen do not cover using houdini (or say blender simulation nodes) to prebake physics, I'd be very interested to do that

I want to do stylized not realistic effects but the effects in the video are stylized too

[warm torrent]

I think that video demonstrates really well what Houdini can add to vfx
It's however an expensive software suite that's way overkill for most games
If you want to get hired into triple-A vfx field then I'd assume it's an incredibly useful skill to show off

[tribal bluff]

Hi! I made dozens of vfx with Vfx Graph and sent them to someone else. Then they said only a few would appear/render in-game.

I assume it's because they haven't opened the rest of the vfx graph, so it never gets compiled and so never appears.

But manually compiling them would obviously not efficient, how do I batch compile every Vfx Graphs available in the project? Could I probably have a script that I can send them to run themselves?

[warm torrent]

Are they being displayed on the same unity version they were created on?

Does in-game mean in Play mode or in build specifically

[fresh socket]

why i cant find pbr graph in unity 2022?

[warm torrent]

Can you clarify what you're looking for exactly?

[tribal bluff]

2021.3 with probably different minor version.

[tribal bluff]

both

[warm torrent]

Should be no problem there
I guess the project setup or build platform may affect it in some way, but not sure how
I've never encountered the need to "compile" vfx graphs, I'd think that happens automatically in the editor

[tribal bluff]

Not sure why, either. Our projects are set up for Android build on each PC. Shader Graph assets doesn't behave like this. Sometimes I have to open the asset in its VFX Graph editor which will automatically compile the asset, then it will finally render. Especially Vfx gameobjects which have been disabled in the scene for several sessions never played.

I have no idea how other people collaborate with VFX Graph assets

[warm torrent]

I've never had such issues when cloning projects or importing packages with VFX in them

[warm torrent]

Does android support VFX graph effects? I was under the impression there were some technical limitations there

[tribal bluff]

The 'compile issue' exists when my project was still set for Desktop build. When I reimported to Android, I have to reopen every VFX Graph assets to compile them manually.

But all of the effects I made can be played when I build the demo scene locally for my phone. I don't actually get the full project since this is an outsource work.

[warm torrent]

I hope somebody here is more familiar with that type of issue

[tribal bluff]

Don't worry, thank you for your time!

[jaunty tree]

Thanks! I think I was just quite amazed on how good the effects look and wanted to know if this is mainly because they use Houdini or just because its a talented artist

I'm just a hobbyist, so not AAA haha. The education licence is around 80 I think and I wanted to understand if this might be a worthwhile investment

[warm torrent]

Depends on your goals
If you really like the simulations then it could open up that option

It can also be used for a huge number of types of procedural geometry, for level generation too

[jaunty tree]

I just started googeling motion vectors and some keywords from the youtube video, it seems that there are just many techniques that are not covered in any of the tutorials I have seen up until now

and its not soooo tied to houdini

so trying to understand that now haha

but houdini looks really really nice, maybe at some point I will try to get into it

[ashen robin]

Can pretty much accomplish all this stuff with the vfx graph + some scripting.

as long as you've the assets (models, and textures) you can whip up all kinds of crazy stuff

also half of that is flipbook sprites which can be done without any particle system

actually probably fine with the shuriken system too. There's nothing too heavy about the particles here

particles + some scripting + unity's animator + some fancy camera work

• some shaders

[craggy axle]

Hi team! Q: trying to have persistent blood splatters when blood particles hit the floor. What's the best practice: decals put on when particles collide, forever particles, etc?

I know it's possible in a billion ways, but want to approach it using the more performance/best practice wAy

[ashen robin]

I think just using the urp decals probably fine enough

can also enable GPU instancing over them but the srp batcher probably does fine too

[craggy axle]

Likely have 200 agents or so on a scene

Oh gpu instancing. Very true forgot about that

I'm not strong on the visual sides of things

Thank you!

[dreamy matrix]

Idk why, but the particle system only appears in Birth, for example if i put it on Collision, Trigger, or Death it dont works. Idk what i should show for info since am new with particle system

[carmine bone]

I'm struggling to think how to create this type of effect shown at https://youtu.be/3lhW7Vsdn7g?si=W055G7Em3hpjsSRj&t=47 (the rings on the ground that come out before the pillar that look like rings of red shadows outwardly expanding)

[ashen robin]

probably expanding cylinders (given the depth) along with some shader scrolling uv (with some alpha cutout)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qyh9RPxeKcA
You can probably get an idea from this

[carmine bone]

I think I actually already looked at that.

💀

[static violet]

Hello, is there anyone that knows how to create visuals? Visuals as in like somethinhg that would be projected during concerts? I have some questions and need help with something. Thanks

[tribal bluff]

There's like several objects there. Big circle with the cloud textures that rotates. Then several circles with similar texture that rotates and expands its size in XZ (horizontal) scale.

The circular noise texture of the big circle is not only rotates, but also zooms in. You could probably just rotate the mesh, but the noise texture being the one that zooms in.

[warm torrent]

Best to ask your questions regardless of that

[jaunty tree]

Yes, but houdini is precisely there for creating the assets right? I looked now into it deeper, and it seems that much of the stuff can be done with blender too though. If I understand correctly, the point is that you can prebake some nice physics (for example a the vectorfield for the particles in a tornado, or just a flipbook animation of fire together with vertex animation textures).

What I am asking myself more is how common it is to do these things yourself maybe? Don't really know what my question is I think

So would people actually normally use these programs (not even houdini, maybe just blender), to prerender some textures and vector fields, or is this is a very advanced technique that I should not care about as a beginner

Or yeah, maybe the question is: Is this just kind of "one of many specializations", which I could go into and could get productive relatively fast that way. Or is it a very advanced technique, and the reason I am not seeing these techniques in most tutorials (talking about gabriel aguirars for example), because they are an overkill time wise (or maybe also just expensive if you want to develop for low end stuff)?

I think the problem is that the field is so broad and there are so many ways to do things, and I do not understand which of these are just alternatives to each other for different kind fo artists, and which of these are more common/less common because of some other reason (advanced, time-consuming, expensive on hardware requirements)

Maybe a kind of overview of the different VFX artists specializations, how the effects look that they do, and how they approximately make them (which tools) is what I am searching, now that I am thinking about it

[jaunty tree]

why do you say "given the depth" here? What would be the alternative to a cylinder? Just having a plane mesh and rendering the texture on it? And what you are saying is that you see that these are actually cylinders?

[ashen robin]

yeah it's some wrapped circular mesh

I'd say a lot of that is strictly shader generated too and not stylized drawings

https://i.imgur.com/wqgY7DN.png

[jaunty tree]

Yeah maybe the questions I have is. First of all, is this the right understanding? For Shaders or Particle systems, the main tools of a VFX artist we often need some kind of assets. The main kinds I think of are:

A. Flipbook animations
B. Textures that are used to make a static object look a specific way (normal maps, height maps, just the normal color textures etc)
C. Assets used to fake physical simulations (vertex animation, vector fields, ...)

1. Hand-draw stuff -> Photoshop, Adobe
2. Use modeling software to prebake assets like normal maps etc -> Blender, Maia
3. Use physical simulation software for the textures -> Houdini, Blender, Embergen
4. Use noise of all kind and overlay it smartly in different ways/scroll it to make it look like what you want -> Substance Designer

1 is mainly used for A and B
2 is mainly used for A,B (or does one m )
3 is mainly used for A,C
4 is mainly used for B

[ashen robin]

much like the tornado video up there

similar idea

[jaunty tree]

this is from my video right?

so not mine haha, I wish, but the one I posted

[ashen robin]

I'd say the main tools is just having the assets

make yourself a folder of hundreds of noise and textures to just mix and match

[jaunty tree]

Instead of actually making them in the softwares I mentioned?

[ashen robin]

https://github.com/Auburn/FastNoiseLite

endless assets

[jaunty tree]

Oh nice, thank you very much

So you'd say the average VFX artist does not use the tools I mentioned (but are they approximately right), but just buys the assets from people who made them in these tools?

[ashen robin]

flipbook stuff is nice and all, but frame by frame animation stuff is too time consuming when you can just toss on some noise

[jaunty tree]

For example yesterday I found this video which I found very interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-Yc2vbC0nI&t=908s

[ashen robin]

Blender for your meshes like you'd need above for 3D particles

[jaunty tree]

He first simulates the smoke in blender, then renders it out to a flipbook and motion vectors and uses that in unity. Would that be a common approach or is this already highly specific?

[ashen robin]

Photoshop for trails and flares, but otherwise you can probably grab those textures online

and speaking of textures you got endless resources online for that + AI now spews it out

flipbook stuff usually looks nicer if you want to take your time on it

[jaunty tree]

So basically: Flipbook looks nicer if you really do some time investment (either by drawing or physical simulation), but it does cost a lot of time. So often its easier to circumvent it?

[ashen robin]

right, smoke and fire is pretty easy much like doing trails, but you don't want to end up being the 2D artist

better time spent on making shaders

[jaunty tree]

And how would you for example make such an explosion animation or fire animation like he makes here?

Thank you for all the help btw!

[ashen robin]

#✨┃vfx-and-particles message
#✨┃vfx-and-particles message

some more resources

[jaunty tree]

Thanks! So for fire, you'd just use the flipbook animation from that asset pack for example and use it in a shader?

[ashen robin]

for smoke and stuff, there are official resources for it around

for the vfx graph

[jaunty tree]

I then imagine that you'd not use motion vectors for example (are these a physical-simulation-only concept)?

ah you mean just using official unity assets?

[ashen robin]

actually didn't know blender could do that too so that's neat

[jaunty tree]

(which are flipbook animations I guess)?

[ashen robin]

is that what they're doing in the video

pretty neat idea

[jaunty tree]

but basically fire and smoke will always be flipbook animation or flipbook-animation for many small particles right? All you are saying, I should use the flipbooks from someone else instead of doing my own

In the video they just use blenders "quick smoke" and some here and there to make it look nice

then render it and render the motion vectors

and import that into unity

[ashen robin]

so they're rendering volumetrics, but because rendering that stuff is pretty resource intensive they instead just chop it into frames and render it via quad

[jaunty tree]

and it looks much better with motion vectors actually

[ashen robin]

not a bad idea

[jaunty tree]

yes exactly

yes I also think its quite cool and then also looks really nice haha

[ashen robin]

if you're going to render it smoke and fire on a quad, then yeah I'd go with flipbook

they're cheap volumetric alternatives, but there's also some support for rendering it completely using HDRP, and I know there's vfx graph tutorials around on it. I'm not sure if it's URP compatible though.

[jaunty tree]

volumetric alternative means for example rendering particles which are actual small spheres (maybe squished etc)

Then they have actual volume and one might only need noise textures to make them look like fire

so it is more procedual, but also much more expensive

where flipbook is maybe more time consuming to produce (if you do not just buy the flipbook), but you have to make some tricks to maybe make it look good and not to repetitive from all sides etc, and so that it looks like it actually has volume. But if you are able to do so, then its much cheaper at runtime

Would this be a good summary of the alternatives here?

But I think I understood much more now. Thank you for taking the time and explaining it so well!

[ashen robin]

usually the idea is try to minimize as much as possible while still making it look good

and you can get away with just rendering stuff to quads and aligning it to the camera to gain an illusion of 3D

but if you were designing some fps or something where you're more involved in the world, then quads just aren't enough if you allow your player to walk into this smoke field or fire

and so that's where shaders (both vertex and fragment) come in handy

[tame storm]

Hey @ashen robin how is this made?

https://gyazo.com/b67a4c8cd0b937576b8fd87f76f9476c.mp4

I think i know what it is but not sure.

[warm torrent]

That one looks to be 90% meshes as particles
But most of the effect is carried by the fancy shaders on the meshes

[tame storm]

i thought of beams

[warm torrent]

Beams?

[ashen robin]

pretty neat. I like when the floor collapses and they stencil a little city in it

[jaunty tree]

Are VDBs an expensive technique which is more appropriate for realistic simulations and high end games?

Or is it something used all around?

[nocturne yarrow]

Visual Effect Graph: How do you stop a constant particle with no lifetime?

[torn tiger]

Hi all -- I'm working on a project right now where I need to instantiate a ton of vfx graphs and I'm having this issue where VFX.ZeroInitializeBuffer hugely stalls out the editor / player when I instantiate certain VFX graphs.

It looks like ZeroInitializeBuffer comes from OpenCL so hopefully I'm not hitting a limit of compute shaders.

Anyway I could use some insight on the best way to load VFX graphs!

Roughly 64 of them at a time.

[torn tiger]

do you mean hide it? if you put a SetAlive(false) in the ParticleOutput it should kill it and then also skip rendering it

[ashen robin]

Are you instantiating a graph per GO? In that case you should consider prewarming by creating a shared graph for these particles, and dynamically cleanup/instantiate them when loading the majority of the assets of your scene.

Otherwise object pool the GOs that have the vfx system and asset on them instead of instantiating them in bunches.

[torn tiger]

64 gameobjects which all share the same vfx graph!

but need to all change to a different vfx graph on command

so I could cache for each effect

will you walk me through prewarming? I think there might be something I'm missing about it

the problem is just enabling them in the first place is preventing me from getting into play mode

i could break it up frame by frame but it would still be really slow

i guess they could all be part of a scene that's additively loaded in?

[ashen robin]

so you're making 64 gameobjects which all have a vfx system component? You'd probably do want a way to spread the loading throughout the updates in that case like you've mentioned.

[torn tiger]

cool thanks!

I'll look into approaching it that way and report back

[ashen robin]

The other solution is to use a single graph though

single vfx system component

[torn tiger]

my problem is that i need huge point counts

and the stability of vfx graph seems to decrease significantly w/ huge counts

its a funny balance for me right now

[ashen robin]

once it's all loaded it's usually fine, but if you've high capacity on these systems yeah it'll take time to create all those buffers

[torn tiger]

do you think there's anything i could do within the graphs to simplify it?

less custom params?

[ashen robin]

if it's a loading issue and not runtime it depends on the capacity and particle count usually. I could see larger params being a problem since that just directly increases the buffer size, but this is something you should profile

[torn tiger]

sounds like breaking up the work in a coroutine / async is the way to go

[ashen robin]

yeah typical loading, you don't want to stall your program so awaiting the loading process should probably be the first thing to resolve

[torn tiger]

thank you!!

[ashen robin]

ye

[jaunty tree]

Is there a way to get the particle speed?

I am having an Add Position with a Perlin-Noise (Derivative) input to make my sparkles fly in interesting directions

However, I also have a Set Speed node, which sets the speed. Therefore, when the particles are already very slow, the added velocity is still of the same magnitude and can change the direction heavily

Therefore I want to only change the direction slightly if they are slow

[scenic basin]

BigElixirExplosion is a VFX effect that has alot of other VFX effects nested under it. Is this the proper way to play all the subemitters ?

    public void playSubEmitters()
    {
        // Check for and play any sub-emitters.
        ParticleSystem[] subEmitters = manaDeathParticles.GetComponentsInChildren<ParticleSystem>();
        // Check if there are any sub-emitters.
        if (subEmitters.Length > 0)
        {
            foreach (ParticleSystem subEmitter in subEmitters)
            {
                // Make sure not to play the main effect again.
                if (subEmitter != manaDeathParticles)
                {
                    subEmitter.Play();
                }
            }
        }
    }

[ashen robin]

Get Attribute nodes

[jaunty tree]

Should I see it when enter get speed? Couldn't find it earlier. Will check tmrw again. Thanks!

[ashen robin]

you can't see the value but if you need to do some additional logic outside of the context blocks like comparison then you can retrieve the current speed or the source speed (the speed that was sent in through events or sent in through the spawn context or getting previous system data after nesting systems)

[dull obsidian]

Generally, yes. While it can be used at interactive rates on capable hardware VDB is a storage format for baked volumetric data and sequences that are usually quite large and memory hungry. And Unity doesn't include VDB support currently though there are a few examples of VDB packages / plugins floating around: https://github.com/Pjbomb2/Unofficial-Basic-Embergen-VDB-Loader-for-Unity/
https://github.com/karasusan/OpenVDBForUnity

[jaunty tree]

Ok, yes I think I understood by now that VDB is mostly not for what I want to do haha! Thanks

[dull obsidian]

what do you want to do?

Also, this may be what you are looking for. This is a simple naive / dense volume file format official supported by Unity: https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.visualeffectgraph@17.0/manual/VectorFields.html

When working with smaller more reasonable volumes it's more performant anyway than sparse volume formats like OpenVDB which incur an overhead to traverse the spatial storage structure.

[dull obsidian]

and some info on Signed Distance Fields and point caches: https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.visualeffectgraph@17.0/manual/representing-complex-shapes.html

[dull obsidian]

also actually forget about this .vf volume file format for most use cases, if you can fit the depth slices in a flipbook texture and import it as a Texture3D then this will be the most straightforward and compatible workflow. https://docs.unity3d.com/2023.3/Documentation/Manual/class-Texture3D.html

These Texture3D can also be used in High Def Render Pipe as Density Mask Textures https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.render-pipelines.high-definition@17.0/manual/create-a-local-fog-effect.html

Or you can author a Fog Volume Shader that even doesn't even use a baked Texture3D (like the endlessly randomly generated ground fog shown.) or it apply an effect on top of / post processes the Texture3D / Density Mask Texture like distorting or swirling, etc. https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.render-pipelines.high-definition@17.0/manual/fog-volume-master-stack-reference.html

[torn tiger]

OK I'm back with more questions about VFX Graph

Have other folks found good ways to plug your currently rendering camera into VFX Graph?

I tried using the beginCameraRendering event and it worked OK but not great

[ashen robin]

Not something I've looked into, but you can render VFX on specific layers and cull it on other cameras

you can probably send in the camera transform and deconstruct the matrix inside of it if that's what you're looking for

[torn tiger]

that was the conclusion i came to too

not super satisfying but probably works

appreciate you responding to both of my problems!

[prime dome]

Is there a parameter to set the number of particles based on the volume of the emission box?
Like X particles every cube unit

[fast cedar]

i wanna put my particles infront of everything, ive set the layer to terrain but it doesnt work

im new to particles so idk if thats what im supposed to do

[warm torrent]

As long as your "ParticlesMaterial" is of type transparent, it'll use 2D sorting priorities like everything else 2D/transparent
https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/2DSorting.html

If any shader in your scene is opaque instead, they use camera depth for sorting, also against anything transparent

[brazen stirrup]

I don't have access to HasAnySystemAwake and I'm not sure which version of unity it comes from, is there another way to check whether a VisualEffect is currently playing? I've tried checking the alive particle count (always 0) and iterating over each ParticleSystemInfo also says 0 for each as well as True for sleeping, even if the particle is playing

[ashen robin]

read back from vfx graph is not accurate. You're better off trying to estimate the time on the cpu for when the system would expire.

[brazen stirrup]

Alrighty, I have a duration float so i'll just read that instead ta

[digital edge]

Hi. I'm trying to create a boost effect for a charging enemy. it doesn't work and I don't know why.

any Ideas?

[digital edge]

I found out that the mesh doesn't want to move from 0,0,0

[gloomy geyser]

how do I make circle particles? The default is squares and I don't see an option to change it

[torn tiger]

you'll have to change the material!

circular meshes are really inefficient so usually when you see a circular particle in a game its actually an image of a circle drawn on a quad

if its a must have you could use output octagon (if vfxgraph)

or change the output to mesh (if particle system) and replace it with a circle mesh you make in blender

[torn tiger]

you probably need to change it from world space to local space. I can't see your settings very well with the compression.

[gloomy geyser]

I am a complete beginner to paritcles so half of that went over my head. My game is in 2D, anyway to have 2D circle particles. I also want them to have lighting

[torn tiger]

Ah gotcha! do you know how to make materials?

I think the easiest thing you can do would be to make a material and replace the material in the particle system with that.

basically its fine that its a square but you can make it look like a circle with a texture in a material

Here's a tutorial I found that lines up with what you're describing: https://learn.unity.com/tutorial/particle-system-lights

Lights are expensive depending on how you're rendering your scene so this might slow down your game a bit.

[gloomy geyser]

yeah actually I saw online to make a material. I tried that by making a new material, setting its Albedo thing to default Circle sprite, but that didn't work when I tried to use it

[torn tiger]

oh great! ok cool you probably just need to find the right shader

you can find that at the top of the material

[gloomy geyser]

I have it as Standard Unlit

Also did this because of what I saw online

[torn tiger]

great sounds like you're on track

but they show up as squares ?

[gloomy geyser]

The preview of it is a sqaure yeah

[torn tiger]

the probllem is that you're using an opaque render mode

try clicking that at the top and setting it to transparent

[gloomy geyser]

Oh!

[torn tiger]

or additive

: )

[gloomy geyser]

Actually cutout seems to do it

[torn tiger]

that works too!

[gloomy geyser]

Fade works too

[torn tiger]

sorry fade not transparent haha

[gloomy geyser]

Not sure what these options do

[torn tiger]

under the hood those are blend modes

which basically describe how transparency is applied underneath it

additive will add the color of the thing beneath it

fade will blend it using the alpha and hold onto the original color a lot better

opaque cutout will take the alpha value and do something called a discard

[digital edge]

that fixed %75 of the problem but now the boost aura will just stand in its first spawn position

nvm I just needed to parent it

[torn tiger]

it will basically delete the fragment that is underneath the alpha cutout value

a fragment is like a pixel

[gloomy geyser]

I see so it's just doing different things to the transparent parts of the image depending on what you choose

[torn tiger]

so you might see some pixelation aroudn the edges of the image

exactly

[gloomy geyser]

That's why Opaque made it a sqaure because the transparent parts were just made opaque which makes it look like a sqaure?

[torn tiger]

yep!

[gloomy geyser]

Ok got it, thanks hol

[torn tiger]

for sure!! good luck!!

[gloomy geyser]

hey @torn tiger if you are still there, I'm not understanding how the lights work here. The particle system asks for a 3D light, when I apply it, nothing seems to happen. Is it because I'm in a 2D game and it doesn't work? Although that doesn't make sense

[torn tiger]

ooh actually when i responded to you i didnt think that part through! I haven't worked with 2d lights before.

I'll do some research

seems like particle system does not support 2d lights

are you comfortable with C# scripting?

[gloomy geyser]

Yeah I was thinking of just programmatically attaching a gameobject with a light to each particle. But I thought there would be a more proper way, it also doesn't seem very performant. Not that performance matters since I'm not spamming particles but still

[torn tiger]

yeah I think having a light per particle isn't very performant in general

idk how that measures up against the 2D rendering stack though

you can speed up having tons of lights in 3D using deferred rendering

[torn tiger]

I think that's your best bet if you want to use the 2D light component

there are probably ways to artistically evoke light that are more performant

[gloomy geyser]

Maybe I could mess with some baked lighting

[gloomy geyser]

yeah

Maybe just include a transparent "light" in the image itself

[torn tiger]

yes!

that's probably how I would solve it

it doesn't give you specular highlights on your models

if that's how you're lighting them w/ 2d lights

[gloomy geyser]

alright I'll think more on it. Thanks again

[torn tiger]

for sure!

[gloomy geyser]

Any way to keep the particles alive if parent gameobject gets destroyed?
I feel like doing it programatically to just remove it as a child is a way to do it, but not sure how the proper way to go about it is

[ashen robin]

design your systems such that you can detach particles from the parent (as if they were a child subsystem) so this way you can destroy the primary system while keeping the now de-attached particles alive. Though it's always better to object pool than outright destroying these particle systems if you're constantly reusing.

[fast cedar]

where do i set my material type?

[warm torrent]

In the material asset, or the shader if it's a custom shader

[fast cedar]

huh

[warm torrent]

"Rendering Mode: Cutout" makes the particle shader "opaque" with "alpha clipping" enabled
That might not make sense to you right now but it's good to keep in mind for future, as the terminology changes between render pipelines

You should have a "Fade" mode option instead that would be transparent

[fast cedar]

ok so they are showing now

ty

i made the rendering mode fade

[grave berry]

Hey everyone, is it possible to use volumetric effects created in Blender in Unity?

[ashen robin]

highly doubt it but that's something to google

[torn tiger]

Someone above was posting about openvdb volume rendering with hdrp - you could try that or look into alembic https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.formats.alembic@2.3/manual/index.html

The catch is those are going to be pretty expensive. You could also look into a unity package like alembic to vat to speed it up.

https://github.com/Gaxil/Unity-AlembicToVAT

But that's only gonna show you the meshed surface

[torn tiger]

Up here!

[sly grove]

Hi guys. I'm pretty new to particles. I try to make a cannon shot, and with the help of Unity's Particle Pack, i created an explosion for the muzzle and some cool smoke, but...i can't figure out how to make a shooting flame coming out of the muzzle. I tried to use the Animated Flame Sheet, but now it looks more like a lighter..can someone help wrap my head around it how this can work?

like this

[ashen robin]

Just takes patients with adjusting parameters. I find that throwing more and more particles at stuff eventually starts looking nice.

Should just post what you've got already

[ripe frigate]

I'm trying to get this to lerp through the gradient color at a desired speed but this doesn't seem to work, the color just flickers violently regardless of the speed selected....anyone know the correct setup for that?

[ashen robin]

may need to normalize the speed by a time

gradient I think runs 0-1 so it would probably go pretty quickly

if you want to do it over the duration of the lifetime then you need to use GetAttribute nodes for Age and for Lifetime then divide for the normalize time

if you want to loop the gradient you'd need to figure your measurement of time (in 0-1 time)

also this:
https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.visualeffectgraph@12.0/manual/Operator-Smoothstep.html

[ripe frigate]

ill see if i can get it working, cheers

[torn tiger]

the thing that's causing the flickering is the deltatime node which changes from frame to frame based on the amount of time the last frame took to render.

[sly grove]

Thank you, will try that. I see if i can put something together to show where i'm currently at with my cannon.

[scarlet light]

My particle show up blurred and with a black outline around them as soon as I set the speed to 0, Anyone had this issue before?

[torn tiger]

looks really cool haha -- it might be because a bunch of particles are all clumped up at 0,0,0?

[scarlet light]

'clump' is definitely the right word for it, but I'm following a tutorial with all the settings exactly like theirs, but the results are not looking the same. I'm restarting just in case I messed something up--will post if I figure it out

[torn tiger]

you could also try shrinking the point size to see where things are --it doesn't look like they're all in the same place

just very close

[limpid mist]

how do you remove this shuriken like sprite? new to the particle system and don't know how

[burnt coral]

It's a gizmo icon (only shown in editor). Should be able to toggle it in the gizmos menu iirc. https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/GizmosMenu.html

[limpid mist]

ah, thank you man

[sly grove]

currently it looks like this. There is also a recoil animation on the cannon, but it's not hooked up right now

[ashen robin]

Few things between the cannon reference and your cannon is that the cannon reference has a very focused fire, while yours has its explosion a bit further back, as if it has some back-blast going on. I think in that situation you'd want to obscure the camera looking side a bit more with some more particles because the quad doesn't give the depth needed to cover it all

How does this flipbook align when facing towards the cannon?

[sly grove]

thank you for the feedback. I adjusted the speed of the particles and the smoke and eliminated the back-blast, i think. Still, i need something like a flame stream, a shooting flame, firing strong and dying out in the end. At the moment i only have the ambers doing that kind of thing.

[inner jolt]

I feel like the embers move too slowly based off of how long they are. The length emulates, or at least gives off the impression of motion blur, but they aren't moving nearly fast enough match how visually stretched they are.

[minor glen]

Not sure what ou are going for but your sparks/fire embers move at a weird speed.

[nimble axle]

my particles have just gone completely invisible after downloading it from github onto a new pc

they just wont play at all

they are just invisible for some reason, any idea why this might be

[ashen robin]

check the material/shader and render tab there

[nimble axle]

the mesh is missing

thanks just realised

[lunar cargo]

When you click on the game button, the first thing that happens is the sword should appear, but it doesn't. But when I select all the particles and play particle play, the scene appears in place. How can I fix this? It seems like it would cause problems when recording for the portfolio, and it also doesn't work when I use the code (when I want to press a keypad with all the effects and show it). I need help for this. I use particle system

[ashen robin]

Could try a custom script and just executing in edit mode

especially if you're going to use the animator with your systems too

[lunar cargo]

how? I'm new to this though

[jaunty tree]

This is more of a logistic question. When creating the VFX I often need multiple graphs that loop at the same time. I can get that by putting the spawn system on Loop Duration constant and setting the same loop duration for all systems in the VFX

but in reality I then only need a single burst (explosion) which is often also triggered by a specific event

[ashen robin]

Is this all a single system? If so, I'd expect having start delay would be fine too with additional subsystems for your other effects

[jaunty tree]

Do I always have to go through all of my spawning contexts, set them to loop duration constant/infinite and add an event when switching from dev to prod or is there an easier way?

[lunar cargo]

That's what I did. Did you mean that?

[ashen robin]

Yeah, Shuriken System has a delay variable I believe which you should be syncing everything with

or is it like Start Time or something I forget

[lunar cargo]

What I don't understand is that the main problem is that "sword" does not appear at the beginning, that is, when I directly say play, it appears only when I select it from the hierarchy.

[ashen robin]

Ah, yeah I know what you're talking about but I've not used it much recently. The custom script idea is useful though if do you want to use the animator because a lot of these portfolios use both.

VFX and animator go hand-in-hand for the most part. Especially for the more cinematic looking stuff.

[lunar cargo]

I didn't use an animator. I made the stroke of the sword in the particle system using "Edge" in the shaper section.

[ashen robin]

I'm not sure what you mean, but why doesn't triggering a particle burst with events not the solution here?

[jaunty tree]

Thanks. How do I get that to repeat in editor, so that why developing I can see a repeating effect playing?

[ashen robin]

Ah, right you got to keep pressing the event button/play then haha

[jaunty tree]

yeah thats the problem haha

[ashen robin]

custom script ^^^^

[jaunty tree]

is that what ppl do actually?

ah ok yeah

[ashen robin]

[ExecuteInEditMode]

[jaunty tree]

so ah MB which triggers the event all few seconds?

[ashen robin]

Yeah, probably the idea here

could probably just loop the burst then connect the event afterwards just for testing but otherwise I think that's what you'd do

[jaunty tree]

but if its multiple bursts? Then I'd need to loop all of them individually right?

so thats a bit annoying since you always have to change it in the inspector for each of them

[radiant cipher]

The black outline is appearing likely because the particle texture is premultiplied, but blended as if it's not.

[sly grove]

@inner jolt , @minor glen , thank your very much for you feedback. I threw out the old embers. @weak wraith, the ref is reaally good. I searched a long time for something like this. I removed the blastwave and reworked the embers.

Uploaded it again, it somehow was broken.

[ashen robin]

Ah, I think the black smoke worked better because now it feels like it fades out too quickly

it could also just be because of gif format not really showing it at its greatest lol

[sly grove]

Thanks, i will keep that in mind. It's a naval cannon, i will be placed alongside 32 others. When all of them are firing... i need to make sure the player can still see something! Will test then how dark i can go with the smoke.

[minor glen]

I feel the smoke particles you added youself need to be the same color as the ones in the main sprite sheet.and
the sprite sheet doesn't really seem to match the color of your refrance video

The smoke particles you added however do match

Just dosnt look right. Other than that it looks great

[mossy ember]

I saw a video and they had it also but on my nodes it doesn't show up ? What could I be missing ?

[dull obsidian]

the Block node names start with Set or Add etc but aside from that they should show up with those search terms just fine. this is VFX graph 17 / the Unity 6 Beta though, the search might have improved?

Make sure you are adding / search for these Blocks inside of an Initialize or Update context or they won't appear. they aren't supported in the Output context (simulation already finished) nor can you place these Block nodes by themselves in the graph outside of a context, that is for Operator nodes only.

[ashen robin]

If you're missing nodes try seeing if you've the experimental package enabled via project settings under vfx graph tab

[sly grove]

Thank you. I tried a few things, but... the way the Texture Sheet is working i can't seem to figure out how to get the explosion smoke to a lighter shade. As far as i understand with my beginner knowledge, the Texture Sheet is just a grayscale getting colored dark in Color over Lifetime, the fire colors come from a separate grayscale Sheet that get's colored yellow, that only affects the Emission. When i start lighting up the particles in Color over Lifetime, the Emission also gets effected and it all turns into a blinding glow 😦

I hooked up the recoil animation and the cannonball, added a Smoke Trail (it's not realistic, but for gameplay reasons). That's where i'm at now:

[minor glen]

Looking good!
Whats with that random glowy particle at the end flying tp the right?

[sly grove]

oh, yeah. I see. That must be from the cannonball's ember trail. I go check why it is there. Could be a perspective thing that it is so big, but, it shouldn't be anywhere behind the cannon. Maybe i need to delay the start of the the embers.

[wicked narwhal]

It's just the soul of whomever took that straight to the chest. Don't worry about it.

In all seriousness though, might just need to clamp that effects' timing or duration.

[jaunty tree]

Hello I have a VFX graph with two systems for a projectile.

1. Just outputting a single rotating particle (a sphere)
2. output a trail (flipbook of flames)

Aside from looking totally horrible, it seems that the whole flipbook is always rendered in front of the sphere (but not in front of other game geometry). Does anyone know why?

This picture visualizes it. All spheres have the trails in front of them. But the character (clown in the middle) is rendered in front of some of the trails, correctly

This is my output node. The trails are initialized with the position of the sphere

[ashen robin]

what's using transparent shaders here

if you've subsystems you can only sort by ordering, and if you've multiple systems then you'd sort transparents by the system's pivot

and, you can also sort systems by ordering themselves

[jaunty tree]

so in one big vfx graph, the position does not influence ordering?

[ashen robin]

one big vfx system if you're using transparents for your particles then you rely on the particle ordering

[jaunty tree]

This is my vfx graph, to the left it is only a single burst, outputting one particle with infinite lifetime

basically just using vfx graph to animate a shader nicely

on the right I have the trail

you say these two graphs cannot be sorted based on the position of the emitted particles, but will be sorted by the time they are output?

[ashen robin]

https://i.imgur.com/XvULMsQ.png

on the asset itself, Output Render Order

I don't believe particles have pivots inside of the system, only the system itself

actually may need to double check on that

but in general when you do transparent sorting, you either sort by pivot or override ordering using a transparent queue (you don't write to depth)

opaque writes to depth and sorts by pixel

[jaunty tree]

hmm but I think I actually only need alphacuttoff, not realy transparency

could I then have particles in the same graph which sort based on depth?

[ashen robin]

I've been alpha clipping stuff a bunch because of this, but that's just the nature of transparents

you can try additive blending though as another way to try to "blend", but I've not been able to get some appealing particles from it

[ashen robin]

Opaque + Alpha cliping sorts depth fine if that's your goal and that if transparent layer sorting is not the solution

[jaunty tree]

yes! alpha-clip + opaque worked

thanks 🙂

[ashen robin]

you can also sort between opaque and transparents

for depth

but not transparents + transparents

I think, may need to test that again haha

so like if you wanted 1 transparent type of particle blended with some opaque particles it should be fine (ah, right! This is how you'd structure your particles to make those cool shockwave/distorting effects)

Right, it's not sorting but because it's different rendering queues

[jaunty tree]

haha ok, I'll keep that in mind

I have to read the sorting stuff every time again I use it

[mossy ember]

thats weird mine looks different...

[mossy ember]

project settings i dont see vfx graph tab

[jaunty tree]

I think you can activate experimental blocks somewhere

[ashen robin]

oh it's preferences for some reason

[mossy ember]

oh wow

wish the docs would mention this was "experimental"

Unity does weird shit sometimes

thanks guys!

[ashen robin]

"Do you prefer to have 70% more functionality in your graph"

[dull obsidian]

yeah i had no idea these were experimental, sorry

[mossy ember]

me niether, video i watched also never mentioned it 🤷‍♂️

yeah no mentioned of experimental in docs either

[dull obsidian]

it is one of those settings i enable so often it's a bit of an autopilot routine now

[mossy ember]

my first time using vfx graph 😅 Just used particle system since i picked up unity

[ashen robin]

it's like keeping your game in early access

cant be blamed if your project explodes because it's experimental

[mossy ember]

just like progrids xD

its been in "Experimental" forever

[dull obsidian]

ah visual effects : experimental operators/blocks is also an editor wide setting in "preferences" so i'm only ever setting it once per workstation not per project.

It is a bug at least in the documentation that these "from direction" nodes don't have the experimental banner on them like this node has. but now i see where this likely came from, the mesh sampling / set position mesh feature is experimental and that's where the direction attribute was introduced?
https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.visualeffectgraph@14.0/manual/Block-SetPosition(Mesh).html

though now that it exists, the direction attribute can be used in an arbitrary way and values written to it without using any of these mesh sampling features. (in a similar way to a custom attribute, but with some built in nodes already made for it.)

Advanced Simulation Attributes
direction Vector
You can use this attribute in the following ways:
• As a storage helper to store arbitrary direction.
• Use any block that sets a shape position to write to the direction attribute. For example, Set Position (Shape : Circle).
https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.visualeffectgraph@14.0/manual/Reference-Attributes.html

[prime dome]

has anyone used unity blender export script to export 6 way lighting for smoke volumes?

[coarse orchid]

Hi I am pretty new to visual effects. I am trying to create the visual effect similar to the one in this youtube video. Basically I am trying to create a ring for the outer object that does not move and another ring effect for the rotating object and once they intersect in these two rectangles, that part of the ring changes color. Any ideas on where to start?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXJUYumwh-k

Here's what I created using a swarm particle system and without swarm particle system

[ashen robin]

Seems more like the work of shaders and manipulating UVs

can use like world uvs to keep each of these mesh datas in sync for the texturing

[coarse orchid]

do you know any videos that can help with such tasks?

[ashen robin]

I'd ask in #archived-shaders for ideas

probably able to whip one up with shader graph

https://cyangamedev.wordpress.com/2020/01/28/worldspace-uvs-triplanar-mapping/
Cyan has some nice guides for this

but looking at your video again the texturing seems to follow more of an algorithm, so there may be more to how to modify the UVs

[ripe frigate]

im trying to compare the particle's world space position to position3's world space position, but it wont let me use these in comparison nodes...does anyone know how I would use this as a predicate?

i can drag them in without the Change Space, but i need the positions in world space for the comparison..

[ashen robin]

is the output on them vector3s?

[ripe frigate]

x,y,z yeah

[ashen robin]

https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.visualeffectgraph@10.2/manual/Operator-Compare.html

says floats but I would expect to compare vectors too

[ripe frigate]

could always try a distance node, just set it to 0

[ashen robin]

https://i.imgur.com/fT3eh3L.png

plug em into vector3 nodes and try

yeah beats me lol

[ripe frigate]

well this allows me to hook it up, but doesnt give the desired results..

I have a particle that follows a path, when it reaches the end position i'm trying to set the lifetime to zero so it deletes itself allowing a new one to be spawned, since theres only supposed to be one at a time.

But the particle keeps dying WAY before it reaches Position3, since both positions were in local space i thought i needed to compare them in world space but yields the same results apparently..

[ashen robin]

Have you considered this:
https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.visualeffectgraph@10.3/manual/Block-TriggerEventOnDie.html

[ripe frigate]

yes, but that requires manually setting a lifetime, so you would have to match that exactly with whatever length your path is

i'm trying to automate it

[ashen robin]

Should this path time be know as soon as you instantiate it

instead of recalculating a time every update

You know the starting position and the end position so whatever time is calculated there would be your defined time

[ripe frigate]

i have no idea how I would set that up node-wise

so your saying work out how long itll take to reach position3 using age over lifetime multiplied by speed, then set THAT as the particle lifetime..

not entirely sure how i would set that up, since theres multiple positions, so you would need to calculate how much time its going to take to cover all of those distances

[ashen robin]

I'm just saying if you know the distance and the speed your lifetime would simply be Distance / Speed

and you can either calculate that on the CPU and send it in, or do it in the initialize block

then use a TriggerEventOnDie to spawn the next particle which happens when Age == Lifetime

[ripe frigate]

so something like this?

do this for every position, then add it all together and use that as the lifetime?

[ashen robin]

oh, I see you're changing the speed over the time too

[ripe frigate]

it shouldnt be changing at runtime so putting this in Initialize should work, assuming it's even correct

so something like this?

[ashen robin]

comparing distances seems fine, though I'm not too sure how precise that is so you may need to compare to some values near zero;

since it's just a magnitude/scalar quantity and it can overshoot probably

[ripe frigate]

nope, no dice

[ashen robin]

I'd just say if distance <= 0.25 (or some small values) then set Lifetime perhaps

or Age for that matter

Again, probably the best way is to calculate it all beforehand, but you have to also account for the acceleration which can be a pain

I actually don't cap distances on my vfx and just let it all run its duration, but for collisional stuff I do have some CPU logic going

Now that I think about it, Vector3.Distance pretty terrible to use if you ever try to compare projectiles or such against a point. You'd overshoot on higher velocities (or for any speed for that matter)

I guess you can fallback on some extra logic like, if the values have increased from the previous frame, then you have passed the target point

[remote mortar]

Hey, Im using the particle system. I am getting this strange glitch in the game and simulator view with this billboard particle. It seems to only happen if the material is a Cutout rather than fade

[ashen robin]

what do you mean by fade? Could be related to post processing if you've got that enabled on your camera.

[remote mortar]

in the built in URP in the standard shader, there is an option in rendering mode to make it transparent, fade, or cutout.

[ashen robin]

Ah, neat didn't know this was a thing

but hover over soft particles and camera fading on the shader

[remote mortar]

I turned off post processing and it seems to have worked.

[ashen robin]

has refraction too that's cool

[warm torrent]

It's what BiRP calls transparency with alpha blending
"Transparent" is what URP calls "premultiply" type transparency
And cutout is naturally opaque with alpha clipping

[remote mortar]

Cant excactly find these

[ashen robin]

Ah, ok makes sense. I should really look into more of the standard shaders but stuff like this naming throws me off lol

[ashen robin]

same place where you can change from cuttout to fade

I guess premultiply would be the problem with post processing then eh

[warm torrent]

(though "premultiply" transparency isn't premultiplication at all, it just means alpha is not applied to specularity)

[ashen robin]

the camera fade from these are actually pretty nice, surprised I've not took the time and played around with them haha

maybe ill go copy paste some of that code into some of mine

[coarse orchid]

I think I will see if I can do it using the particle system. Because I am also using it for Augmented Reality and I don't see the visual effects in AR but I see the particles using the particle system

[loud thistle]

Guys, why is my trail renderer not showing when I change the alignment to transform Z?

Like it shows just fine when it is set to view

Shouldn't that just change the orientation of the trail?

[ashen robin]

ok so there's view and z. View seems to billboard towards the camera, and z seems to just be relative to world coordinates, so what's probably happening is that there's backface culling

[loud thistle]

Oh

You are right

Can I make it render in both sides though?

[ashen robin]

im not seeing it ;o

[loud thistle]

Well, I will make it work anyways, thxs ❤️

[woeful yarrow]

I'm working on the VFX for the hammer swing of my the character and I wanted to use a trail for the swing. However one issue I was never really able to solve when working with trails is the jagged edges of trails (which are especially easy to see when the width is a bit stronger).

This one is using the "trail" setting from the shuriken particle system but it's pretty much the same issue with the trail renderer.

Would love to understand how I can make it a very smooth trail

[ashen robin]

More corner verts or use a texture with softer edges

[woeful yarrow]

I think in a particle system you can't change the corner verts? Or am I blind xD

And this is my effect texture. But even if I were to use the default unity particle texture, which is pretty smooth, I still get the edges.

it's less but you can see them still

[ashen robin]

Ah, this is on the particle system eh

[woeful yarrow]

yep

[ashen robin]

looks pretty good

maybe a little softer could blend better

[woeful yarrow]

I can't really agree with that haha I can still see the edges

[ashen robin]

there's also additive blending that may be helpful

[woeful yarrow]

but that only changes the way the color is applied, the verts are still not that clean

when moving it around a little faster (and the trail is a bit bigger) you can clearly see the issues

[ashen robin]

yeah, it's not the greatest

try setting a few small vertex distance

[wintry temple]

is there a way to position particles based on noise?

like some places have more some have less because of a noise texture that is generated

[ashen robin]

There's a lot of neat features with the VFX graph if you look around, but otherwise I'd just compute this before passing it into a system such as reading the texture data and/or using point caches.

[zealous wing]

In VFX graph, does someone has an idea how can I keep increasing the X value while Y value gets closer to 0? To be more specific. I want to make the particle grow more on Y-axis the closer it gets to the spawn position 0 on X-axis

[ashen robin]

Using GetAttribute: position will allow you to grab the current positional values allowing you to compare positions or by sticking them in an animation curve in Update Particle

perhaps also create a private field and cache the starting positions

[zealous wing]

I didn't think about using animation curve. I will try it out

[ashen robin]

GetAttribute: position source will give you cache buffer values if you sent them through an event by the position attribute

oh but if you append to them more in initialize then yeah maybe want to make a private field and set it

[native forge]

Hi guys, i want to create VFX for my 2D top-down game. Can you help me where i can start to create one?

[grand forum]

How do I import from blender to unity with textures?

[dull obsidian]

aside from searching the web for tutorials to get you started, this topic is best suited for #🔀┃art-asset-workflow the channel all about exporting assets from artist software and importing them into unity.

[dull obsidian]

here's a great place to start with an overview and links to official tutorials and examples https://unity.com/how-to/2d-special-effects-vfx-graph-shader-graph

[carmine bone]

Is there a good resource for ground crack/splat textures for free to practice making vfx with?

I kind of want to focus rn on making effects more than the making textures currently and save that for later.

[ashen robin]

could try your luck at AI and generating a bunch, otherwise grab yourself a pack off the asset store / itch.io if not the web

[grand forum]

from what I found I have to remap textures

Difficult to do with this kind of textures

[grave berry]

Hey everyone, all my 'old' vfx graphs no longer work and are displayed as completely empty in the latest LTS of Unity 2022.
Did anyone else have this problem? Is there a fix?

[dull obsidian]

i have not seen this. are there any messages in the console about it? that's the first place to look for answers

you may also want to try a "reimport all" on your project

[grave berry]

There are no messages mentioning the graph. I reimported the folder with the graphs and that didn't change anything.
I'll try reimport all.

[grave berry]

If I had to guess the vfx graphs probably broke when upgrading unity to the latest lts at some point down the line

I just found an error that could be the cause of my troubles

[dull obsidian]

ah yeah perhaps

@grave berry also a simple test would be to create an empty project in the same LTS version, installing vfx graph ( or use a template which already has it) and copy one of the "empty" vfx graph files to it to see if it's accessible then

[grave berry]

good idea 👍

I just found the cause and fixed it. Upgrading from 2022.3.7 to 2022.3.14 'upgraded' all the vfx graphs which broke them.
I simply reverted those changes via VCS and now everything seems to work fine.

[split prism]

how do i control particles in timeline? its straight up not showing, tryna make gunshots but :/

[fiery robin]

        var particlePositions = new GraphicsBuffer(GraphicsBuffer.Target.Structured, particleCount, Marshal.SizeOf(typeof(Vector3)));
        particlePositions.SetData(particlePositionsArray);

        //set the buffer on the visual effect
        VFX.SetGraphicsBuffer(_bufferProperty, particlePositions);
        VFX.SetInt(_particleCountProperty, particleCount);

        VFX.Play();

        particlePositions.Dispose();

Hey so I'm trying to spawn a bunch of particles at once in vfx graph, but all of them are spawning on position 0,0,0.
The buffer correctly has all the positions, I checked with GetData().
Any clues why this might be happening? Am I reading the buffer incorrectly?

[cloud stream]

heya, im new here

can anyone help me with learning some unity for an asignment ?

[ashen robin]

I believe the index must be changed here because how spawnindex works

[fiery robin]

which index?

[ashen robin]

https://qriva.github.io/posts/how-to-vfx-graph/