✨┃vfx-and-particles

[wicked narwhal]

yeah I figured it's be something like that, good think I don't need to

Oh man, this is exactly what I needed. haha They are just zipping around now

[mental reef]

Hello!

Was wondering why when I move left and right my VFX particles speed up or slow down. Here is a video of the issue and attached below is the graph I am using. Any help would be appreciated, VFX graph is not exactly my forte. I am using URP with Unity 2022.3.21f1 if that helps at all.

[tired summit]

Maybe the projection matrix ? (in the output context)

BTW you can remove all these time scale nodes, if the time scale is zero, then delta time is also zero.

Unless you specifically need something that is time scale agnostic unless the time scale is zero...?

[mental reef]

I wanna freeze the movement when the game is paused (time scale will be set to zero).

[mental reef]

is this the output context you speak of?

[upper hedge]

Be careful to not let it break your UI animations when time scale is 0

UI animations use timescale

by default at least

[mental reef]

Ahh good thing to have pointed out. I'll keep it in mind.

[mental reef]

I think I know what is up. It's using the local transform of the object it is attatched to. The enemies turn and look towards the player so I'm thinking it's the enemy turning that is offsetting the rotation, thus speeding it up or slowing it down depending on which direction you are approaching from.

[modest trellis]

how do I fix this flickering of the particles?

the particles are inside of the red cube

[fiery glacier]

is it usually a norm to set the x and y values to match the aspect ratio when designing vfx graphs like those meant for a rain effect on the foreground?

[warm torrent]

This looks like a transparency sorting issue
Transparent geometry are sorted by their origin's distance to the camera
Particle systems are one mesh, so they all share an object origin
The simplest way would be to make every cube face is own individual gameobject with a bit of offset in their origins away from the center

So that the sorting point of the particle system would not be closer to the camera than the cube faces' while the camera can see the faces

[modest trellis]

Problem is that the whole lantern is a 3d model from poly pizza. It is one game objects, but with 3 different meshes, which enabled me to change their colors, so I can not make any real changes to the model itself

[warm torrent]

Can not?

I'd just modify the mesh
It'd be a simple edit but if you're not familiar with the process there's some pitfalls

[modest trellis]

How do I acces it though? When I import it into blender it is just one singular big mesh

[warm torrent]

You'd separate the faces into their own objects, and make sure the origin is at the geometry or a bit in front of it

Alternatively you could change the material's render queue

But afaik changing render queue can make it appear in front / behind every other transparent object with an unmodified queue

I don't know if there's a way to add an "offset" to to the depth sorting point

[modest trellis]

For my case it would be ideal to turn the cube into 4 faces/windows

[warm torrent]

Indeed

[modest trellis]

But I don't know how to seperate the faces into their own objects

or delete them in fact

[warm torrent]

You'd have to look up how

[modest trellis]

yeah currently doing that, but thanks for your ideas once again

[tired summit]

Simply split the object itself in Blender

You might have to export as "object groups"

[wicked narwhal]

I have a particle system that is changing position every x seconds. When it does move, any spawned particles immediately disappear. Is there a way to ensure any already spawned particles continue out their life cylce where they were before the whole system's emission position changes?

[silent sierra]

switch to world mode. it's at the top in shuriken and that (L) right top of each node in vfxgraph

[wicked narwhal]

I have no idea what shuriken is. lmao I'm also doing everything in code. Thanks!

[wicked narwhal]

That was it. Thank you so much!

[chilly plume]

Im using the Universal Render Pipeline and im not sure whats causing this? If its drawn infront of my ground material it doesnt draw properly

The images are Game view vs Scene view. Both in editor

[chilly plume]

ah its because my camera is orthographic, ill google why thats breaking it and hopefully find something

oh it uses soft particles which apparently just doesnt work with orthographic cameras?

is there anything i can do to make them work?

[wicked narwhal]

Back with hopefully my last question about particle systems for the time being.
In the gif you can see the particles being emitted in various places but they seem to all be synced up. Is this a lifetime issue or something else? How can I ensure particles are continuously emitting but not all at the same time like so? These particles are meant to be fireflies on the map and spawn in randomly during emission instead of all at once. Fixed.

[rotund pasture]

is there any way to make a custom tree I have created in blender work with Unity's wind

[still whale]

this is the pic from unitys documentation of package manager

mine doesnt have the tab that says unity registry

anyone know why mine looks different?

[burnt coral]

Should be under "Packages : In Project" dropdown at top

[worn jewel]

Does anybody happen to know how Unity renders 3D mesh particles when your particle system has multiple meshes to choose from? Is it grouping each mesh type together and then rendering those together each time? Just wondering if there's something clever it's doing under-the-hood that's not obvious.

[flint glen]

I'm working on a 2Dgame in Unity and have added a smoke effect to my enemies using the particle system. I've integrated the smoke prefab inside the enemy prefab, but I'm facing an issue with the smoke's rendering.

The smoke is being drawn beneath everything except the ground, without considering the enemy's Y position. I've checked the Sorting Layer, Order in Layer, and camera settings, but the problem persists. I also tried adjusting the Z position of the particles and using a Sorting Group, but haven't had any success.

Has anyone encountered a similar issue or have any suggestions on how to fix this?

Thank you in advance for your help.

[ripe mantle]

@fluid lagoon It's 1.

@fluid lagoon And both are using the default Unity cube mesh.

It seems that the particle is 0.1x times size of the mesh.

[fluid lagoon]

And it has no parents?

(either of them)

[ripe mantle]

nope

This is the entire system

[tardy dragon]

Any high level advice on how to achieve this "plume-ey" sort of pixel art fire in 3D? Particle system w/ spheres, quantized + noise, fluid sim?

https://img.itch.zone/aW1hZ2UvMjYwNTgzNC8xNTUzMjQxNy5naWY=/original/dBrL9t.gif

[trim tide]

You have only tried setting the Z position of the particles? What about the prefab/object?

[sweet furnace]

Hi, I have a small question. Is it possible to use a sprite's slice mode or some equivalent for particles? I was planning to use it for this effect, where rectangles grow like this but they get too thick when the size is really high, which is why I was hoping to use slice mode

The border is thin since that's a sprite whose draw mode is set to sliced, just needed something similar for the particles inside to complete it

[stuck timber]

Particles system, 3D meshes, noise dissolve texture, use another noise texture for the colors to add that gradient bright yellow -> orange as well,
Could be done without 3D meshes if your scene is isometric/topdown without any changes in camera angles

[tardy dragon]

Got this working! Only issue it visually looks like there are ~7ish particles. I assume this is because there are around 7 frames during the animation so they all end up emitted/clumped at the same starting position for each frame. Any smart ways to interpolate? I added some variation of +/- x units for their starting positions, but that only helps so much. I also don't want to go too overboard on rate since it's already at like 400/s, but that might be the only solution?

[ashen robin]

sweet art style

[ashen robin]

if you're using vfx graph refer to this
https://discussions.unity.com/t/how-to-improve-appearance-of-a-moving-system-spawning-behavior/854389/7

can probably get an idea for the shuriken system with it otherwise

[tardy dragon]

ooo thank you. figured this must've been a common problem!

[novel steeple]

I am trying to implemented a skinned mesh renderer particle effect in Unity 6, but it's not behaving as expected. Here's the VFX Graph, and a screeshot of the result. Any gurus that can tell me what I'm missing? The particle system is spawning at the root, but not affecting the mesh.

[ashen robin]

https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.visualeffectgraph@11.0/manual/Block-SetPosition(Mesh).html
check the bottom of that page

[buoyant ermine]

how can i stop fog from doing this?

[novel steeple]

Hey Mao, thanks for the feedback, the setting is enabled

[ashen robin]

for the sake of testing, try using some primitives first

because otherwise what you have there seems fine to me

Actually, is there a reason you're plugging the transform into a set position property instead of sending the transform into the positional mesh node?

https://i.imgur.com/sP5FmVO.png

It's been a while but this is what I've done with them before

[novel steeple]

so moving the set position above the skinned mesh results in this

[novel steeple]

It's starting to look like the mesh, but offset somehow

should I be setting the mesh transform to the mesh's transform? the tuts I followed set the transform to the root node

[ashen robin]

I use one of those vfx property binders

[novel steeple]

LEGENDARY!

Now I simply need to make it look pretty 🤣

[novel steeple]

Not looking too terrible 😁

[novel steeple]

Thanks @ashen robin !

[rancid bridge]

Hey everyone, I've just created a new project to test some stuff on VFX graph and it seems they've changed some things and now I'm a bit lost. On VFX Graph 14.0.9, I could connect each axis of vector nodes separatedely, but it seems they've removed that on VFX Graph 14.0.11, and now I don't know how to get each axis. There's no split node like in Shader Graph, so how do I "Split" a vector node now?

[open birch]

Hey guys, I'm sure this question has a super simple answer I'm just not finding, but randomly when modifying the intensity of rain with my particle system I will sometimes get the following error:

NullReferenceException: Do not create your own module instances, get them from a ParticleSystem instance

The issue is however, that for some reason I can't simply access the emmission module through the rain particle in code (image 2), so I'm obliged to declare the particle systems rain module in a separate variable within the start method (image 3). Does anyone know what I'm doing wrong? Thanks you for your time, any help is very welcome.

sometimes it works fine! then other times I just get errors?

I'm super confused

[rancid bridge]

Ok, so, the modules of a particle system are Structs and Structs are value types, so you can't modify structs as if they were a refernce type like what you're trying to do in the second image. Being a value type, you need to copy it, modify it, and then assign it back. For the same reason, it's not a good a idea to get it in Start because, since they're a value type, you're not getting a reference to the module, you're getting a COPY of the module, so if you modify this copy, the original will not be affected. It's exactly the same thing as when you want to modify the transform.position of an object: if you try to modify only the X axis, it won't let you because Vector2/3 are structs.
So, as a rule of thumb, if you wanna modify a struct, you need to copy it, modify the copy, and assign it back.

Okay, correction, just did a quick search and for Particle systems you don't need to reassign the module back: https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/ParticleSystem-main.html

[wicked narwhal]

Is there a way to set the color for each particle individually?

[warm torrent]

With which system

And by what logic

[wicked narwhal]

Not sure what you mean by the system. I'm just running a ParticleSystem, all from code.

I'm currently setting a random color for every particle at once for the color of the ColorOverLifetimeModule.

I was hoping there was a way to set a random color for each particle separately though.

[warm torrent]

https://discussions.unity.com/t/particle-system-random-color-in-c/722888/3 a gradient into start color in random mode

[wicked narwhal]

I'll give that a shot, looks like it should work

[wicked narwhal]

https://paste.myst.rs/gnniq398
Here's what I've got but the color is always black, for every particle. Image to show what those colors are as well.

I may have found my mistake

[hot berry]

Anyone here know how to make some really good looking blood VFX

[wicked narwhal]

I did not fix my issue. New code btw...
https://paste.myst.rs/bm2ml37j

[wicked narwhal]

I found a different approach which works for my needs.

[half aurora]

Are you looking to make it realistic or stylized? If stylized, you can create a quick sprite animation of just the individual puffs and then have them spawn in that arc shape with a gradient color change

[tardy dragon]

Stylized. Considered 2D sprites, but was worried that the billboarding would look awkward. I think my final solution ended up being an okay compromise; it loses fidelity and density but looks better at different angles.

Maybe some degree of shader magic can make the individual puffs stand out a bit more.

[half aurora]

I've done a similar-looking effect before using just a circle sprite and size-over-lifetime changes with gradient colors. Just have to kinda play with it and see how the puffs change size at various parts of the body

[slow beacon]

Respected, I also want to make this..
but after 1000 times try, I didn't achieve this particle system..
can anyone please help me

[modest elk]

hello i want make a sneeze effect but its the first time i try to create vfx so im bad someone can explain me how i can make splash texture when he touch the ground

[tardy dragon]

Decal on collision?

[raw torrent]

hey so im trying to make some lightning effects where lightning bolts come off the player and i want them to be random colors between black and white but for some reason there are some gray ones

i did random between 2 colors

my only guess right now would be that a black and white lightning are overlapping and im not sure how i can fix that

[urban pike]

Learningparticles, any suggestions? I feel it’s missing something

[modest elk]

how can i see if i have a decal on my collision ?

[tardy dragon]

Sorry, bad wording. I meant, consider adding a decal on collision. You'd have to implement it as a potential solution for this.

[modest elk]

i have to do it in the inspector or in script ?

[tardy dragon]

Likely a combination of both.

Though I haven't personally looked into it, might be a way to do it w/o.

[raw torrent]

also sometimes it doesnt trigger and sometimes it also just does it at a different spot then where it should

[shut cliff]

@raw torrent Try reducing noise strength of the particles at the start by using a curve. Using noise may offset them a bit from the start area

@raw torrent Also for the random color, use Random Color with a fixed gradient

[sudden dagger]

https://youtu.be/zntgnpoTs8s?si=2zUQ0twocB_T1aJY

how to make this type of light reveal animation in unity 2d ?

[ashen robin]

look up stencil shaders

[sudden dagger]

Any idea ?

[ashen robin]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSeUMTaNFYk
Videos a little dated, and they use built-in here, but you can do similar using URP render objects.

[sudden dagger]

great thanks

[ashen robin]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jidloC6gyf8
More updated version but less specific to the topic (rather the inverse of the idea)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkcCWqifT9M
Oh, sebastian has a good one too

[sudden dagger]

Can simple animation works ?

2d animation on UI canvas

[deft forum]

To set something as simple as a sphere in a VFX Graph do I really have to do this hack? https://discussions.unity.com/t/vfx-graph-how-do-i-set-a-transform-reference-set-property-binder-by-script/812878/5 / Is there no one-liner way to do it?

[tardy dragon]

t3ssel8r fakes particle effects by using full screen animated textures for rain, dust, etc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39A0n24PX8g&t
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ony4o3E0J20

He states that he does this to "obviate the need to compute particle effects on the CPU or transfer buffers between CPU and GPU memory". Likewise instead of relying on physics collisions to detect rain impacting surfaces I believe he simply places random splashes on the screen and culls out ones that don't intersect with top edges via reading the camera depth texture.

Since VFX Graph already offloads a bunch of stuff to the GPU, does it naturally take care of some of these concerns? Obviously a texture likely still has less overhead, just wondering how it performs at a high level.

[ashen robin]

Yep, way better than CPU generated particles that's for sure. Few ways to go about it, one being to generate a bunch of kill planes -> spawn splash particles inside of the graph, or do the same splash effect idea by spawning particles on a signed distance field of your terrain.

kill planes aren't that accurate I feel if the particles do travel too fast (doesn't seem to really do much interpolation as far as detection)

You can probably chunk the systems a bit too and spawn them over sectors so a single system isn't rendering all the particles at once if your world is large enough

or dynamically move a system and let the particles fall locally

[tardy dragon]

Could you child the system to your player and hope they don't run fast enough to outpace the output of the system?

i assume this is that haha

[ashen robin]

yeah, that should probably work fine

[tardy dragon]

He seemed very worried about trying to detect collisions, thus opting for camera depth texture random splashes, wonder if that's a big performance hit.

[ashen robin]

vfx graph has its own kill fields which you will bake either through signed distance fields or using plane yourself

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

scroll to the bottom

[tardy dragon]

ah gotcha, and I assume all of that still comes with the buttery performance benefits of being done GPU side?

[ashen robin]

or the alternative assuming your level isn't that complex in geometry is just tween out the alpha so they never hit the ground

yeah it's done using compute shaders

[tardy dragon]

Is it expensive to read a bunch of meshes to update SDF at runtime?

Prefer not to bake manually atm, if possible.

[ashen robin]

not too sure but that page does mention about runtime. I doubt it would be impactful unless you're changing them every frame

[tardy dragon]

Gotcha, ty!

[ashen robin]

the idea is you try to do least amount of work across frames, but if it's like a few changes here and there, you just proliferate those values downwards

and once that data is inside those buffers, you can use it as you want. The most expensive operatiosn are those that need to communicate to the GPU from the CPU side

which is interesting because having a system local to your player still requires sending that transform to the systems each time it's updated, but I guess it's done in some performative way

[tardy dragon]

ooo dear you're right. VFX property binder for player transform -> emitter origin... safe to assume that's performant?

or...

[ashen robin]

it's a feature of the graph so they intend for some of that information to be sent to it

I mean, I have some systems that I directly modify these buffers each frame and it's still much more performant than doing it CPU side, that's for sure.

it's just that when it comes to say a rainstorm, you wouldn't be modifying each raindrop. Instead, you modify the position of the rainstorm which only requires updating the buffer with a single transform change.

Meanwhile, shuriken system you can iterate over each raindrop and modify it (bad example but you can if you wanted to)

[tardy dragon]

Got it working! Turns out VFX Graph can read depth buffer (which makes sense, duh), so collisions were trivial.

Now to figure out if there is some inverse kinematic voodoo to make splatters normal to where they hit.

[ashen robin]

Aye, pretty good. I've actually not had the best luck when using that feature as I felt particles clipped through a bunch, but it's been a while since I've played around with it.

[tardy dragon]

ha, luckily my game is lofi enough to get away with clipping. thanks a bunch for the insight! ❤️

[deft forum]

That looks great!

[still thistle]

Hi there! Is it possible to send data from a VFX graph back to the CPU? Specifically, I want to call a certain method if a particle gets within a certain distance of a Vector3 property. I see a couple mentions on the Unity forums in 2020 of CPU Events and CPU simulation, but nothing that seems like it'd be helpful for this.

[upper hedge]

best you could do, I think, is enabling particle collisions and placing a collider there - and then making them only collide with each other through layers

there is a way to get gpu stuff back into cpu, but I'm very doubtful it can be done with particle system particle positions

[upper hedge]

just remember to turn on send collision messages, and to set what it collides with

[lost frigate]

Hey guys, how can i know when my particle hits to any collider in the scene with VFX ?

this is my water effect and now i want it to make a decal on the ground when it hits, i could manage create the decal on the ground, but only when the particle dies, (Triggre event On Die) its called.

but i want it to be anytime when it hits to anycollider, any thoughts?

[still thistle]

I appreciate the response, but I'm talking about the VFX Graph, not the Shuriken particle system. Shuriken particles are on the CPU, so I can definitely get things working with that, and might swap to that if it doesn't seem like there's another way.

[solar summit]

Does anyone know how dani made the blood have like a trail ? At 4:48

https://youtu.be/K0X5A6aURms?si=EClE3fl1rdxMPJ9t

[warm torrent]

The trails are made using trails, if I had to guess

Since they look to be trails on particles, particle trails specifically

[solar summit]

Thanks

[cinder iron]

I think its related to Depth buffer

[lost frigate]

True, I am using it but yet I cant call any events for it, it only affects as collider to show physics particles ( like hits to any object around it) so basicly i need to move to old particle system in order if i want to have some functions and actions/events on my particle OnCollider hits because VFX is based on GPU, but Particle system is on CPU which is sad :(

[still thistle]

Yep, seems like the same question I was asking. Looks like the closest we've got right now (assuming you're using Unity 6, which I believe you need for the collider blocks) is using Trigger Event to trigger a GPUEvent, but that can't interact with the CPU and thus can't spawn decals or anything. (Was taking a look at this thread: https://discussions.unity.com/t/vfx-graph-trigger-events/928437/5)

[still thistle]

Some more info: https://discussions.unity.com/t/send-an-output-event-on-particle-death/912030
There is an "Output Event" block that triggers an event on the CPU, but you can't call it from a GPUEvent (only a "Spawn" block). Looking at the workaround OrsonFavrel posted, it seems unlikely that it'll be helpful in your case, but possibly still worth checking out.

Oh wait! Have you looked at the Output Particle URP Lit Decal block at all? This still won't allow other CPU events, but if adding decals is all you're looking for, it might be what you want? (Haven't looked into it too closely yet)

[fast olive]

hi! i'm having issues with the trail renderer:
in the first clip the order in layer is lower than the tornado. it seems to me like it's trying to figure out whether to render the whole thing or not and it sort of flickers
in the second clip the order in layer is higher and obviously the trails are rendering behind it when they shouldn't.

does anyone have any idea on how i could approach masking the back face of these trails without it getting all buggy? any help appreciated

[ashen robin]

vfx graph?

[fast olive]

no, shuriken

[ashen robin]

it looks like it is sorting correctly, but the problem is the trails linger by the time the pivot swaps sorting position, making the whole trail render in front/back instantly

basically you're sorting by 2 pivots

because transparents you don't sort by pixels (when sorting between transparents)

some ideas is use opaque trails and a dithering shader

[fast olive]

yes, but you see these little flickers happening to the alpha

[fast olive]

i will look into this

[ashen robin]

not too sure about the flickering but probably similar problem as it's fighting with sorting

[little cobalt]

Has anyone experienced certain particle systems not showing on some Android devices? If so, what fixed it?

[tardy dragon]

Unsure on how property binder functions under the hood; Is there a way to throttle how often the property is bound as to limit how often the CPU has to talk to GPU/potentially improve performance?

[ashen robin]

Unless you're running into performance issues I wouldn't worry too much about them. Like I was saying it is interesting that for a module that runs on the parallelization between the cpu and gpu has features that update these buffers every frame, but from my testing it hasn't really factored into the performance from what I've seen.

If anything, updating multiple buffers every frames I'd expect would lead to more synchronization issues first before any actual performance issues

[slate radish]

Where can i find 3d modelers on this discord ?

[grizzled orbit]

can we use vfx graph stuff in mobile games?

or just use shader graph and shuriken?

idk if its safe to say that all mobile devices that people use are gpu based these days?

[clear spruce]

”High End Mobile Support” is currently only at the ”Planned” section in the roadmap so no mobile device is officially supported at the time. Because the Compute Buffer support only exists on some high end devices (not all of the very new and powerful devices have it either), it is unlikely to get any better in the near future. Shuriken is the way to go on mobile platforms

[lost frigate]

oohh thanks, yeah i will look after this for sure

but at the moment, I have another issue, so basecly i have an alpha clip in my shader graph and i have its value in VFX profile so i want to change it over the life time of my particle, im sure there should be a way but dont know how to make its algurothm, any idea?

this, i want to change this

[ashen robin]

You can get a normalize time by the getting the elapsed particle time and dividing by the LifeTime

rather it's lifetime divided by total time? That may be it

[mint mesa]

just messing around trying to make a basic fire particle. why isn't the lighter orange always appearing on top of the darker one? i have the order in layer of the light orange set to a higher value, so how is it that sometimes there is dark orange above light orange?

[deft forum]

Trying to make a VFX effect that correctly projects a decal onto a skinned mesh renderer (blood onto a character) - is there any easy way to make the blood decal deform 1:1 with the skinned mesh?

IE. At the moment, when the blood decal hits initially, everything is in the right spot, but when the character is moving/animating, the decal projection sits there and projects onto whatever element of the skinned mesh has moved in front of the projector. Parenting the decal to the relevant bone helps but doesn't seem to fix it.

Example here:

[lost frigate]

i guess, but i wanna control it with a curve, let sent a picture real q

[agile hedge]

With a Particle System that has subemitters. If I have a subemitter that emits on 'Death', how can I know when that 'Death' event happens, or when that subemitter starts?

[ashen robin]

that seems fine to me, what's the problem? I'm not too sure if you can send in animation curves at runtimes, but I've not really looked into that

[fast canyon]

im new to vfx in unity, trying to make a simple effect by following a tutorial and i added a vfx graph into my game but there are no particals comming out? why is this?

[lost frigate]

ok so the problem was the curve, it needed to be inverted, the higher you go the more visibale and the lower which is closer to 0 it makes it fade away over the textures alphas

[spring wolf]

I have some projectiles in 3d that use particles. I have them set to local here, where they are "correctly" facing their target, but are obviously flat in a 3d world
setting them to view works fine for achieving the 3d illusion, since they always billboard toward the camera, but then they obviously don't inherit the rotation of the game object, so rotating the projectile doesn't work

is there some kind of middleground for this where I can get both?

more succinctly: is there a render alignment option where a particle will be parallel/billboarded to the camera plane while also rotating with its gameobject?

[spring wolf]

this might be a better visualization

the particle is tilted 30* to match the camera, and it looks correct here- it's moving -> toward the right of the screen
but if I rotate the parent gameobject to face north instead, it obviously looks incorrect

is the only solution to this to do the math when I update the gameobject's rotation and rotate it to face the camera?

[warm torrent]

"Stretched billboard" is one such

Although the alignment is with its particle, not the gameobject

[blazing hinge]

Hey people, I have a VFX which uses an "age over lifetime" sampled bezier path for particle motion. I want to begin the vfx at an advanced state, as if it had already been playing for a while, so that the path is already filled with particles. I tried prewarming and vfx.simulate from script but I can't do it. How do I do this? How do I start my vfx with advanced simulation time start?

[fast olive]

hello. i am making this effect and have hit a wall. i don't know how to stretch the orbs in the direction that they're flying into. i can't scale it over x/z axis because each orb has a different angle relative to the enemy so it wouldn't look right.

this is all one particle system. it's moving with an external forces module + spherical wind zone. i could split this up into 5 different particle systems and animate them manually but i would prefer to find a way to stretch them in the direction they're moving towards in either the particle system or the shader.

i have always used shuriken but let me know if vfx graph provides solutions for this and i will try it. any help appreciated, thank you! (this is not meant for in-game implementation so unconventional solutions are welcome)

[burnt coral]

Might be something under the Custom Vertex Streams (under Renderer tab of particle system) that you can use to pass data into shader texcoord/UV channels to apply vertex displacement 🤔

[fast olive]

i believe custom vertex communicates shader into particle but not particle into shader. i might be wrong and i will check

[ashen robin]

Usually when I see stretching displacement, most of it is done using the animator/shape keys so perhaps something to incorporate.

Though, I think scaling is the easiest solution here such that all rocks should just face the target in the forward direction and scale the z

[fast olive]

But how would I make it so that they're all facing that direction? That would be ideal (I'm already using that to scale the Y in the beginning) but if I do that currently they would all have the same Z axis, and each one has a different angle

[ashen robin]

not sure about shuriken system but vfx graph you've control of the rotation through atan2 and nodes like:
https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.visualeffectgraph@10.2/manual/Operator-Rotate3D.html

Though I'm surprised you've got that all accomplished with one system. Usually I would just use the animator or expand out my particle controller script

I find sequencing using the systems alone quite complicated without some secondary scripting

[granite otter]

does anyone know how costly is for a particlestrip update

[keen slate]

Are you well

[granite otter]

no

[keen slate]

Why

[granite otter]

as long as i am doing gamedev my life is at stakes

[tardy dragon]

Is there a non-stupid way to clamp particles to a pixel perfect grid? Trying to avoid iterating over every particle every frame, esp. on CPU. Is a vertex shader the right track?

[clear spruce]

I’m not sure I fully understand what is the effect you are looking for but it sounds like vertex shader might do what you want

[prime dome]

how to make particlesystem particles emit 2d lights?

[warm torrent]

https://discussions.unity.com/t/lwrp-using-2d-lights-in-a-particle-system-emitter/752498/14 this ancient thing still should work

You need to modify it to be able to inherit particle information for the light though

[prime dome]

people really uses that to attach things in ps's?

i guess I have no choice

[warm torrent]

It's useful for non-light things too

Not having to use a script it would be more performant for sure, but it's not like prohibitively bad to do a couple of loops
Lights, both 2d and 3d are expensive enough that you probably run into rendering costs first

[prime dome]

Aight thanks, let's just hope the visual fx is worth the loop

[granite otter]

anyone knows why particle strips quad looks much thinner when moving vertically than horizontally?

[granite otter]

nvm i gotta orient it

[limber quartz]

hey all, is there a way to get sprite particles to use the sprites pivot point? I'm using it for the dust the player kicks up. "castle crashers" style. But I'd like each particle that spawns to be pinned to the ground (all particles to spawn at the same Y axis regardless of size). Also, Is there another work around besides using the pivot?

[ashen robin]

https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/SpriteRenderer-spriteSortPoint.html
Perhaps that's it, otherwise just create your own gameobject pivot local to the sprite

Hmm actually that just returns an enum

Usually I just pivot the sprites at the bottom such that local space 0 is at the ground

[torpid harness]

Can anyone help me make a lowish quality hollow purple particles, im new to unitys particle system and I would love to make something like it for my game! (Red, Blue and Purple if anyone knows how)

[lost frigate]

how to animate textures like this in VFX or in custom shader graph ?

[warm torrent]

Flipbook Player in VFX graph, Flipbook node in shader graph

[lost frigate]

didnt know we had it in shader graph too

tnx

[warm torrent]

VFX Graph also supports flipbook blending and "motion blending" which is fancier version of it

[lost frigate]

yeah but it dosent work, or at least i dont know how to work with it, im trying to find a way to do it in shader

even tho i think its better in VFX itself

should't be like this?

[warm torrent]

To set an output to use flipbooks, change its UV Mode to Flipbook, Flipbook Blend, or Flipbook Motion Blend. For more information on the different UV Modes, see the documentation for the various output Contexts.

Seems relevant

[lost frigate]

got it thanks

[torpid harness]

anyone?

[lost frigate]

i know VFX better than particle system

[torpid harness]

Oh, could you help with VFX then? (I dont even know how you open VFX or wtv T-T)

[warm torrent]

You have to ask more specific questions and show your progress

[torpid harness]

Im trying to make something like this, currently I have a base purple outlined circle as the actual model. And im just trying to get the effects like the hollow purple

[lost frigate]

well i can make a sample one if u could show an example pic

[torpid harness]

Thats probably the closest of what I want it to look like

[lost frigate]

is it like explosion ?

[torpid harness]

It works like this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2ja8ZLRwrA (Skip to 0:40 to see it)

[warm torrent]

Right, so what do you have now

[torpid harness]

This D:

[warm torrent]

You probably need to get into shader animations to make much more progress than that

The lightning and debris in your reference could be particles, but all those swirls, blurs and wobbles would have to be scrolling textures or some distortion effects which only shader can do

[torpid harness]

The thing is I've never really touched Unitys VFX or Particle System like ever 😭 (I think particles maybe once or twice)

[warm torrent]

Well, time to start touching?
You'll need the shader graph too

[torpid harness]

Alright

[lost frigate]

and i finally found how to use animated tiled textures in both shader graph and VFX, which is i also believe is helpful for ya @torpid harness

the shader graph

and the VFX

u dont need flip book player at all

just try this

[torpid harness]

Okay

[torpid harness]

Is this one the VFX?

[lost frigate]

no thats shader graph

i can give it to ya, i dont mind share tbh

[torpid harness]

I may need a little more help with this if you dont mind T-T

[lost frigate]

on my free time, sure

[torpid harness]

Can you add me?

[lost frigate]

made in unity version: 2022.3.43

[lost frigate]

so i have another problem over here

see part of the particles are under the ground

cause the there init pos is on the center

is there a way i make it bottom ?

[limber quartz]

Thanks, I ended up just fudging it by altering the Y axis on there Renderer Pivot. Not perfect. But it got the job done.

[fading flare]

is this guy have differences tutorial between in youtube and in his udemy course ? i just was about to buy some of his vfx course but then i curious if there was have a different course or maybe tutorial between youtube and his udemy ?

[tardy dragon]

Is it possible to emulate these sharp diamond-ish impact FX from Hades without a custom texture/mesh that specifically has that shape? E.g. is just scaling/stretching a few basic particles viable? (or would it be stupid to do it this way rather than another)

[ashen robin]

The arc probably does a mesh/shader combination while the impact looks like some stylized decal which could be a flipbook if animated

[tardy dragon]

Yep, sorry should've been a bit more clear, mesh for arc makes sense, just concerning the impact "lines".

It is animated, they thin out like so.

[ashen robin]

ah, if it's not animated then it is some shader along with the decal

squashing the uvs of a quad maybe?

[tardy dragon]

iirc hades is purely 2D so on their end it may be pre-rendered?

[ashen robin]

you still have shaders in 2D

[tardy dragon]

i'm more than fine w/ it being a 3d effect though, just want to get similar visuals

[ashen robin]

not spatial shaders, but you can still distort uvs

(well, from the majority of 2D engines I've used)

and luckily Unity has a fake 2D implementation so most shaders you throw at it can work

[cosmic moss]

Hiya guysss, joined this server very quickly because I'm struggling with particles

I'm doing particles to mimic the effects you get from a gobo light (meaning they don't move)

But where I've set it up it seems to be flickering randomly which obviously isn't great, any ideas?

The effect I’m trying to recreate ⬇️⬇️⬇️

[naive sentinel]

ooh

nice

[open birch]

hey guys, I have a quick question I was hoping someone would have the answer to. I'm currently using a trailrenderer for a plume of smoke behind a rocket projectile in my game, that destroys itself after hitting a target and exploding. I was wondering if anyone knows how I can keep the trail renderer present until it has naturally ran its course and expired in its own time? (without waiting for the trail to dissapate and then destroy the object) thank you for your time!

[tardy dragon]

Change your system duration?

[cosmic moss]

Oddly didn’t change anything

And I don’t understand why it’s constantly random either

Random seed is off

[warm torrent]

!collab

[gleaming flicker]

:loudspeaker: Collaborating and Job Posting

We do not accept job or collab posts on Discord.
Please, use Discussions to promote yourself as job-seeking, advertise commercial job offers, or look for non-commercial projects to participate in:
• Collaboration & Jobs

[ashen robin]

few ways to go about it but what I like to do is detatch the secondary trail then run a timer for when that particle should be cleaned up

[raw torrent]

how can i make the lightning particles be easier to see and stuff

what should i be changing in the particle system settings to make it more visible

[warm torrent]

You could check that the particle system doesn't set the lightning's alpha low or color to dark
Beyond that you'd have to tweak the material settings

Or rather investigate why it's hard to see in the first place
Some purple thing seems to be occluding it?

[onyx lake]

This is usually done with a cone mesh and a shader instead of particles. Would recommend looking into that.

[misty hemlock]

Hello! Does anyone know why my HDRP local volumetric fog is being culled at a very short distance? The component's cull distance is at 10000 as per default, and I've googled and scoured Unity for some kind of setting to increase the distance, but I can't find it. Any ideas? Thanks in advance!

[warm torrent]

Best ask in #archived-hdrp
I'd check for global quality overrides affecting it

[misty hemlock]

Thanks, I'll check in hdrp!

[tardy dragon]

Is there a common name for this effect in game dev space? The closest thing I can think of is pinhole theory, but not getting any Unity related hits.

[onyx lake]

god rays

[tardy dragon]

ahhh duh.

would that be done w/ raymarched meshes? potentially expensive with tons of smol ones, I assume?

[onyx lake]

It's usually just fake stuff, if you're looking at games like world of warcraft and such. Usually no need to make it super realistic. Unless you have a different use case than normal?

[onyx lake]

@tardy dragon something like this is usually how games do it. Again, unless it's some very realistic game that wants to go for next gen graphics. If you're looking for something very realistic I'm out 🤫

[tardy dragon]

hmm, but even a heavily stylized godray would require raymarching and/or some sort of depth testing to behave correctly if there was something in the middle occluding the light, right?

[onyx lake]

Definitely a bit of different story, if you want it to by dynamic and interacting with the environment, yes. You could easily hide parts of the effect with a depth fade, but that wouldn't mean it would cast shadows from the occluder or anything. Pretty advanced stuff that requires a lot more details to answer properly. Also probably going outside of my knowledge.

[tardy dragon]

yep no worries, just curious about how people approach things.

[warm torrent]

@onyx lake @tardy dragon depth textures could also be used here with multiple/layered light rays, similar to:
https://vxtwitter.com/Cyanilux/status/1190253359703482369

This example uses simple object position and radius, but with an RT camera that sends its depth texture to the shader, position of intersection could be inferred in 3D space

Much like how shadow casting works for Unity's own lights

[tardy dragon]

likely positive performance implications over raymarching, at the cost of some fine-grained control?

[tranquil tendon]

Hey yall, question. I just followed two tutorials, a lightining vfx and an impact one. How would I go about combining the two into one single vfx? I used the visual effect graph editor.

these two

[ashen robin]

You can have multiple independent systems inside of one visual assets just fine

[tranquil tendon]

how would I do that? just drag it over in the graph?

[ashen robin]

create it inside of it

I believe you can just copy paste it all

[tranquil tendon]

got it, thank you!

not sure if I had to copy paste the whole system or just this, but it seems to work

i would assume doing it the other way would allow me to edit it the impact manually

[onyx lake]

that's right. You can have two totally separate systems in one graph and give them unique timings etc.

[random mesa]

Looking to do an vfx aura that slightly pulsates around the player game object and creates an after image effect when it moves. Where do I start? Everything through Unity preferably

[torpid grotto]

why does my particle force field not affect all particles

[scenic basin]

Why is the Dusst Paritcle Material still a square even though I have a value filled in for the base map? The base map consists of 30 particles, which I want to be shown as separate particles, but the material just shows the 30 piece image directly,, instead of one by one. How do I fix this?

[warm torrent]

With particle system the texture sheet animation module is required to display texture sheets

[lost frigate]

hi, is there a way that i can make fog shadered particles in VFX HDRP, by creating costum shaders? like adding mesh and the mesh gonna be the fogs 3D textures and then add it like particle ?

[scenic basin]

When you say it is required to display texture sheets, do you mean it is required to show the entire texture sheet, including all 30 tiles on it, as a single image?

[warm torrent]

The module divides the image into a grid and picks one by index

[scenic basin]

For some reason the paricles that are coming out are squares, instead of the things in the tiles of the texture sheet

[lost frigate]

hey, is there a way to stop particles from dying after spawnning?

[warm torrent]

Particle system's particle lifetime can be set to inf

Alternatively Ring Buffer Mode can be set to pause or loop which makes the lifetime pause / loop rather than the particle disappearing until the particle limit is reached

[rancid verge]

Hi. This should be simple but i'm stuck.
I've made a particle system using a sprite sheet
I've placed the pivot point to the right in the sprite editor, but the particle system uses the sprites as if the pivot point was in the center,

Any idea about why the particle system doesn't respect the image pivot point?

[rancid verge]

Fixed it creating a material and using a grid mode instead of sprite mode in the texture sheet animation; and then configuring the pivot point in the render module in the particle system

[lost frigate]

sorry forgot to mention, not the particle system, i meant VFX HDRP

see these fires are spawning and getting destryed after their life time passes, if i dont set life time, it'll add a lot until every where is fire

plus i wanna controll its intensity by a slider value from 0 - 1

[tardy dragon]

https://x.com/i/status/1826592445100085278

Any ideas on how to achieve this stylized fog effect in a 3D scene? Projected quads w/ quantization + noise + some dithered edges?

1000 Orks (@1000orks) on X

We are making it out of the doghouse with this one!🦴

Keep your nose to the ground — more details will emerge soon! 🔜

Wishlist WARCANA here ▶ https://t.co/BjzhiqgtjW

#pixelart #ドット絵 #indiedev #indiegames

Twitter · Aug 22, 2024, 12:09 PM

[tepid crest]

Dang that is nice, I feel like the hardes part would be getting the perlin to flow nicely

But yea I would imagine it's some number of like quads or sprites each with the shader, perlin noise, quantization with dithering

[tranquil tendon]

Hey I'm trying to make particles without using tutorials for practice but I'm a bit stuck here, how would I make the particles not follow the set path? I want it to look like the red sparks you see when someone welds.

seems to be the add velocity that keeps it in the line

[wicked narwhal]

Alright, I've been scouring the forums and the rest of Google all night and I eventually just threw my own script together to try to handle the issue but nothing it working. How can I ensure my particle textures here always point in the direction they are moving while also billboarding? They should only rotate along the x and z axes. (This is a mod for RimWorld and RimWorld uses the y axis for depth/drawing, hence the rotation being on the x and z). The video shows what is happening. They are rotating along every axis.
Here is the script for the rotation handling. (and the rest of the repo)

[tardy dragon]

The crazy part is that game is fully 2D. My brain's going in circles on whether they've just prerendered everything, or they're doing some super smart 2D masking, or...

[clear spruce]

I suppose one way would be to have each object also render to a separate depth texture for which they could use different texture for the height information above the ground for each sprite. Using that depth texture it would be easier to simulate the fog almost as if the game was 3d

[tepid crest]

This article talks about 2d fog, it used a bunch of slices https://www.gamedeveloper.com/programming/graveyard-keeper-how-the-graphics-effects-are-made

[ashen robin]

That's a pretty cool idea

[humble moon]

Are Sub-Emitter transforms just bugged? in 2022.3

If a sub-emitter has local offsets as a child, it gets reset to zero.
If a sub-emitter has transform settings on its Shape module, they only follow the default world axis (as show in in the video, the local axis is selected).

I want the sub-emitters to be offset in the local X axis they always align with the world axis.
I have set the sub-emitter to Inherit Rotation on Birth but that doesn't change the behaviours.

[little cobalt]

For 3D, is it possible to make particles only world-space on the X axis? I want the Z axis to stay on the player, and I will have a subtle Z velocity for that. I don't know if I explained it well.

I'm making a cartoony 3D endless runner and want this for the player running dust trail. Here is an example of what I want to achieve. In this test, the player is not moving on Z axis. In the actual game, player will be running along Z axis (so this doesn't work).

[little cobalt]

I achieved it by looping over each particle in LateUpdate and setting the particle.z position. Let me know if there's a better/more optimized solution.

[slow beacon]

Respected,
this will call on the particle collision....

if (_hit.collider.gameObject.name == gameObject.name)
{
UIController.instance.UpdateCurrentInteractingObject(objectName);
Debug.Log("why2: " + hit.textureCoord + "..." + hit.collider.gameObject);
// If the ray hits the object, returns the texture coordinates of the hit point.

return _hit.textureCoord;

}

this code works fine in the editor.
but when I export the android build..
it returns the default unity cube texture point correctly on collision... but on other meshes it print the name correctly and always return the (0,0) texture hit points on each part collision of the body.
I have applied my shader, but I think it's not relevant to the shader.
I don't know, I didn't get anything relevant to this..
And i am trying to get the solution from past two days.
Kindly guide.
Thanks

[wicked narwhal]

AnimationCurve weightedLifetimeCurve = BuilderUtility.GetWeightedLifetimeCurve();
mainModule.startLifetime = new ParticleSystem.MinMaxCurve(1f, weightedLifetimeCurve);

public static AnimationCurve GetWeightedLifetimeCurve()
{
  AnimationCurve weightedCurve = new ();

  // 75% of the time, lifetime of 1-5 seconds
  weightedCurve.AddKey(0f, 1f);        // Maps to 1 second
  weightedCurve.AddKey(0.33f, 5f);     // Maps to 5 seconds

  // 15% of the time, lifetime of 6-15 seconds
  weightedCurve.AddKey(0.34f, 6f);     // Maps to 6 seconds
  weightedCurve.AddKey(0.66f, 15f);    // Maps to 15 seconds

  // 10% of the time, lifetime of 16-20 seconds
  weightedCurve.AddKey(0.67f, 16f);    // Maps to 16 seconds
  weightedCurve.AddKey(1f, 20f);       // Maps to 20 seconds

  return weightedCurve;
}

I'm trying to give each particle emitted from my system a random lifetime with weights. This seems to only take effect once though. As in, when the system starts emitting it picks a key and that is the lifetime every particle has, instead of each particle getting a randomly weighted lifetime from my AnimationCurve. Am I misunderstanding how something here works, fundamentally?

[lunar bough]

Is there a way to render a quad that would 'hide' geometry behind it by rendering the skybox there instead?

In this example, you can see the top down of the rest of the level, but what i want to have happen is that it just renders the skybox over it. I could put this floating island inside of a cube with a shader on it, i'm just not sure what it would do.
Alternatively, i could make another camera which sets depth only? Then nothing would get rendered in the real pass for anything behind it?
Edit: Arg, i erased my clipboard, one moment

[warm torrent]

An unlit shader that samples the skybox, such as with Reflection Probe node will accomplish the first task

Not really VFX questions

I rendered the sky layer over a mesh by setting that mesh to use a stencil shader, and with URP's render objects feature rendering the sky layer only over that stencil
But I don't know if there could be better ways
And I don't know if you're using URP

[lunar bough]

ah right, i can ask this in the other forum

[mint solstice]

any 2d particle packs besides kenney

[spring wolf]

heya, I have a vfx graph that takes a combined mesh of my player and outputs it as a particle. this part works great- the problem is that this mesh is being updated and reapplied to the vfx graph (just through SetMesh) a few times a frame, for an afterimage effect. this means all existing particles update to the new mesh, causing them to essentially be a low fps version of the player character instead of a static afterimage of one frame of movement

is it possible to "lock in" a specific mesh for one particle? it's being applied just in a shader graph output variable right now, as shown

[vapid spoke]

Is there a way to fill a mesh with grass similar to blenders particle system, I need a quick way to apply grass to a mesh, Geomtry shaders seem far to complex for me to figure out, I'm ok with getting 1fps. I just need to apply grass to a modular mesh

Google has given me some examples but I'm not 100% sure on the method used I need some kind of tutorial

[bright hinge]

hi everyone, noob question but i googeled and didnt find the answer, how do i rotated the direction of the outputted emmision. In this case it was a rain effect but with a slight angle, im making it into a shower, im also looking to make it in a cone shape if possible?

[normal remnant]

Hey. Does anyone know how can I re-create this effect in Unity?

[warm torrent]

Looks like mesh shells and a scrolling texture shader

[normal remnant]

I think I got it (Also, this is not a scrolling texture)

[empty obsidian]

Does anyone know how I can render a particle system in front of a screen space overlay canvas?

[idle cave]

would just not over complicate things use a screen space camera canvas

then you can layer what ever else you want over it from a other camera

or use particles within the same camera

[junior thistle]

stupid question, but are all shuriken vfx eligible for the particle lit shader if they were made for the normal unlit shader

[blissful knot]

Hi. Not sure if i drop it here or in URP, but all thing considered it probably belongs here.

So. I have a problem that occured after i installed VFX Graph. It demanded installing URP or something similar, so i did just that(URP)
And when i added a VFX into scene it throws these exceptions

in all three Compute Shaders files inside VFX Graph asset("Initialize Particle", "Update Particle", "Output Update") and VFX plays slow and laggy.
Any solutions?

[ashen robin]

URP VFX graph and the built-in version could be considered different enough that they just recently stop support for all built-in versions going forward with Unity 6. If there's a direct fix then the forums would be it, otherwise may be better off just recreating them.

[blissful knot]

Well, looking at answers i'm gonna drop that idea. Not needed enough for this much a hassle.
Thanks anyway

weirdly enough, but VFX Graph worked good with project that was made from 3D URP template.
But i guess there are some settings pre-set that i'm not smart enough to tamper with

[wicked narwhal]

When using MinMaxGradients and Gradients with ParticleSystem modules and different modes, is there a way to have the gradients/curves evaluated at something other than the entire system's lifetime?

[empty obsidian]

how do I prevent the second camera from rendering the canvas?

[idle cave]

well if you just want partciles in the canvas i would just put hte partciles infront of the camera setup for the canvas

but if you do not want a camera to render certain things, its always the same approach, you edit the culling mask on the camera

which lets you define what layers the camera will render

so for a UI i tend to toss my canvas on a layer called UI

and have the UI camera only render UI layer

[empty obsidian]

this doesn't work when the canvas is set to screen space overlay, then it overrides everything else

(or I'm doing something wrong 👀)

[idle cave]

assuming your partcies are just not set to the right layer

also make sure they are physically between the canvas and camera

[empty obsidian]

does the camera position matter though when it's set to screen space? Doesn't it only take the world position into account when it's set to screen space - camera?

[wicked narwhal]

Back to this, I want to ensure every particle emitted from my system spawns with a random color from a list of 6 colors. I also want to ensure each color has a weight though. As in, I want the particles to be green 50% of the time, yellow 30% of the time, orange 10% of the time and so on. I cannot figure out how to do this though. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[idle cave]

read the docs, but when you setup a camera to be the canvas canvas it will automatically put the canvas infront of the camera

and you can control that distance on the canvas

[nimble axle]

I can't seem to find many tutorials about how to make slash and swing effects in unity that doesn't use the VFX graph.. anyone know how to do this or have any advice?

[scenic lynx]

Can someone teach me how to achieve this type of lightning

Got really inspired by rec room and how they do there lighting

Yet nobody has figured out yeah and when I tried to figure it out myself everything goes wrong

[obtuse yarrow]

hi, im learning about particles, and i downloaded a package to check everything out and i was able to make it all work but for some reason the shadow look like this? any ideas on how to fix this? https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/vfx/particles/cartoon-fx-remaster-free-109565 this is the asset i downloaded

[obtuse yarrow]

its happening on other ones too not just that one btw

[wicked narwhal]

It's been 10 hours. Hopefully there's someone on now who may now. 😅

[warm torrent]

https://discussions.unity.com/t/particle-system-random-color-in-c/722888/9 did you see this yet

[wicked narwhal]

Yeah, was the first result in Google. It's not what I'm looking for. I want to assign random colors to my particles based on weighted values though which don't rely on the duration of the system itself. Doing just random colors is easy.

[warm torrent]

From reading it I thought ParticleSystemGradientMode.RandomColor makes it use the whole gradient as the random range, did it not seem to be so?

[wicked narwhal]

It does but that's not what I want. If I use RandomColor and the duration of the system is set to say, 0.5 seconds then for that half a second, every particle that spawns will simply get assigned a random color from my gradient starting at time 0 and ending at time 0.5. It just sets the color to each sequential particle emitted in order along the gradient.

[warm torrent]

So is it a random color from the gradient
Or a sequential color in order from the gradient?
I maybe confusing something

[wicked narwhal]

What i want is this, for example.
While the system is emitting, 50% of the time a particle will be green, another 25% of the time a particle will be yellow, another 15% of the time we get red, and the other 10% the particles are purple. I want to do this without having the curve evaluated for the systems' duration as x.

It always returns colors sequentially.

Sorry, this is bad timing too. I'm not home atm.

[warm torrent]

If it's sequential I do wonder what's "random" about it
I'm not in a position to test much at the moment either, so just passing some ideas

[wicked narwhal]

Fair enough. The current method I have works. Just... Not well.

Since every modules' mode and their respective curves/gradients, if using any, only evaluate the x component of said curves/gradients as the entire particle system's duration that means all modules get evaluated via the same value. Meaning if I want green particles to possibly have the same random lifetime as a red one I can't. I need to make a graph to visualize this when I get home. Lol But basically green particles live the shortest and the rarer colors live the longest because those two totally separate modules share the same evaluation value for their curves.

I can't evaluate different modules curves with different x values.

Unless you can and the unity docs don't outline how or I'm missing something.

[warm torrent]

I think there has to be some way to set a random start color from script, from a gradient with the correct proportions, or some weighted random function
But if not, you always have the custom vertex streams / shader method

There's a custom vertex stream for "random per particle" which you can use as the variable for a color gradient in the shader

[wicked narwhal]

Fookin hell. At this point a shader might be easier. Looks like we're dusting off the ole HLSL today.

Wouldn't be a hard shader to write even.

[warm torrent]

Shader graph can do it also

What you're trying to do feels like it should be one or two methods / variables in a script, just elusive

[wicked narwhal]

I can't use shader graph in these parts. This is a mod for RimWorld and it's built on 2019.3 and doesn't support shader graph. I'm comfy enough with HLSL so I'll try it. Gonna look at my code again first. I'm doing everything in c# btw. No inspector or unity at all.

I could've done this whole system in unity but uh.... Yeah... I didn't.

[formal rock]

how do I stop a vfx decal from projecting on other effects?

It doesn't have the layer control that the decal object has

if someone knows how to stop those lines in the wall, I also would be thankfull

[ashen robin]

The decal should be facing the direction of the normals they hit

[formal rock]

I mean, technicaly he is, the center is there, the problem is what gets hitted as well I think

Also, in the code I can't always control where this explosion will happen, only make sure its facing the normal it hitted, but still complicated by this extreme verticals

A solution might be to make the code verify 4 key points on where the explosion happen, and turn the overall thing to make it less weird

[ashen robin]

Grab a decal projector and fool around with that and rotate the direction and see if that gives some insight

[formal rock]

I'm starting with decals now, So I don't know many other ways

[ashen robin]

As for the layering issue, I forget if the vfx does have access to the lighting layers (urp decal layers), but I remember getting around that issue

maybe I had to use the physical layers and use URP render objects

[formal rock]

I saw that in the forum, decal projectors you can control which layers get the projection, but apperently the function on the vfx graph urp counterpart doesn't have the same thing

and they are still implementing, don't know if they already did't tho

[ashen robin]

right, I think I remember that issue now. Perhaps assigning the visual effect system to a layer and playing with render objects is the idea then

[formal rock]

hmmmm, that might be a interesting solution

gonna find a way to apply

thanks

[ashen robin]

otherwise just use decal projectors

probably easier lol

[formal rock]

not when I need gradients to work, and the goddamn thing keeps alterating all the materials instead of the one in the current explosion

[spark talon]

Hi everyone, I've been playing with the particle effects in Universal 2D and I want to add a lighting effect to the particles. When I try to drag a Spot Light 2D prefab into the lights setting of the particle effect it doesn't work. But if I create a normal Point Light prefab I can place it in the lights setting however it won't cast any lights. Can anyone direct me on how to accomplish this effect please?

[crimson trail]

How do i remove the background from particle system ( I have transparent background on the image)

[cobalt scarab]

@crimson trail Please remove other cross-posts now that you've found the correct channel to post in.

[crimson trail]

Shaders and here

its okay right?

[crimson trail]

Can u help me

[cobalt scarab]

There's no cross-posting. Pick one channel

You need to select correct transparency mode on the material.

[crimson trail]

how?

[cobalt scarab]

are you using a custom material on particle

It's either that or sprite doen't have correct settings

[crimson trail]

I have downloaded a fog png from google and removed its background

then tried applying it to the particle system

but there is still black background

[cobalt scarab]

You need to use material with particle shader set to transparency mode

And sprite I think must have alpha channel used for transparency in the asset.

[crimson trail]

Is this okay?

[warm torrent]

Not good enough
The material must determine transparency as seen above

[crimson trail]

Right?

[cobalt scarab]

Make sure that you use correct shader for the pipeline you are using as well

[crimson trail]

I dont know what you are saying

[cobalt scarab]

What pipeline are you using?

[crimson trail]

Whats pipeline

idk

[cobalt scarab]

This looks like a shader for built-in one, it should work for both though.

[crimson trail]

What i changed something and the background is gone now but it looks like this now

I bought this pack from asset store

but its 4 in 1

This one

[cobalt scarab]

It's suppose to be an animated particle. See a tutorial how to setup one correctly. https://learn.unity.com/project/getting-started-with-particle-systems

[crimson trail]

I cant read that long

[cobalt scarab]

Then you're in the wrong industry

[crimson trail]

just tell me how do i make only 1 smoke instead of 4

[crimson trail]

like this

[cobalt scarab]

@crimson trail Should learn to google while you're at is as well.

[spark talon]

Hi everyone, I've been playing with the particle effects in Universal 2D and I want to add a lighting effect to the particles. When I try to drag a Spot Light 2D prefab into the lights setting of the particle effect it doesn't work. But if I create a normal Point Light prefab I can place it in the lights setting however it won't cast any lights. Can anyone direct me on how to accomplish this effect please?

[cobalt scarab]

Check that materials you are using to reflect that light are Lit, so they can show it.

[warm torrent]

If you specifically mean to attach 2D lights to particles, it's not supported out of the box but you can use this script for it
https://discussions.unity.com/t/lwrp-using-2d-lights-in-a-particle-system-emitter/752498/14

Additive material can give your particles light-like blending without having to deal with light components, alternatively

[cobalt scarab]

I think you might have to remove shadow casting for them as well. Particles might quickly deplete allowed shadow casting lights.

Not sure what are limitations right now.

[spark talon]

OK thanks. I've been looking into it all day but haven't found anything that works

[nimble axle]

I'm not at home, but would it be possible to create a slash effect by projecting a texture onto a 3d mesh like this?

and like making the texture travel along the mesh somehow

[clear spruce]

With shader definitely, without you may want to make the UV's radial like this and just change the offset along the right axis. Depending on the effect you may want to consider using a shader though

[nimble axle]

UVs like this?

[clear spruce]

nope

[nimble axle]

and how would i accomplish this with shaders?

[clear spruce]

more like this

[clear spruce]

depends on the exact effect you are looking for. clip of the desired effect would help on that but radial UVs would make the shader easier too

[nimble axle]

skip to about 5:56 on this video
https://youtu.be/Rp-_zkFvwiw?si=-pDCicnmV_nJ4v0D

[warm torrent]

Could be radial, or rectangular as demonstrated above

[clear spruce]

Looks like having radial UVs and just stretching and offsetting the uvs in a shader. Actually I don't think you need shader for that, just using the Offset and Tiling values of a standard shader should be enough

[nimble axle]

is there a way to augment the values of offset and tiling directly via the particle system?

[warm torrent]

With custom vertex streams and custom data module, yes
It will require a shader that uses this custom data for UV tiling/offset

[nimble axle]

is there any documentation that i can read about this?

[warm torrent]

https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/PartSysVertexStreams.html

In Shader Graph you access them using the UV node, and get the corresponding TEXCOORD via swizzle or split node

[cosmic gale]

hi is there a reason I only have these options for curves by default?

reducing in value would be quite useful too

im using 2022.3.17f1

[random mesa]

Pursuing a ghost trail like the image, but for a gameobject that doesn't have limbs (a chess pawn to be precise), how would you go about it? Tried a trail renderer but essentially would need a material formed like my chess pawn and to my knowledge you can't shape materials based on prefabs?

[warm torrent]

What do you mean "only" those curves? They're all the presets there are supposed to be
You can of course make any kind of curve you like

By adding new points on any curve you have

[lusty glacier]

hello new to unity , when i add a custom simple mesh exported from houdini and load it to particles it doesn't show anything any idea wh

they're like this invisible

[warm torrent]

You can use a mesh as a particle, that should make it pretty simple
The hard part about that is usually to match the movement of the limbs of the skinned mesh renderer

[random mesa]

I can’t even use a skinned mesh renderer on the pawn game object though or can I? As it’s basically a box with no limbs

[warm torrent]

Why would you want to?

[nimble axle]

do you know any video tutorials that explain this? I find it easier to watch it be done

[random mesa]

To replicate this effect which was made with one. But as it can’t be done for my game object I’m looking for other ways to create that object/ghost trail

[warm torrent]

https://youtu.be/Ca9jPbwPMco this probably

[warm torrent]

I may have been unclear
The effect in your example is a mesh particle + skinned deformation
You only need the mesh particle, so you can skip the skinned deformation part entirely

Skinned mesh is just the same as a mesh, just more complicated

The hard part would've been to transfer the skinned pose to each individual particle, but you don't need to do any of it

[random mesa]

Ah nice. Thanks! So, basically learn however he did the mesh particle, do that and then put it into the material in the mesh renderer?

[warm torrent]

Yes but what do you mean by "put it into the material in the mesh renderer"

Materials are related to shaders, not meshes

[random mesa]

My bad, I've been sitting in my trail renderer component so got a little scambled in my head

[random mesa]

So basically, make a shader instead? Sorry this is all super new to me

[warm torrent]

No, that's unrelated

[random mesa]

a particle system then? Or what do I do, I'm lost

[warm torrent]

I assumed you already had a mesh trail / afterimage tutorial since you're posting pictures of one
Which was likely for VFX Graph

Particle System can do it too, but it doesn't deal with mesh particle rotations well
And you won't find tutorials for it because it can't do the skinned mesh deformation part which is what most people want this effect for

All you really need for it is 0 start speed, emission by distance and most importantly Render Mode: Mesh with the same mesh as your piece, and Render Alignment as World or Local

Then just keep the particle system parented to the piece

Local render alignment makes it so all particles inherit the piece rotation at all times
World makes it so that none of them do
Neither is perfect, though it may be possible to use scripts to override the particle rotation in World mode
VFX Graph can do all that out of the box, but is more complex to use

[random mesa]

Great, thank you so much. I'll give this a spin when I'm back at the computer.

[lusty glacier]

Hi guys, i want to make some vfx for a mobile games, any suggested youtube channel or smth to start?

[proven mortar]

I have a question about VFX graph systems, i have two systems in one Graph, both use the same perlin noise to move their points in 3d space, hovever i want one of the systems offset in Y so it is slightly above or below the other system.

how can i achieve that?

[ashen robin]

can just use another set position node and put it above the noise

with local values

[proven mortar]

thanks for the idea, however if i do that all spheres are positioned at one point in the space:

[ashen robin]

What's origin on the noise node? It's set as 0 which I would assume is what you'd want to change then

there must be something on that node that is setting the position to sample before applying the noise

[woeful geyser]

Anyone knows why there is a line appearing in the texture when I turn it into a material? It wasn't there originally

[burnt coral]

The line is there because that's textures stretch the outer pixels of the texture when sampled outside the 0-1 range with the Clamp wrap mode.

Adding a border of transparent pixels would fix it, but to adjust the size of the cloud you should do that via the particle system, not the material. Keep the tiling at (1,1) to fill the whole particle quad - otherwise there's wasted overdraw

[lusty glacier]

Hi im working on a mobile game, does the unity's VFX graph work for unity urp mobile games?

[warm torrent]

https://discussions.unity.com/t/what-will-be-added-to-high-end-mobiles-for-vfx-graph/918745

[inland tusk]

how can I rotate something by a quaternion in vfx graph? I've passed one in as a vector4, I've also passed in on matrix4x4 which has the quaternion inside it (with position which I don't want).... but stuck what to do with them, there's no quaternion node or option to use quaternion in 3d rotate node (I'm getting some stuff going wrong with eulers)

[errant osprey]

I'm working on converting my particle system to utilize object pooling to improve performance. However, will this also resolve my issue with the first instantiation of the particle causing lag? After playing the particles after the first time, the lag goes away. But I'm not sure if object pooling is meant to solve that.

[ashen robin]

If you need a way to do a LookAt, you can utilize Atan2 if Rotate3D isn't good enough.

[ashen robin]

Object pooling could potentially help assuming it is a problem with instantiation of the system, but perhaps it could also be some shader compilation problems if you mean that these systems only cause frame-stuttering on the first system ever to be instantiated.

[inland tusk]

thanks, though I am reading in a graphicsbuffer of positions and updating per frame the VFX graph particle positions with it, and rotating them, not a lookat

what's happening, weirdly, is that all of the particles disappear when it's roughly facing north south east west... I was wondering if it's a gimble issue and a quaternion rotation instead would help

[ashen robin]

You sure this isn't just a particle orientation issue?

https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.visualeffectgraph@10.2/manual/Block-Orient.html

[inland tusk]

this behaviour was present when I was using billboarded quads and is still now present with mesh cubes without rotation applied to them

[tight wolf]

For some reason my particle are just invisible? and if I change the render material they just turn kinda grey/blackish. How do I make them show up?

[ornate ridge]

Hey all !
Just got here, and I have some question for Unity 6 preview testers 🙂
I'm using the VFX graph and I'd need some experimental blocks, especially the "Get / Set Custom Attribute". I checked the Preferences > Visual Effects > enable experimental blocks, but I can't see anything in the VFX graph. restarted the editor twice..
Checked on 2022.x, the set custom attribute is available

[cosmic gale]

is there a way to use multiple "trigger event on die" blocks in one particle system? i want to spawn a burst when the particle dies but also flashes

[nimble axle]

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1050044572039909436/1290644553400848456/export.gif

how can i make a particle animated? i have a sprite sheet for this thing i made

and i just wanna spawn a single particle that animates this

[warm torrent]

Texture sheet animation module in particle system, or flipbook player in vfx graph

[inland tusk]

so I have this map.... where the surface is a plane with vertical vertex displacement on it with a custom shader, and the map markers are a VFX graph, with output particle mesh. My intention is that the 'tail' on this mesh would be clipped off by the 'ground' in the map, so it would become a line showing how high above the ground it is.... but I'm getting wonky depth sorting between the displaced plane and the output particle mesh tails.... I'm not sure exactly my question here, but should this work? (as you can see the tails are rendering through the floor ( these map items are roughly at ground level)). I've played around with z write and ztest in the mesh output node and they seem to either be visible or not (URP, depth write is enabled in the map displacement shader). It seems actually that even a tall cube won't correctly be clipped by a standard cube, do VFX meshes only get sorted by their origin and not their geo?

[inland tusk]

eh vfx meshes were just not sorting right for irregular shaped meshes so I used a facing quad instead:

[ashen robin]

Sorting should behave similar to anything else rendering through the pipeline so perhaps you're rendering it as transparent? If so then you would sort by the visual asset's game object pivot.

[inland tusk]

so, actually my previous bandaid was not working, and putting both items to custom shaders with 2 sided enabled 'fixed' it... So I'm guessing something was inverting/turning them around (even though one of them is an output mesh that wasn't set to facing or anything. I tried just about every other combination of sort priority and ztesting and stuff I could find

[pallid carbon]

does anyone know of a good blood splatter particle on the unity asset store? I'm looking for something that will stain the ground and players.

[proven mortar]

i found it, it has a SetPivot Function i was able to set on the output node 🙂

Can i tell the Line to stop connecting the last and the first Point?

[proven mortar]

I found out how to do it:
Get Particle INdex in Strip helped

Index -> custom

[haughty kernel]

help why does this look so bad 💀

[haughty kernel]

and actually does anyone have some good sources for vfx that work well with lower poly

[prime dome]

Well it just looks like a sprite, we cant help without you showing us what you did

[dire flower]

Hey guys im quite new to particles and vfx, how can i make so a collider is following my particles. like in my video i have the particle bounce and stop and now i want it to have a colider around it self after it stoped. just adding a collider to the particle system doesnt work:(

[prime dome]

Can you open the collision tab in your particle system and let me see it

[dire flower]

imagine the particle is a glowing spike, and when the player hits the spike a new particle spawns on its transform.

[prime dome]

https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/MonoBehaviour.OnParticleCollision.html You can use this to detect particle collisions, however im unsure if you can access indivual particles to see their postion

[dire flower]

ah oki i will read that thanks 😄

[dire flower]

maybe a stupid question. but how do i fix so the camera doesnt make it look like the particle is moving?

[prime dome]

Thats just how particles work, they look at the camera, im unsure how to prevent that, you can probably use a separate sprite for that thing

[dire flower]

oki i got it to work before, just dont really know how 😛 i keep forgetting 😄

i just borrowed the working one 😛

[dire flower]

i found the answer but forgot again some render options

[tardy dragon]

The issue is less so low poly and more that you're using a 2D effect in a 3D scene while the camera is rotating. Use a VFX graph of smoke mesh particles or a single plume mesh, with noise/quantization shaders.

I tackled a kinda similar case where no amount of billboarding or 2D trickery would look good, so I just opted for 3D smoke n' flames.

[opal star]

So I'm currently optimising our vfx systems. The approach I took for optimisation is to use a single vfx graph instance in the scene to render multiple effects. This is achieved by putting the position of the vfx requests in a gpu buffer and reading it in the graph. Now the problem is that some system like the sparks actually want to spawn a variable number of particles. Unfortunatly I cant read the gpu buffer in the spawn context since that is all cpu side( I get a error in the graph). So I came up with this idea to use a guide system. This system spawns a single particle at the desired world pos, in update emediatly kills itself and issue a gpu event with a random count that then feeds into the actual spark system. This works but feels cumborsome and I would like to avoid doing for all systems that require a variable number of particles. Anyone got any bright ideas ?

[warm torrent]

Multiple different effects? VFX graph instancing would batch similar effects by default

[opal star]

yeah but it seems there is some overhead or they dont batch properly. This system works way faster than the normal pooled aproach

[dire flower]

Anyone knows of any good videos that explains how you can make diffrent vfx that follows eachother? in the video for example i want the trails to follow the flower. do i have to do it with a set velocity something`? i would want it to always follow the flower nomatter

[ashen robin]

Perhaps using a Trigger Event Over Time to spawn a system of particles while the primary system gives the pivot for those particles

will probably need to constraint it to some time variable as you can't limit it by a count doing it like that

[opal star]

Thats…what I already did

But using on die

[ashen robin]

So you're asking what you've posted there can be improved? Because it seems fine to me

similar to what I do in that scenario

[opal star]

Yeah. I have more than a dozen vfx’s to to go through. Many of them hold multiple systems. Adding this approach is cumbersome.

[ashen robin]

What you're doing with the buffers on the first system should be consistent between all systems using them so you can just save that system to be reused. As for that secondary system, the way you're doing is (probably) the most optimal way because here you're only updating a single value in the buffer and letting the GPU handle the extra particles that proliferate from that value.

But even in a basic system you'd do similar if you were using a system with world coordinates (giving it a position in the primary system then using some event to spawn more particles from it)

[opal star]

How can I save a whole system?

[ashen robin]

https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.visualeffectgraph@7.1/manual/Subgraph.html

similar to how you do it in the shader graph

[opal star]

Oh I did not know you can put a whole system in a subgraph

Cool

[zealous wing]

In Shuriken particle system is there a way to make the particle system scale with parent?

[warm torrent]

https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/ParticleSystemScalingMode.html Hierarchy

[astral saffron]

hello can someone tell me how to get started , actually i am a roblox vfx artist and i was thinking of starting making vfx in unity

i was wondering if someone could tell me how to get started

[vestal solar]

Checked Unity Learn ?
https://learn.unity.com/tutorial/introduction-to-the-vfx-graph-unity-2018-4-lts
(a bit old, but verified with Unity 2019.4, should probably still be applicable to 2022.3)

[astral saffron]

oh

alright thanks!

[astral saffron]

i was wondering if i could make vfx on a low end laptop like mine

i got lenovo idealpad 3

sorry for pinging

[vestal solar]

Yes, you can, just don't get to ... optimistic about the particles count ^^
Also, VFX graph works with URP in the latests version, so you don't have to use the more ressource heavy HDRP for rendering.

[astral saffron]

alright thanks bro!!

[vestal solar]

You can also look at the older particle sytem : https://learn.unity.com/tutorial/introduction-to-particle-systems?language=en

[astral saffron]

alright 😄 !!

ima dowload unity first ig and see the system n all

[vestal solar]

(check here for other ones : https://learn.unity.com/search/?k=["tag%3A5d351f0b7fbf7d006af48182"%2C"lang%3Aen"] )

[astral saffron]

thanks!!!

[astral saffron]

can someone tell me why it says download failed

[vestal solar]

"There is not enough storage to download...." might be a good hint ?

[astral saffron]

I mean I got 50 gb of free storage

[vestal solar]

Are you installing on an other drive and C: is full ?

[astral saffron]

Idk ima try to re install

[astral saffron]

it installed finally

[gray ravine]

Hey guys, is this supposed to apply the rotation to the texture coord or do I have to do that myself?

[vestal solar]

If I'm not wrong, the rotation is applied to the mesh itself, but the UVs are not transformed.

[stuck timber]

This is looking awesome, gj

[gray ravine]

dang thats a bit annoying

[grand bronze]

Hey! Idk how to work this question exactly.

But I have a particle system that destroys its particles if it collides with an invisible wall.

My issue is I want it to spawn that killed particle instantly at its max size instead of slowly appearing. If you watch the mouse there will be parts of the asteroid belt that are empty, any tips?

Oh I wouldve hoped that embeded the video, not made it a download file

[clear spruce]

It would be really annoying and weird if it did. The rotation of a mesh is 3D and UVs are 2D coordinates which doesn't have any direct relationship with the mesh rotation

[gray ravine]

um... this is sampling a mesh at a position. If I rotate the mesh, the sampled position should have the color/uv data from after the rotation, not from before the rotation. It doesn't make sense to only apply the transform to the position output of this node.

[vestal solar]

It should act exactly as if you rotate a sphere that has a texture.

[gray ravine]

oh.. then why did you say the UVs aren't transformed!? im confused man. But I think what you just said rn gave me an idea I can try.

[vestal solar]

Like, UVs themselves are not transformed when you rotate a sphere, they are exactly the same as before, it is just the whole mesh thate "changes", and the UVs keep their "relative" value to say it like this.
Maybe the issue is related to how you set up the rest of the connections, mind to show a bit more of the graph ?

[merry snow]

At this point I have no idea what I'm doing.
I was trying to change a normal shader graph particle system over to VFX graph, but no matter what I try, it's always black particles.

[vestal solar]

The Set Color node does in reality (iirc) sets the vertex color of the particles meshes. So if you want to use this data, you need to use the vertex color node in shadergraph.
Else, you can just sample a gradien in VFX graph, and assign the value in the Color connection of the output particle header (which is the shader exposed property)

[sharp frost]

Hello i am just trying to use the basic particle system... i have for my explosion render set to mesh to shoot out shards, but when i assign the shards that i made in blender it doesnt work, yet unity's premade 3d primitives work. what determines whether a mesh plays nicely with the particle system rendering?

[elder barn]

Hi, is there a way to always spawn a new particle, whenever a particle dies in VFX Graph? I want to always keep a constant number of particles in an area, so whenever one dies because it's Lifetime is reached, a new particle should appear somewhere else. Before I did that by having a really high Spawn Rate, but a fairly low Capacity. That way it always spawned a new one. However I now need to set the amount of particles dynamically based on the Area (bigger area, more particles) and Capacity can not be adjusted per VFX 😦

[nova dome]

Asking for my Art Director : Has anyone else experienced the component sockets being completely gone in VFX Graph lately ? Unity 2022.3.25f1 (VFX Graph 14.0.11)

(in our case we can workaround with a swizzle mask, but this seems like a bug?)

[vestal kite]

Hi, I have made a particle using Unitys Particle System, but for some reason, my road object is not affected by it? Its just completely see through, and it doesn’t look very good. Am I missing some setting I need to switch on?

[gloomy cypress]

Hi, we have been dealing with the same issue and the solution is a newer version of Unity

[carmine bone]

Sorry, I can't seem to figure out what these types of VFX are called so hopefully someone else can help me. Basically a line between two points that adapts as the points are moved and are sort of like a chain/tether/whatever between the two points. Usually they have some movement or flow in one direction.

[nova dome]

aha, thank you

[ashen robin]

Easiest way to go about it is just use world UVs and wrap a texture across an ever-extending quad.

[deft forum]

Anyone know of a hacky way to get any sort of data at all out of a VFX graph back onto the CPU (that's not a spawn event)? IE. is there a way to somehow make a graphics buffer and tell the VFX Graph to dump it over or similar

[carmine bone]

Isn’t there a more commonly used name for these type of vfx? I feel like I’ve seen something in the past but forget what it was for these sort of things.

[ashen robin]

Can't really tell if it's a larger mesh but the most simplest case are quads facing the camera. As for the stretching you're doing some vertex manipulation or making a trail of them.

[onyx lake]

Beam, line renderer, trail?

[carmine bone]

Yeah line renderer was what I was using I’ll see what else I can drum up. Thanks.

[neon girder]

How can I make a particle system start disabled? I called Stop() on it but it still briefly plays in the beginning

[warm torrent]

You can disable Play on Awake

[neon girder]

Thanks

[vestal fractal]

Hey all, I need to "assemble" a texure from particles, I want particles flying in from one side and then locking into place to build up a texture. The texture is not big (about 100x700 pixels). Does anyone know of an asset or github repo that can do this? Or would be a good starting point? Needs to run under URP

[warm torrent]

VFX Graph or Particle System should be able to do it, no assets needed

With PS you'd have to get a bit hacky, since scrubbing or reversing a simulation is not a built in option
Instead you can call Simulate method for lifetime minus elapsed time
VFX Graph has way more control over stuff like that out of the box, and you might find something just like you need from the official examples

[spring lake]

This video should cover everything. His other videos are great as well. https://youtu.be/ZytOQ4NSciU?si=nxKEb_q7w5ZIFfrW

[inland tusk]

I have a high amount of bullet impacts being spawned(or recycled from a pool) of unity particle systems (tiny ones). I started getting CTDs. Upon limiting the number of times spawning a system to 1 per frame, there is rock solid stability. I'm in 2022.3.11 , any ideas? (with 1 per frame limit I still have potentially hundreds going off and it's fine)

[gray ravine]

How would I make particles from the VFX graph emit from a cone and behave the same way they do in the particle system? I cannot seem to figure out how to give them velocity that matches the cone they emit from.

[tardy dragon]

I want a particle to do A when it "Collides with Plane" but B when it "Collides with Depth Buffer". Is there any usable output from a collision block or ability to dispatch different events from them?

[gray ravine]

I really feel that if it works fine in local space, transforming the world position to local position should make it work

[tardy dragon]

Ended up doing this with a hack where one collision block writes to collision attributes and the other doesn't—allowing for differentiation between ripple and non-ripple splashes. Also potential solutions: custom nodes and/or sampling a splat texture to determine where a collision has occurred.

[nimble axle]

how can i make a trail that like draws the speed of the player like this?

[tardy dragon]

TrailRenderer + modify material properties based on player velocity in script.

oo hmm that would change the color of the whole trail though.

I assume you want different sections to be different colors?

You could do a gradient and keep track of things in that, but that'd be hack as all heck. So yeah, you'd probably be best off using a VFX graph that changes emission color based on velocity. You can use a VFX property binder to either bind a velocity or color.

[nimble axle]

someone suggested a hacky fix where i just use a particle system and change the color of the emitter based on speed. this is purely for debug purposes btw

so i dont really care how good it looks

[tardy dragon]

yeah if it's for debugging purposes you can just use particles. should be trivial to implement in both shuriken and vfx graph.

[nimble axle]

whats shuriken?

[tardy dragon]

the "old", standard particle system.

[nimble axle]

oh right

also that pixel effect in your video you sent is really cool, how did you achieve that?

i love that art style

[tardy dragon]

use a toon shader + sample the camera depth/normal textures to create outlines for pixels that are sufficiently deep compared to those around them.

then you can either change urp render scale or leverage a render texture to down/upscale for the pixelation effect.

[nimble axle]

thats cool, i dont think im gonna use pixel effects in my current project, but i'll keep it in mind! you seem pretty experienced with effects, how can I avoid my game having that "unity" look? i'm using toon shaders and stuff but it still feels kinda unity-y if that makes sense

[tardy dragon]

not sure what "unity look" really entails tbh.

the answer to making things look good and not generic is usually just art direction and competence in executing the direction. there's never going to be any one piece of advice that can address those things. personally, i just take things that i find pretty and try to implement them in my project.

i think your project looks good for whatever it's worth. also this is discussion is straying from vfx-and-particles, we should probably move to... shaders?? or post-processing??? idk.

[nimble axle]

thanks! when i meant default unity look i meant this kinda vibe.

[clear spruce]

I don't think unity's trail renderer really supports that without a lot of custom hacky code (you could use the gradient but I don't think it would be easy or very performant). It might be easier to just make your own trail renderer implementation that generates the proper mesh and stores the speed in vertex colors

[ashen robin]

VFX graph has does have rate from velocity that can work, but not too sure about shuriken

ah, actually you wanted to change the color based on velocity. You would send that value through code into the system then

you can probably resolve the color inside of the system by making a gradient, and then send in the character's current velocity into the system

[idle lynx]

There is a video tutorial I watched where the guy sampled the entire character and made it fade as he ran. Let ne find it

https://youtu.be/7vvycc2iX6E?feature=shared

[ripe mantle]

I'm kinda confused here. Why is this particle flickering?

For some reason the particle doesn't appear for the first 0.02 seconds of playback on each loop.

[ripe mantle]

This seems like a Unity bug. It doesn't flicker on an older LTS (2021)

Ya this issue seems to exist on 2022.3.48f1 (at least) to the most recent LTS.

[ripe mantle]

I also found it on 2022.3.40f1...

Ok there's no way looping particles have been broken since july.

Am I doing something wrong?

[ripe mantle]

And it's on the most recent version of Unity 6.

Alright what's going on here?

Anyone have a clue?

[ashen robin]

ya just spawning the particle over 1 seconds

also hi spazi

[warm torrent]

It's possible
I seem to recall I was using the same technique last year without issues, but this year I've had just that problem of a semi-random gap between the loops

I didn't investigate it though

There might've been some workarounds using looping ring buffer mode, and maybe a burst for the first particle and a looping emission for the rest but I don't remember specifics

[ripe mantle]

Time to file a bug report?

[ashen robin]

Ah, I thought this was just common behavior and would just set a very large duration

[warm torrent]

Sure actuallyinf for duration and lifetime would solve this particular problem (as well as Pause ring buffer mode)

But the thing I usually would do this for to also make looping effects with modules that rely on lifetime, like a pulsing size or color

[warm torrent]

Couldn't hurt

[ripe mantle]

I think it's just the duration that's causing the fuck up.

If you spawn a single particle and it has a lifetime of 1 second, I believe it loops fine.

Problem is when the particle is part of some larger coordinated effect.

[warm torrent]

"Part of some larger coordinated effect" in what way exactly?

[ripe mantle]

Ok the problem seems to be with Burst?

If I just have the system emit 1 particle every 1 second it's fine. Even if duration is set to 1.

[warm torrent]

That also works, but you'll have the first second without any particles

Hence why emitting one and then looping the emission is a workaround I mentioned

But the burst still desyncs the same way, just not every second

[ripe mantle]

So freaking strange.

Well I sent a bug report in.

Hopefully someone over there picks it up.

[worn jewel]

Crazy question I feel I already know the answer to, but is it possible to render the resulting particles of a VFX graph to two different render targets? Ideally with different shader passes on the particles? Basically, I'd like it to render to the camera's target as usual, but also an additional rendertarget too with a different shader pass.

[deft forum]

In case anyone finds this and wants to know how, found the way: https://discussions.unity.com/t/play-audio-from-gpuevent/936958/5

[ripe mantle]

Issued a bug report for the problem I was coming across last night.
https://issuetracker.unity3d.com/issues/a-particle-is-not-rendered-for-the-first-frame-when-the-duration-and-lifetime-values-match

Looks like I'm not crazy boys.

[pulsar bay]

Any tips on making these kills look JUICIER?

[stuck timber]

• Make the sprite/enemy turn white when hit/killed and goes back to regular color, should make it really short like 0.3s - 0.5s
• Add 2 glow particles to the impact VFX, one glow should be big then goes small really quickly lasting about 0.15s, the other glow should last longer (1.5 - 3s) and just fades out slowly
  Even more juice:
• Make the background flash bright red for a single frame, then ease back to black in about 6 frames
• Add an impact VFX of the bullet, it could be some white particles that shoots out in a cone

Should also add an epilepsy warning if you intend to flash the screen btw

[frosty prawn]

I need help with enabling or playing a particle effect in animation. My setup involves a player with an attack animation clip. When the player slashes the weapon, it should produce an effect, and the FX is a child of the weapon. I’ve tried adding properties for the FX in the animation window and used an event at a specific time to trigger the effect via a script attached to the parent, but it didn’t work. I also tried enabling the FX GameObject at a specific time to trigger the effect, but that didn’t work either. What could be the issue?

[pulsar bay]

You are my new favorite human, thank you kind person in my computer!

[icy wing]

in your attack logic, simply instantiate a particle prefab from resources folder and make sure to disable looping for a single attack (if that's what you're aiming for)

[frosty prawn]

Thanks! I realized it might be more efficient if the particle effect stays attached to the weapon as a child object. This way, we won't need to worry about rotation, and it avoids the overhead of instantiating and deleting it repeatedly. This is just not working out for me though or maybe m doing something wrong ig

[icy wing]

Yeah you can always use GameObject.Find and make the particle a child of the weapon during instantiation if that’s what you’re looking for

[hot comet]

guys, help pls
i'm trying to play a particle system, Play() doesn't work, Instantiate() than Destroy() works but doesn't destroy particles

[warm torrent]

Play() has worked fine in my experience and it should not be possible for particles to remain when the system is destroyed, since they are fundamentally a part of the component
The issue must lie elsewhere

[hot comet]

it works in another script

[warm torrent]

My guess would be that the script where the methods do not seem to work isn't referencing the particular particle system correctly, or at all

[hot comet]

no, the reference works good because when i tried to Instantiate() it in script it appeared but Destroy() method never removed it

[warm torrent]

Instantiate creates entirely new gameobject, or a particle system in this case
Play and Destroy must be called on an already existing one

[hot comet]

i put instantiated object into a variable than pass this variable as parameter for Destroy() method

[hot comet]

ParticleSystem effectOnScene = Instantiate(effect, transform.position, Quaternion.identity);
Destroy(effectOnScene, 3);```

i tried it after i saw that one simple line

effect.Play();```
doesn't spawn particles

[warm torrent]

That doesn't seem to prove that effect actually holds a reference to any existing particle system component

There's certainly no indication that it'd be referencing the instantiated effect

[hot comet]

as i wrote, this code spawns particles but doesn't remove them after animation ends

[warm torrent]

I don't know what the "animation" is in this case
All I can say is that particles can't exist if their particle system is destroyed

And assuming the issue is in your code or missing editor references, no one can troubleshoot with just random lines

[hot comet]

animation of those particles

[warm torrent]

There is no signs yet that your script is at all considering how the particles are animating before trying to destroy it
And as I said since particles can't exist with a destroyed particle system, it seems certain that you're not successfully destroying the system

[hot comet]

yes, i can't destroy them and i don't know why, that's why i'm here

[warm torrent]

With the amount of information you've given it's not possible to do more than to dispel your misconception about destryoing particles
You should actually show your code in #💻┃code-beginner and try to prove that your object references are actually correct

That process alone seems likely to lead you to the solution

[hot comet]

but you didn't ask me any additional information

you're saying i didn't give it to you but i don't even know what else should i tell you

[carmine bone]

I wanted to make a particle system where a bunch of orbs I have splatter into all directions. The problem I'm facing is that the orbs are constructed of 3 different parts. There's the orb itself which is a sphere with a shader attached, a billboarded glow behind the orb, and a trail renderer with a custom shader on them. Is there a way I could guarantee that all 3 stay attached together as they fly out with random velocities into different directions?

[frosty prawn]

what if the paritcle already stays with the weapon i wanted to find a way to make the particle play in the animation

[junior thistle]

Can't you just parent the 2 components to the main orb and make them not move themselves

They'll just move with the orb since they are children

Is that what you're talking about?

[warm torrent]

You can only attach other particle systems to particles via sub emitters, which can work as billboards and trails

Unless you have a script that reads particle positions and sets gameobject positions to them

[icy wing]

Set it’s simulation to world

[sinful badger]

how to make my particles visible through my character's mesh? I'm trying to make a black hole in his chest

[frosty prawn]

i dont think u got what m saying, the problem here is how do i play the aniamtions using the animation window

cuz i tried using an event and playing it doesnt work

[carmine bone]

This is probably a dumb question but I'm probably just suffering from late night and needing to rest - I have a projectile effect I made that has some trail renderers attached to it as children along with a few other particle systems. I have a script attached to the projectile that when it impacts something or reaches its maximum range it will die and spawn an impact VFX.

My issue is that as a result, the trails instantly disappear even if they haven't fully caught up. Is there an easy way around this or do I need to rearrange my hierarchy somehow? I currently have a parent object with the scripts attached for the projectile behavior and then a few children attached with all the particle systems for the visual itself to separate everything.

[icy wing]

I’m not entirely sure as i’ve never used animations with particles because the particle system itself is very versatile. You want the swinging effect right? Or am I misunderstanding lol

[frosty prawn]

not swiging just a effect that should be played at a specific movement like imagine a timeline where the weapong slashing and about to collider thats where the particle gonna be played.

[icy wing]

I mean you CAN set an animation but you can also use a raycast or coroutine (if your weapon has a fixed swing velocity) to have the particle instantiate at the end of the attack or measure the distance between the weapon and whatever you’re trying to hit. I’m assuming this is a 3D game you’re making, i’m not the best with 3D development but I hope I gave you something lol

[craggy geyser]

Hey guys I have a question

Currently I have a VFX of a rather large smoke wall

I want to put them in the shape of a square to act as walls for the player

I tried this and it seems to be dropping frames in the scene view and overall causing performance issues

How do I solve this problem?

This is what I have as for parameters

This is the smoke wall for reference

[ashen robin]

Despite the quality of the image, I'm not seeing anything that could be problematic. I was thinking overdraw problems, but looks opaque to me. And, even then it's not that high rate of a system. I'd try not using mesh and just output a quad for the sake of testing.

[craggy geyser]

An update for this is I turned off shadows and it stopped causing me frame issues

But if I turn them back on, then the frame issues come back

[calm moon]

Hi, how do I apply a vfx graph to a line renderer?

[warm torrent]

You wouldn't really "apply" it
They're two entirely different components
What are you trying to do precisely?

[calm moon]

i made this vfx graph for a project but i realized my team is using a line render for a mob entity's attack and i have no idea how to apply this or if i need to remake the asset from scratch

[warm torrent]

The components cannot work together
But you can keep them in the same prefab and control them from scripts together
VFX Graph can render lines just as well, if you want to remake it though

There's no rule that says that an effect has to be all in just one vfx graph, or just one particle system or just one line renderer

[calm moon]

can the line renderer just use the same shader i used for the vfx though?

sorry im still learning how to get around this

[warm torrent]

Vfx graph shaders require the vfx graph type in graph settings
It's likely that also works for lines but I'm not sure

In general a line renderer's shader doesn't need to do anything special beyond utilize the Vertex Color node in some way, if you want the component to be able to control the material's color

[calm moon]

ill try to mess around with that, thank you

[fresh bluff]

Hi VFX people

I've been playing with VFX graph and really enjoying it. So much that I'm considering something crazy

I'm doing a "voxel" game, but mostly as the visuals, not specifically gameplay
And I'm considering replacing my Mesh building code with VFX graphs as my "renderers".
Is this completely crazy?

I feel like it would open the door to lots of 'per voxel' effects

[inner jolt]

It might be doable, but the performance would suffer, since it would be pretty challenging to cull interior faces. I'd reccomend only using vfx graph for the objects that truly need effects applied to them.

[fresh bluff]

A voice of reason 😛

how costly is VFX graph?
I guess always more then a simple mesh...

maybe I can do some sort of LOD
When close and wanting to play a Effect, swap in the graph and hide the mesh...

[fresh bluff]

anyone have tips on how to make this better?

I'm going to use VFX for the "planner" mode when placing the building, but I always hate how it looks cause of the faces of cubes against other faces
somehow I want the outer most faces andto cull all the others but still be transparent

[fresh bluff]

turns out I was looking for Dithering

[sturdy forge]

Any vfx graph enthousiasts here ? I'd have a question, what if I have a calculation for a color, and I need to use this calculation in 10 different place in the same VFX graph, how would I go about it if I dont want to repeat the nodes everywhere ?

I could do a subgraph, which I did, it only takes one node now every where I need it, but it feels wrong because it will have to redo the calculation for every sub systems ? Couldn't i just save the value and use it everywhere else

[warm torrent]

What kind of calculation
Does it depend on the particles or systems locally?

[craggy geyser]

Hey, I’m wanting to make a VFX for when an enemy dies in my game but have no idea how, would someone be willing to help me?

More specifically, a dissolve effect, I have a dissolve shader already made and working but I have no idea how to further customize it and then to get it to actually work

[clear spruce]

Dithering is one way but it has it's distinguishable look to it. If you don't want the grainy effect, you can always do depth prepass by rendering the mesh first only to the depth buffer and then second time using the transparent material to render only the front most faces

Nothing wrong with dithering though. In some games it can look really cool too in addition to being cheap and easy to set up. I think it could cause some problems with some other effects like post processing anti-aliasing though

[calm moon]

why is my trail so dim?

if it moves too fast and overlaps with itself it also becomes a miniature sun, im confused

[warm torrent]

That's to do with trail renderer settings, not material
Perhaps minimum vertex distance or a setting like that

[calm moon]

doesnt seem to be it, tried crazy high minvert and didnt do anything

just in case, the shader used is unlit

oh my god

i copied my nodes over to a sprite unlit shader and it worked

[warm torrent]

swapping the graph to sprite unlit type didn't work the same way as copying?

[calm moon]

i can do that? how

[warm torrent]

Material: Unlit

In your above screenshot

[calm moon]

oh no

i made a new shader thats sprite unlit
i was using a normal unlit shader

[warm torrent]

Indeed

[zealous wing]

Is it possible to use Lit shader graph in Particle Output Lit Mesh in VFX Graph? Everytime I try to do it I get "You must use a lit vfx master node with a lit output" error message. (using 2022.3.40.f1 version)

[vestal solar]

Did you enable "Support VFX Graph in the graph settings ?

[zealous wing]

Yes

I can use it in VFX graph, but only in Unlit output

[zealous wing]

ohh nvm

you are right

didn't check that box

thanks

I thought adding Visual Effects in active targets is all that was required

[sturdy forge]

it would be the same calculation for all the systems

@warm torrent and the same value, basically a sine calculation based on some parameters that will change the behaviour of the whole system

[warm torrent]

If it's just one sine with an identical result, it may be cheapest to calculate it just once every frame in a C# script and set it as a global property

[sturdy forge]

thank you ! I will do just that. Is there anything similar to global variable in shaders ? Like a value that is shared amongst every instance of a specific graph

[warm torrent]

Afaik global properties work about the exact same way in vfx graph as in shaders

[stiff topaz]

If you set your shaderGraph variable scope to "Global" they can be accessed easily in HLSL.
So if you're using Unity6, with the addition of CustomHLSL in VFXGraph, you can share HLSL code and Global between SG and VFXGraph.
In this Unite Talk you'll find some examples of "Rain global" that are used to control Shaders in the scene and also VFXs. An other exmples of shared HLSL code and global is shown with Wind Globals:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20WjQIFl85o

[sturdy forge]

Thanks to both of you ! I will look it up

[inland tusk]

I have a bulletmanager which uses jobs and burst to calculate loads of bullets/collisions. I am using VFX graph to represent these bullets by feeding in a graphicsbuffer with position, lastposition, angle, int type, int alive.

I just set the number of particles to 1000 as is my max number of bullets and use a setalive node in their render linked to int alive to turn them on or off. lerp their positions between lastposition and position for smooth movement. all of this is working fine.

I was thinking to use int type, which represents the different weapon types, to set color and size of the bullets. From how I know how to do it, this would involve a switch nodes on every bullet every frame... this seems like it would be super inefficient. if particles were actually getting spawned and destroyed I could set them once at the start which would be better, but I'm not sure how to link this with the graphicsbuffer system....

is it a really silly way of doing it just having the static 1000 particles and having them all updated all the time?

[ashen robin]

Seems like a micro-optimizations and more of a question of how manageable is this single system vs a bunch of independent systems

[inland tusk]

as in the savings wouldn't matter? Im' making a busy mobile vr game so trying not to be wasteful

[ashen robin]

Saving what?

It seems like you're trying to make some modular type of pooling such that you can just do some DI approach by using a switch. Seems like a fine idea assuming you can expand upon it.

[inland tusk]

I wasnt sure if you were suggesting that this aproach was a micro-optimsiation meaning that it wasnt worth the performance, or if using a switch operator for up to a 1000 particles per frame could be also a small amount of overhead

[ashen robin]

A switch statement won't break anything. People kinda giggle at people throwing switch statements in shaders, but it's such a minuscule operation, especially for a GPU

[inland tusk]

also, side question, is there a way to set a custom attribute in a spawn event? I'm trying to pass a graphicsbuffer which holds information for multiple explosions in it (different particle counts etc), have found that you can't spawn from gpu, so am sending an event with the totalnumber of particles

// Send the buffer to the VFX Graph
vfxGraph.SetGraphicsBuffer("VFXEventBuffer", vfxBuffer);

         // Calculate total particles to spawn
        int totalParticles = 0;
        for (int i = 0; i < eventDataList.Count; i++)
        {
            totalParticles += eventDataList[i].particleCount;
        }

        // Set the total particle count in the VFX graph
        vfxGraph.SetUInt("TotalParticleCount", (uint)totalParticles);
        vfxGraph.SetUInt("EventCount", (uint)eventDataList.Count);

what I'd really love would be a way to spawn x particles with custom attribute index, so then I could read in effect specific values for each 'explosion'

[ashen robin]

I find that using the first system just to get the buffers, then using GPU trigger events and passing those IDs when I want a pseudo spawn context.

[inland tusk]

(i'm trying to wrap bullet impacts, explosions, muzzle flashes all into one vfx graph, and there can be multiple effects spawned per frame)

[ashen robin]

but yeah, can't really do much in the spawn context with the buffers

can also handle some of the spawn operation in the script-side

[inland tusk]

could you explain to me how you could use gpu events to do this kind of potenitally multiple single shot bursts per frame?

I'd also be happy to have the particles created and index set code side, I haven't seen how to do that yet, just got as far as sending 'triggers' but it seems not as direct as I'd like

script side something like vfxGraph.createParticles(50, custom attribute id) would be amazing (perhaps meshID could be hijacked for this as that seemed accessible from spawns)

even if i could set an attribute in an event and have multiple of them

[ashen robin]

Yeah, burst and similar spawn contexts I would think would require some more script side logic unfortunately but it's not something I've looked too much into. As for the events, the idea around them is to spawn a secondary system of particles which aren't tied to the buffers, so an idea would be your primary bullet would be controlled with the buffers, but as it travels it emits sparks which you don't actually care to track on the CPU side of things.

It makes sense though, assuming you are controlling their position on the CPU side that a spawn context of burst wouldn't make too much sense.

Unless of course you make your own burst behaviour on your script

[inland tusk]

ok thanks, yeah I thought gpu event was for particle deaths and rate over time which wouldn't work in this context.

[ashen robin]

The GPU events are for secondary particle effects mostly which you don't need buffers for but you can inherit those values from the primary particle

[inland tusk]

I'm doing this in script, basically trying out a modular system where many systems in my game could be defined by a scriptable object, have those passed into a manager as events, then hand them all over to the vfx graph, where there may be multiple events in a single frame, so creating a graphicsbuffer containing that information and trying to apply that to generating particles... just getting particles created with an index I can use is proving awkward 😅

[ashen robin]

I just make my own hashset and keep track of the indicies myself.

instead of doing the modulus operation inside of the graph to grab an index

[inland tusk]

sounds interesting but I'm not sure what you mean, I can read more into it

[ashen robin]

https://i.imgur.com/T44l5TD.png

[inland tusk]

cool, when it says it's getting the ID from source, where exactly is it getting this from? are you setting that in a script and retrieving it or something?

[ashen robin]

I use a combination of the vfxevents and buffers

https://qriva.github.io/posts/how-to-vfx-graph/#how-to-send-event-with-attributes

those things

[inland tusk]

wow this looks like what I need

[ashen robin]

So what I'm doing is getting the system's max ids, making a hashset of the max amount of ids, setting an eventattribute and assigning a buffer to that id, and keeping track of those ids in use on the CPU side

[inland tusk]

thanks a lot for having had the patience to walk me up to here

[ashen robin]

which also means you need to handle how those particles are removed/hidden from the system when not in use or when a particle is done

(which needs to be all done on the CPU side but since you're controlling it all already it)

[inland tusk]

yeah i've set up all the bullet movements and stuff jobs/bursted, collisions raycasted with raycastcommand and stuff but figure I need to pass off the results of that for VFX anyways

[honest breach]

Yo bros, any one know if I forgot something ? In engine I have a torch vfx that loads, when I build it for IOS my flames arent appearing :

Don't know if there is a quick/easy thing to check on ?

[warm torrent]

If it's a VFX graph, it requires a Compute capable device which your iOS might simply not be

[inland tusk]

so I thought this would solve the thing, but it turns out that you can only ever send one VFXevent per frame with unique attributes (boo) , so I wound up doing something ugly which worked 😅

(applying IDs through compares on the frames spawnIndex)

[ashen robin]

Right, you'd have to use the direct* link feature for multiple events in a single frame which itself requires a bit more setup

[inland tusk]

thanks, tried that though and read around and it doesn't work - multiple events in themselves are called yes, total number of particles, but any attributes passed with the event are overwritten and it just applies the last event attributes for all of them

I thought it would be just the ticket

just justified complaints and statements from unity staff that it doesn't work that way sorry on the web

(was up way too late last night)

[ashen robin]

https://discussions.unity.com/t/new-feature-direct-link/847493
That's the full page of on it if you didn't find it, but I've not ran into problems with it from what I've been doing. But then again, most project I am using buffers for are a little more dated, 2021, 2022 versions

[inland tusk]

yeah I found that, I do think I tried it and it didn't work, in multiple ways. I'll go over stuff again and see if I can dig out the relevent pages from a million tabs. I seem to mostly be reading about how eventAttributes themselves overwrote each other and the last one was used (I was sending multiple events with different settings eventAttribute, even dirrent eventAttributes themselves and wans't getting expected behaviour, though it did get too late and I'm entirely capable of getting it wrong.

I'm using 2022.3. Would be nice to get it working properly! when I saw direct link in the link you posted it seemed perfect but everything I did with it I was getting the last attribute data applied to every event sent that frame

[ashen robin]

The reasoning for it all is because the devs don't want you doing a copy every time you invoke one of these events, and that the most performant way is to just update these buffers once. So, if you do have like a bunch of enemies shooting a bullet with the same VFX, then the idea would be to accumulate all these events and then copy it in late update. Well, that was my understanding with it and it seemed to been working for me.

But it's not something I've totally eye'd down and made sure was producing the correct amount of particles.

[inland tusk]

Yeah for sure makes sense to pile them all into the buffer at once. I was (I believe, I was mad tired in the end) that attributes that I was trying to set (int IDs) in the eventattributes would only ever be of the last type when there were multiple in the same frame (in my use case I'd be spawning eg: 20 (1) 35(2) 15(3) 55(1) etc etc ). I do remember reading about how evenattributes aren't actually sent when they are reached in code and are pushed together later in the frame)

I also seem to remember spawnCount also acting similarly, but I will look into it again as I don't like the above approach I settled for even though it allowed me to progress well

[trail vine]

Hey all! I’m working on a snowflake effect for my 2D game. It’s looking pretty decent so far, but I’d love some feedback or advice to refine it.

Here’s where I’m at: I initially set up the snow effect to cover only the camera view and follow it around, which worked well for my rain effect. But since snow falls slower than rain (which is what I want), it spawns slowly too. So, when the player starts moving, the snow doesn’t fill the entire area around them quickly enough. To fix this, I adjusted it to spawn snowflakes around the camera view as a buffer, which gives the particle system enough time to cover the space as the player moves.

This works but has a trade-off: I’m currently using around 3000 particles, which is a lot for what’s actually visible on screen. The majority of these snowflakes are outside the visible area, and I’m concerned this might hit performance on lower-end systems. If anyone has ideas on how to keep a good snow coverage without using so many particles (or any other optimizations) I’d really appreciate it!

[dire flower]

Hey guys any tips on where i can learn how to make cool textures for my particles? i want the textures to be my own, so i would like to learn how to make fire textures and some of my own ideas but im so bad at drawing its insane so i need someone to show me how to draw, not really how to make the texture in it self if you understand what i mean.

[warm torrent]

One option is to use a texture with multiple snowflakes rather than singular ones, so you can have dozens of them per one particle
You can also "wrap" their positions by teleporting them to the other side of the screen when they exit the camera's extents

VFX Graph can handle a couple of million particles easily so no worry about grouping them, and you can build the wrapping logic right into the system
With Particle System you have less of that efficiency and less options, so the wrapping would likely have to be a script and using multiple flakes per particle could become even more necessary

An entirely different way to approach it would be to create the snowflakes programmatically in a shader (post processing or geometry covering the area), which places no limits on how many flakes you can have since it could be a type of animated noise

[inland tusk]

thanks for encouraging me to look at this again, I went though the sample again and got it working. Actually looking at my code from last time when it wasn't working I can't see what was different but it's working now 🤷‍♀️ 6AM programming is not best programming.

thanks again

[cinder iron]

When i look in a specific angle with the camera, the vfx graph disappear
There is an option or a setting to touch to prevent this behaviour ?

[warm torrent]

It's the bounds https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.visualeffectgraph@17.0/manual/visual-effect-bounds.html

[cinder iron]

I tried that few minutes ago but nothing happens, that works now because the value need to be high
Thanks for the answer !

[warm torrent]

The bounds need to encompass your effect, since the extents are used for culling the vfx graph when off screen

This is because the culling system has no knowledge of where the particles are, and neither does the bounds system by default

[cinder iron]

Thanks for the clarification 😃
I have an another problem, but this time i find nothing on the internet

When i move my camera in some angles, the particles looks different (like the color change, or particles receive more light i dont know)
I think its related to the Lit shader but im not sure 👀

https://streamable.com/iicws7

[warm torrent]

That's exactly what's happening

Billboard particles always face the camera, so as the camera moves or rotates the particle's angle relative to the light sources changes and so does the reflected light

[cinder iron]

There is way to counter that ?

[warm torrent]

I don't know what the generally accepted solution would be, but something that may help is to use a spherical normal map (though that might make the particles blend poorly together) or to use a translucent material that allows the material to be lit equally regardless of where it's facing

[cinder iron]

A translucent material type + Only ambient lighting seem to fix the problem !

[warm torrent]

You can get it to react to direct lighting regardless of distance, but I don't recall the exact steps
Some specific diffusion profile settings iirc

[inland tusk]

Is there any node to generate random velocity from a sphere with a kind of slice on it, so it could do a sphere, a hemisphere or cone? Kind of like a direction with a degrees divergence which wraps around in a circle

[dire flower]

turbulence?

[pseudo olive]

I'm learning unity for a uni project, how would I go about creating a similar effect?

[ashen robin]

HDRP has volumetric lighting which is pretty easy to slap on but here it's creating a refraction of the water to create those rays which adds some complexity.

[pseudo olive]

Hehh this needs to run on a Quest 2 so probably having real-time calculate light rays is not the best way to do that

[ashen robin]

Well, the old trick is just to use quads with some transparency if you want to go about a lighter solution

[pseudo olive]

What's a quad? I'm new to learning all this stuff

[ashen robin]

scroll a texture on the sea floor

a quad is just two triangles worth of vertices

basically you're creating a flat 2D image of the light, texturing it with an image that represents the rays, then using transparency to cutout the image

[pseudo olive]

This might be a very good solution

Unless I can test that the hd pipline has good performance on quest 2

[ashen robin]

it's worked for computing games for 30+ years now so yeah always a good solution, but may need some tuning with how it's shown to the player as in a 3D setting you have to keep the illusion that it's not 2D

some solutions is minor billboarding (try to make it face the camera as much as possible), and need some solutions for when the player walks into the rays like

the closer the player is to it, the more difficult it is to keep that illusion

[pseudo olive]

I see thanks

I will definitely test this

[warm torrent]

@pseudo olive Try to find tech breakdowns of the visuals of both modern games as well as games from 20 years ago

For the best mobile and other types of high performance graphics you'd combine the graphical innovations from both time periods

[pseudo olive]

Do you have any place I could start looking?

[warm torrent]

I don't know of any very specific place but youtube is full of graphics tech stuff as well as graphical breakdowns of old games if you search for it
The site https://80.lv/ has a lot of relevant articles (though irrelevant ones too)

A lot of the good info is on random blogs, which you should be able to find by googling for the right topics
Few are actively maintained or have many articles at all, but http://simonschreibt.de/game-art-tricks/ is one

Most blogs of that sort are from a random dev who drops one or two articles and then disappears into the ether, which can be harder to find

[queen plover]

Can particles from a ParticleSystem be used as a mask for other sprites? (specifically for other particles from particlesystem)

Context: I'm making sunlight godrays (particlesystem) and dust particles (also particlesystem) that should be visible only while inside the godrays

[ashen robin]

If it's not included on the system itself then you need to make a custom shader for it with the stencil values. You can also use URP render objects to stencil by layer if you want to do it that way with the standard particle shader.

[abstract crow]

is there anyway to achieve per pixel sorting? when I have my player as the parent of a particle system, all particles are sorted based on the players Y axis, meaning if the player is below some objects, the particles render above the objects, but vice versa when above.

scratch that, its not because of the parent, its because the mesh that holds all the particles has one single sort point

im assuming theres no way around this

[ashen robin]

With a single system that does sound complicated because changing the sorting queue would probably update all current particles, so perhaps the best way to go about this is to z-sort any new particles

Actually, if you want to clarify a bit more with an image so I can get an idea of the perspective

[abstract crow]

no clue how I would sort new particles, it appears they are all drawn on a single mesh with a single sorting point/pivot

[ashen robin]

Ah, ok so yeah you want to y-sort each independent particle. Maybe spazi knows a better way to go about it, but as each particle itself doesn't include those sorting layer properties, I can only image changing the z-sort by iterating through each particle.

[abstract crow]

might just be a feature then lol

dont know if its reasonable to do that

[ashen robin]

I was actually doing something similar a while ago in a 2.5D project, but there you have the option for depth which makes things heck of a lot easier to sort.

But technically you also do have depth in 2D, it's just unity does sorting by using a transparent queue primarily

[abstract crow]

yeah but that sorting is completely different to the y sorting right?