✨┃vfx-and-particles

[ashen robin]

it's just another method of sorting. y-sorting resolves what should be shown in front by changing its place in the transparent queue (when I say y-sort here, it's just an extra step to determine what should render above the other using the custom sort axis)

but instead of changing the queue, you can also just change the distance from where it is from the camera

[abstract crow]

but is there any way to sort each pixel?

because I thought the whole thing is just a single mesh

[ashen robin]

https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/ParticleSystem.Particle.html
This is what you have when you iterate through each particle. There is no sortingorder property like the system itself or a spriterender

so my idea is to force it to render by z-value when resolving the y-position

[ashen robin]

But now that I think about it more, you couldn't rely on the custom sorting axis then for everything else then so you'd have to implement it yourself.

[shy pulsar]

anybody know if custom attributes were removed in unity 6? i dont see them anymore

nvm it looks like it was moved to the blackboard

[onyx lake]

The quest 2 has worse performance than mobile devices. You won't have a good time working with HDRP and should switch to URP instead. No real time lights, a few directional lights max. For starters: https://developers.meta.com/horizon/documentation/unity/unity-best-practices-intro https://developers.meta.com/horizon/documentation/unity/unity-perf/

Quads are basically your best solution, but you need to be very careful with transparencies on the quest 2. Your main bottle neck will likely be overdraw, which you run into with transparencies naturally.

If your project allows for Link PC-VR then go for it. Building for on device only is very limiting.

[pseudo olive]

I see, thank you for your precious info!

[normal remnant]

Unity 6000.23f1, HDRP, particle system. What could be causing the particles glitches? It happens only in the game camera (it looks normal in the scene view)

[warm torrent]

@ashen robin @abstract crow This is correct
The only workaround that I know of is to use opaque particles instead
That prevents you from working with 2D sorting, so it may give you trouble if you sort by anything else but Z position

[lost hill]

Hello, I'm currently working on a project that has a shifting origin to combat floating point precision issues. I'm using built-in so I'm stuck with using the legacy particle effects. One of the particle effects is an emit-over-distance particle and when the origin shifts, a huge trail appears from where the particle system once was and has now changed to. I can fix this by turning the particle system off before the teleport and back on after but the trail of particles gets cleared. Any advice on making this work properly?

[warm torrent]

Custom Simulation Space lets you assign a transform that all the distances, including trails, will be relative to

[lost hill]

Ohh okay! I'll look into this, thank you :)

[ashen robin]

Have you tried playing with the alpha values such that it fades in over time?

Similarly, you want to probably fade out the segments to prevent it from looking like it 'pops' out

[rotund locust]

I have a glow effect on a black background, with Particles/Standard Unlit and Rendering Mode Additive the black background is removed perfectly well, but now i need the Texture as an png image replacing the black with transparency. Do anyone have an idea of how i could convert the texture the same way like unity does ?

[inland tusk]

Dunno if you remember Mao but my difficulties with Direct Link wound up being that custom attributes were not working for me in Direct link (was testing in the example) so I couldn't pass in event IDs directly, in the end it worked when I used the size property to hold my IDs instead.

Is it possible to somehow trigger a VFX graph GPU event (spawn some particles) from a value passed back from a particles shader? Specifically, bullets in my big bullet graph have a custom shadergraph shader which contains a per vertex calculation giving a value 0 or 1. I was curious if there was some way to spawn some particles on that particle if say vertex0 of that particle's custom interpolator is 1

[warm torrent]

Unity does not "convert" it in any way when using additive blend mode, nor change the texture otherwise
Additive means the color is added to what's behind it, so when you add black the result will not change

As math is considered, black is zero

[rotund locust]

yeah but id like to "convert" / remove the black color outside of unity on the image file like additive rendering mode does

[warm torrent]

Unity has an import option for "alpha from grayscale"

[warm torrent]

Additive blend mode does not remove black, as it's a blend mode

[rotund locust]

oh right, thats fine too thanks

[warm torrent]

Beyond that you have to look into background removal techniques specific to whatever image editor you're using outside of Unity

[ashen robin]

You do 'Add' position when you should be 'Set' position, but since it's zero'd out by default I wouldn't think that would matter. Also, setting the strip to stretch is probably what you want if you're using a solid line of a strip.

Other than that it looks basic enough that I'm not seeing an issue if I were to compare by the default system.

Also they just became officially supported (non-experimental) in 6, but there's still issues with them that I don't want to go over lol

[ashen robin]

I've not done anything in particular using the shader attributes beyond what's accessible in the output, but I've seen people using Color and UV attributes to manipulate particles inside of the systems.

[nimble axle]

if i were to build webGL version of my game with VFX graph stuff in it, what would happen?

[ashen robin]

VFX graph uses compute shader which is not available on WebGL, but since recently Unity has been pushing WebGPU development which is available on 6 (abit hidden)

[nimble axle]

i want to switch to 6 so i can use VFX on webGL, but it broke my projectl ast time lmao so im waiting for stability

[ashen robin]

later 2023 versions do have access to WebGPU too

need to turn it on via ini file in the project directory

[nimble axle]

i thought 2023 was 6

[ashen robin]

kinda? Most that was developed in the past two years wasn't part of any LTS release so you can consider it so

[nimble axle]

what does 2023 introduce from 2022? might upgrade

[ashen robin]

AI Package improvements, Cinemachine improvements, Probuilder improvements (and UI)

[nimble axle]

Cinemachine Improvements?

I have CM 3

[ashen robin]

as far as rendering, a bunch of changes you can probably just go look at. They did finally add SRP batching to spriterenders

[nimble axle]

i thought CM was independent of unity version

This is something i really needed for camera animation, but why is it saying 2023.2 is unsupported?

[warm torrent]

What's new in Unity 2023.1
What's new in Unity 2023.2
What's new in Unity 6 Preview
What's new in Unity 6
Take your pick
These are all of the same version lineage despite the name

[nimble axle]

did they skip 2023 for LTS support?

[ashen robin]

Cinemachine, as far as 6 goes, as changed a lot of signatures and some features, but you may be right that is independent. Though, it's now part of the Unity namespace as far as I'm aware

[warm torrent]

Unity 6 LTS is out so its earlier releases including 2023 are not being supported in any way

[warm torrent]

Not skipped, more like renamed

[nimble axle]

I want to update to unity 6 so bad but it only caused me problems lmao

every time i wanted to add an object to the scene it would crash

[ashen robin]

Oh, also Unity 6 now provides forward+ for WebGL builds

which is huge

[warm torrent]

A lot of packages did get updated at that time like CM3 release, and some of those changes did also get backported into 2022.3.
Like CM3 apparently

[ashen robin]

Honestly, big win for web builds with 6

(probably why they are promoting a jam this week for them)

[warm torrent]

Render pipelines, VFX Graph and Shader Graph are intrinsically tied to editor version now, and did get some new features

[nimble axle]

I want to have web builds so i can use VFX graph and stuff

can you manually update a VFX effect?

[ashen robin]

WebGPU then, though it's not fully supported yet. I think devs said it'll be before 7 though

[nimble axle]

I'm using a deterministic engine, and I want to sync the time properly to the simulation

[ashen robin]

I wouldn't count on determinism, but each particle does govern some seeded value

[nimble axle]

oh i dont mind about determinism, theyre like slash effects

but i want them to follow the animation of a character properly

and it's a rollback engine, so i want the vfx to rollback too

so i want to manually update the vfx graph myself

[ashen robin]

is this the new photon quantum networking I see people pushing

[nimble axle]

yea

[ashen robin]

lel

[nimble axle]

its very good, im making a fighting game with it

[ashen robin]

I'll probably try it eventually. Maybe I'll make some small arena shooter project to test the extent of it all

[nimble axle]

its a bit of a steep learning curve, but it means multiplayer is handled for me and rollback is enabled by default

[ashen robin]

Yeah, not too sure about rollback. Maybe the idea is to reuse the seed and perwarm it all

[nimble axle]

I'm using a pixel art low poly style, how can i make this lightning look better?

[ashen robin]

Lightning is usually a choice of noise or a stylistic approach

stylized + noise works too

[nimble axle]

i animated the lightning and just put a single particle on a particle system with a vertical billboard

[ashen robin]

What you have there looks great though and a bit more polished, maybe a flashier shader, would work fine

bit rough on the image edge's

[nimble axle]

thanks! maybe some bloom on the lightning itself? is that something i can do with a shader or does it have to be post processing?

i cant really do a dissolve, because its a solid color, as a stylistic choice

[ashen robin]

yeah, many small things you can probably do. Emissives, maybe a gradient that scrolls down the lightning

[nimble axle]

and it doesnt help the background is white, and white and yellow are hard to distinguish lol

[nimble axle]

scrolls down in what sense?

like changes the color overlifetime?

[ashen robin]

That's one idea. Another being the color intensifies more at the point of the strike

^ on the topic of emissives too

[nimble axle]

Cool, thank you! On an unrelated note, how would you do something like this with a shader in a particle system? something like a double jump effect

i want to try and make more effects procedurally rather than animating them all

[last tartan]

how can i get outputs for each channel? I thought you could, but I also don't see a split node

[warm torrent]

Custom vertex streams can be used to pass any information to the shader, such as to animate procedural effects

[ashen robin]

For the most part you can do most of that in the shader, even if you wanted some randomization, otherwise exposing values and adding it into the graph to manipulate further

[nimble axle]

i saw that as an option in the particle system. how do i send custom streams down?

i assume the streams come from the particle system into the shader

[ashen robin]

I think someone mentioned this was bugged in some versions, but yes it should be exposed (each output). Trying to think if there's a split node you can use.

https://i.imgur.com/fF1G6sL.png

That's how it is in current 6 ver

[last tartan]

dang mine is probably bugged. I am not in version 6 for this project.

[ashen robin]

https://i.imgur.com/YH18ycB.png
does swizzle for you output

[last tartan]

Is that question?

[ashen robin]

yeah

[warm torrent]

https://youtu.be/Ca9jPbwPMco
Docs also explain it

[nimble axle]

thanks, will read

[ashen robin]

Odd, never seen it doing that but seen reports

[last tartan]

Any ideas of how to fix it?

[last tartan]

isnt there some kind of enable experimental operators or something?

[ashen robin]

If you don't have that enabled, that's in user's settings. I find it odd if that's the problem

preferences rather

[nimble axle]

what the hell is swizzle

[last tartan]

Ya i don't see anything that would help here.

[ashen robin]

It's there and you have it enabled. Try disabling it

for the sake of testing

Experimental blocks

[warm torrent]

Operation to read the channels of a vector in any order
So instead of vector.xyzw you can read vector.zxy or just vector.y, or any variant thereof

[nimble axle]

what is w ?

[last tartan]

ya no beans after restarting unity completely too

[warm torrent]

The fourth dimension of a 4D vector
No different from the preceeding three
Could be vector.rgba just as well
The name doesn't make much difference

[last tartan]

How would you describe this problem so i can look into how to fix it?

[nimble axle]

i see

[nimble axle]

what would you use w for?

xyz are positions or rotation i guess

[warm torrent]

View transforms have a fourth dimension, and so do quaternion rotations

Colors can also have alpha, which is synonymous with w
The names of the axes are contextual

If you have only two they might be vector.uv

[ashen robin]

#✨┃vfx-and-particles message

funnily enough, user above suggested using swizzle to get around the issue

[craggy geyser]

hey, would anyone know how i would be able to create a slime effect for objects?

[warm torrent]

A "slime effect" could mean two dozen different things, and each type would have equally many ways to create it
The process here is that you start making your desired type of effect and then ask for help when you get stuck
Or, if you don't know where to begin start with a precise description so it's possible to give some information, then you start making it

[craggy geyser]

My bad, I understand though

So for me, I don’t know where to begin to start

https://media.tenor.com/h9FeXjKWiBQAAAAj/slime-kids-choice-awards.gif

Something like this is the effect I want to create

[trail vine]

In a particle system, can I control the selection probability of each sprite for spawning particles?

One of my sprites is much larger than the others, so I'd like it to appear less frequently. I know duplicating each of the other sprites would reduce the larger one’s frequency, but is there a more efficient way to set specific probabilities?

[ashen robin]

Mostly the work of a vertex shader which shouldn't be too hard and there's probably numerous tutorials out there. The harder problem to this is when you do want to combine other sources of slime, converging into a single volume.

Which actually isn't all that difficult if it's all instanced in the shader, abit taxing though.

[warm torrent]

In 3D these are usually generated by raymarched volumes using SDF functions
Or alternatively a combined mesh generated using marching cubes technique

In 2D the effect could be achieved by blending SDF textures, with normals for the shine generated with with screenspace derivatives

[ashen robin]

Another solution is just animating some meshes, which would skip a lot of the complexities, but you lose out on everything out.

[warm torrent]

Yea, it could be pre-animated via the alembic format for example

[craggy geyser]

Ahhhh gotcha guys Thank you for the input I appreciate it!

[vernal osprey]

Hey, guys! I am currently making fog for my game with Particle System but there is an issue with shadows. So, I have turned off cast shadows and receive shadows but I still see some shadows from particle that are passing. What do I have to do for it?

[opal condor]

Why do I not ever see the visual indicators in my scene view when adjusting settings in the VFX graph such as bounds or Shape Sphere? I have a GameObject that has the Visual Effect on it. I select it in the hierarchy, but as soon as I move the the VFX Graph it seems to get deselected. I have Gizmos turned on and Visual Effects gizmos turned on. Yet I never see the visual indicator in the scene view that's supposed to show things like the Bounds as I edit it, or shapes:

Using Unity 6 btw

I should be seeing something like this:

a visual representation of what I'm editing to help guide me in selecting the correct values

[ashen robin]

https://i.imgur.com/lprcIlm.png
Usually you have to select on the node for the gizmos to appear. It doesn't matter if the gizmos is turned on or off in the scene.

I noticed that I also have the little box there too that denotes the arc sphere

[opal condor]

Hm.. I don't have that:

[ashen robin]

This is unity 6 too

[opal condor]

I'm thinking it just doesn't work in Unity 6. If anyone is using Unity 6 LMK if you see these Gizmos

[nimble axle]

how can i flip multiple particle systems? like on an x Axis or something

[opal condor]

Finally figured it out. I tried the 2022 editor and it was working fine. I didn't notice this little thing popped up when using Unity 6. I had to click the down arrow for the gizmos to appear.

That made the Visual Effect Model screen overlay appear which now causes all gizmos to appear

[nimble axle]

how cna i make an object constantly rotate in a vfx graph? this is how im doing it rn

[ashen robin]

That works but it's in eulers so if you run into gimble you have options like Rotate3D or atan2

[nimble axle]

how do you apply a constant addition of rotation? for my current use case its fine

[ashen robin]

update usually

[nimble axle]

oh im dumb i forgot about that lol

whats gimble btw?

[ashen robin]

It's some limitation to using eulers, or anything but two axis of rotation

not the easiest to explain, but you lose an axis of rotation when two axis line up

[nimble axle]

i think i know what youre talking about

[ashen robin]

You can probably get an idea on the inspector just rotating an object and making a clear indication of its forward direction at all rotations

or making a fps controller using strictly eulers and allowing the player to tilt above 90 degrees

[vernal osprey]

Hello! I have a small issue with wind effect on my game. So, I have watched some tutorials in order to make tree leaves effect with WindZone and Terrain but I have an issue with some trees they doesn't respond to wind and I am not sure why? I have added the trees in terrain but still nothing. Some of them work well but the problem is that the other trees aren't affected from wind.

[ashen robin]

cant embed mkv

probably more of a question for #⛰️┃terrain-3d

[nimble axle]

do VFX objects automatically play on start

or do i have to deal with that manually

[nimble axle]

how can i get the scale of this tarnsform

turns out i cant expand it because its a bug in 2023.2 which they wont fix.

so i have to upgrade or downgrade lol

[warm torrent]

2023 versions are alphas/betas for Unity 6
There aren't many reasons to stick to those

[nimble axle]

unity 6 crashed my project, but i wanted the first person camera support, and the earliest version which had that was 2023

[warm torrent]

First person camera? Of Cinemachine or something else?

You certainly don't need the newest Unity (nor CM) to make a first person camera, and problems upgrading aren't a good reason to stick to unsupported tech stream editor versions
Upgrading to 2023 / 6 breaks stuff in general in my experience, so I'd rather make a new project and export assets over as a .unitypackage

[nimble axle]

like in the editor

first person control of virtual cameras for animation is really helpful for what im doing

[nimble axle]

how do you actually export something to a unity package?

[nimble axle]

https://i.imgur.com/MP4eJkd.gif
this particle doesnt work properly in world space, how can i fix this?

[gloomy urchin]

Anyone know how I'd create a large collection of points like this?

And have them not only illuminated, but also flashing in sequence, like a wave moving along the runway?

[ashen robin]

Without sequencing you could just use a shared material with emissives, otherwise the VFX graph is a good way to instance with sequencing

Actually, doing it all in the shader may be the idea and having each emissive particle here somewhere further up on the UVs

for something like a wave pattern

[gloomy urchin]

Yeah, I can have a gradient texture go over the whole sheet

[ashen robin]

Probably the simplest way is using the world position as an offset for your sin function which should give some independency between each light

[glacial linden]

Hello!
I am trying to achieve something like in the video below for a mod - but I'm currently struggling to understand vfx graphs enough to do it. Could anyone provide some hints?

[vernal osprey]

Hello, guys! I have a question. One of my particles after a minute disappears like fading away and I am not sure why. I have enabled looping and my duration is 5 seconds. Could you please help me with that?

[warm torrent]

Particles of the Particle System disappear when their Lifetime has elapsed
Duration is not related to it
(assuming Ring Buffer Mode is disabled)

[vernal osprey]

Ok! So, in order to prevent that from happening what do I have to do?

[warm torrent]

Totally depends what the cause turns out to be

[vernal osprey]

I think I have the buffer mode disabled

[warm torrent]

I expect you know better than us what your particle lifetime is set to, and if you have modules affecting the color/alpha over lifetime
And if you're actually using the Particle System at all in this case

[vernal osprey]

It says rather than dying when their lifetime has elapsed particles will remain alive until the max particles buffer is full and new particles will replace the oldest but this will happen when the buffer mode is looping until replaced or something else?

There is paused until replaced, loop and disabled

[warm torrent]

Ring Buffer Mode prevents particles from dying, but makes emitting itself kill them later
It was a potential cause of the problem, not a solution

Or rather something related to it

You haven't given any of the clarifying information we need, or precisely said what it is you want your particles to do

[ashen robin]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3Xzzs1TWpk
Good example to follow, especially the trigger events

[inland tusk]

so I have a vfx graph that is sent events that are defined in scriptable objects. Their lifetime is set randome between a min and max defined in said obiect, along with position scale etc.etc. I have some particles that never die.. My first thought was that the compute buffer that sends this info to the graph is indexing wrong or something, but it is getting the position correctly (otherwise the immortal particles would be at 0).... Any ideas? Or any way to detect if a particle is immortal and automatically discard it?

[manic scroll]

Hi! the sphere in the middle showing faces. How can I change to smooth shading ?

[ashen robin]

Is this a custom sphere? Unity's sphere should have smoothing already

[manic scroll]

I didnt know other spheres were different, Thanks found a sphere with smooth shading

[ashen robin]

The smoothing isn't so much in the shader as it's usually in the vertex

you'd notice it too if you were to apply it in blender and send it over

Oh, apparently you can apply a smoothing angle for your meshes in the import settings too

[ashen robin]

I usually add a 'Set Alive' node in the update which I will enable/disable when I want to clean it up. That itself does sound like a bandaid, but I've had problems of particles not getting cleaned up after its lifetime too.

[inland tusk]

ah, so actually not relying on the inbuilt lifetime system at all, interesting

[proven mortar]

you can use probuilder (packetmanager) probuilderize it set smooth and remove probuiulder script

or use the fbx exporter package export it to blender and set the normals there to smooth

you can make liked prefab FBX so when you change externally it will update in unity

[viral marsh]

Hi, I am making this rather simple effect with the vfx graph.
It's going fine this far but it seems to have horrible performance, if I am not mistaken.
I've seen people using systems with tens of thousands, if not millions of particles with the performance being just fine(I could be very wrong), so the performance of this surprised me.
So basically, when the system is active, my gpu usage sits at 90-100% at all times.
I am attaching a screenshot of the gpu usage, screenshots of the vfx graph, as well as a video showcasing that it doesn't really have that many particles.
I am using the latest unity 6, built with vulkan(can't use opengl cuz performance is horrible on nvidia+wayland).
Oh, yeah, it's not that I have a bad gpu, it's a 2080ti and should be able to handle upwards of 10k particles with ease if I am not mistaken.
Thanks in advance!
https://youtu.be/Up5S7a5OvbE?t=45

[ashen robin]

Inside of the graph (I think near the top right?) there's some debugging tools which you can probably grab some information from while you run it. Just taking a look at the graph I don't really see a reason for the performance issues as everything seems to be completely instanced.

Actually, didn't see the other picture, but it does seem like it dispatches a copy assuming you're changing values in the update throughout the system

Still, probably not the largest issue, though some ideas is cull some operations and make sure it's not just a general batching issue.

[viral marsh]

huh, good call for making me check that, it doesn't seem to be the vfx graph at all, guess I just really gotta get a better gpu for my resolution because as the window gets smaller, the less gpu is used :/

[ashen robin]

Are you capping your frame rate? I don't see anything here that would require something intensive lol

[viral marsh]

I'm not, that's actually a great idea.
Although I might have vsync on, I gotta check that.
Will try capping it to the refresh rate now and see how that goes, thanks.

huh, locking it to 60fps improved the performance significantly, not as much as I hoped it would tho, 30fps almost didn't make a dent and doesn't look smooth at all.

[nimble axle]

do VFX graphs have a destroy action?

[ashen robin]

VFX graph pools all particles so by destroy you mean disable particles then yes you can via 'IsAlive' or changing Age to be that of Lifetime. You can stop newer particles from being produced using an event connected to the 'Stop' input in the spawn context.

[nimble axle]

i mean like destroy the game object when it's done

[ashen robin]

I wouldn't depend on the VFX graph for the callback. You should estimate a time for how long it plays then clean it up in your scripts.

[nimble axle]

okay 👌 why wouldn't i depend on the callback out of interest? these are very simple effects with a set lifetime, btw

[ashen robin]

There's methods like HasAnySystemAwake, but you'll get a callback if there is any delay in the spawn context, among other issues I've encountered. Best practice is just use the lifetime that you expect it to run, and add some delay for when you want to clean it up manually.

[nimble axle]

okay sounds good

[ashen robin]

Really it doesn't matter if the system is hanging out the scene without emitting particles

just clean it up eventually

[nimble axle]

I thought that would get costly eventually

[ashen robin]

Even though, it's usually best to just pool the systems

[nimble axle]

cus it's a new effect every time the character jumps

[ashen robin]

Right, then that's a different concept

You have master particle systems to be continuously reused

[nimble axle]

I haven't done pooling before, what is it again? just disabling and re enabling existing objects? how do you know if something that has been used and is about to be used again doesn't have data from the old usage?

[ashen robin]

Well, there's a few ways about it. Create multiple systems and just enable/reenable when you want to emit a particle, or create a single system and use events to request a new particle.

https://qriva.github.io/posts/how-to-vfx-graph/#how-to-send-event-with-attributes
This would be the single system solution

Pooling systems is fine too, abit more mem but not the largest issue

[nimble axle]

awesome thanks!

[viral marsh]

hey, just wanna update you, locking the fps to 60 and closing the unity editor proved to be effective, it's sitting at 30% usage which is even less than I expected, thanks a ton!

[fierce onyx]

i dont want them to cast square shadows

[craggy geyser]

Hey so i made an impact VFX using the VFX Graph, how do i make it so i can have that VFX render in world space? (As in when contact is made with a surface, itll appear)

Not the actual coding, but more so the space, i hope that made sense

[ashen robin]

Well, what kind of objects are making contact? Is it like rain, or perhaps an ability you have like a fireball

[viscid bridge]

Try using alpha clipping for another shadow - it's gonna be difficult to get a proper shadow here though, as you'd need volumetric calculation of the shadows. This isn't something you can do easily.

for now I'd suggest making them not cast shadows at all.

You can do that by creating your own shader that just samples the texture you're using, and turn off "cast shadows"

on second thought you obviously don't want to use alpha clipping, as your texture relies on alpha to fade the texture.

You need to compromise here and not use shadows.

I need help - something's either wrong with my math, or with Unity's VFX-graph cross-product. I'm leaning towards the former.

I'm spawning particles in a circle to make a portal-like effect.
The position of all particles are calculated with a Random Position (Circle) node.
I know this node works properly, as I get the correct positions when the particles spawn. They spawn in a circle.
I want the particles to fire in the direction of the tangent of the circle, using the cross product.
I do this by creating a forward vector and doing cross product between this vector and the particle position (locally).
This should yield a consistent velocity to the right when looking from the back.
For some reason though, this is NOT the behaviour I get.

particles spawn like this when using this node, which is correct.

when adding velocity based on the cross product I get this behaviour - which is obviously very wrong.

using sequential circle the cross-product DOES create the correct vector (tangental to the circle).

My confusion is why this method would yield a different result when both nodes just output a position for the particle to spawn at...

[nimble axle]

do VFX particles play at Time.timescale?

[fierce onyx]

thanks but i scrapped it anyway i just need to find a tutorial for hdrp

[viscid bridge]

They update on a specific rate

If you press on the system you can uncheck the top box to ignore timscale

This will make them look good even when you change timescale

[viscid bridge]

Basically, tick this if you want to use Time.fixedDeltaTime. I think it's ticked in by default for some reason.
If you want to use Time.deltaTime, uncheck it.

if you want them to update properly with Time.timeScale without any stuttering you'd need to leave the box unchecked, as FixedUpdate rate is based on simulation-speed.

[nimble axle]

awesome, thank you!

[nimble axle]

the warning doesnt make sense because it is there

[vivid glen]

I'm trying to make a healing beam similar to mercy from Overwatch does anyone know how to make the line renderer curve when the direction of the healing staff is facing a different direction than the target? Or if their is a better way to make this than a line renderer?

[wooden finch]

If I'm understanding you correctly, could you not use a Vfx graph with a bezier curve? I'll see if I can find an example

[brave snow]

i want my fire particles to react to movement, but if i set them to world space they get left behind and it looks bad, because they are slow, how do i fix that ( i want the flames to kinda bend in the opposite direction of movement yk what i mean)

[prime dome]

Hi people, with DrawMeshInstanced, can you change the mesh size by using vertex displacement?

like I can multiply the vertices on a mesh, can the same be done in shaders?

[rain dagger]

why could it be

these are the properties

i want to create a star sparkle effect for a second here

[zealous wing]

In VFX graph is there a way to decide which get attribute I am receiving when there are more than 1 systems in a single graph?

[ashen robin]

Where are you these attributes being sent in

https://qriva.github.io/posts/how-to-vfx-graph/#how-to-send-event-with-attributes
You can specify by events which can added above the spawn context

[craggy geyser]

Hey, so I made this simple skull texture and i want it to hover up and down slowly, how do i achieve this? (ive been using VFX Graph for it)

i want it to be infinitely hovering until a player were to interact with it

so i disabled lifetime, could that be the reason why its not working?

[ashen robin]

What's not working about it

[craggy geyser]

i dont know how to make it hover, not sure what component i need to add to this to make it happen

right now it just spawns and stays still

[ashen robin]

You can child the system to the player, but the vfx graph itself needs to be local space (top right corner of the contexts)

this way it'll use the gameobject's space

[craggy geyser]

im sorry im not too sure what that means 😭 , is it not possible to create the effect in the graph itself?

[ashen robin]

If you use local space, then the position would be relative to the player, so Vector3(0,0,0) would be the pivot of the player's gameobject is child to it

[craggy geyser]

ah ok thank you

[wispy shard]

Is there any way to get particals out of unity, and into blender?

[rotund sedge]

hey i have a question regarding some mesh effects, i only started messing around witht hem and im trying to recreate a type of guilty gear style punch, unlike all the slash prefabs i find i can never find a punch effect with a mesh where its a mesh that spawns a little behind the user and it comes forward. havent been able to find any meshes that would do good with that and im no good with blender so ive tried making it it and failed a lot. any advice or sources that may have what im looking for?

[cold crypt]

hi theres a way that when a particle collides with a object instantiate that object following the position rotation of a other object?

[manic scroll]

Any way I keep this sprite visible in the black hole ? ( black hole is a mesh particle )

[onyx lake]

Use a shader with ZTestAlways to always render it in front (only UI will be drawn on top)

[jaunty apex]

I'm making some basic particles to spawn on the mesh and fly up

And Im having a problem where the particles will show up in the right spot if IM not in play

But they don't when I'm in play.

Could it be my property binding?

From the looks of it the Particles aren't matching up with the transform/mesh

[ashen robin]

Is the position being set in local space to the object here

[jaunty apex]

I believe so. How would I check this?

[ashen robin]

So, you do have the systems in world space, but what matters if the initial position here which is being set by the transform node into set position

For the position attribute node on the left, where are these values being set

You sure you just don't need that Set Mesh Position Node only here? Trying to figure out this additional set position operation going on

https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.visualeffectgraph@11.0/manual/Block-SetPosition(Mesh).html
Calculates the vertex position, so really all you need to do is feed it the mesh and set the position to local

https://i.imgur.com/7w1M1xa.png

https://i.imgur.com/jtaGPe9.png

Transform property only works in local space apparently

[ashen robin]

If this is all using alpha blending, then changing the rendering queue from each shader should work. If the sphere is opaque though then it gets a little more tricky as you're now comparing depth values compared to rendering via queue. Bubjes' idea is probably fine if we're treating this like floating damage text such that it renders in front of everything, but say if you don't want the text rendering in front of the player then you're looking into pixel replacement like stencil masking.

There's always a bunch of tricks too like moving the pivots relative to the camera, or if the camera is simply fixated then you can adjust the pivot of the text further towards the camera.

[jaunty apex]

Hey Mao,

I apologize for the very late response,

So I messed around a little bit more

First thing I did was unparent the VFX GameObject from the "weapon" it's supposed to use for the mesh,

That seemed to fix the it being far away. However know seems to only use the pivot?

[vernal osprey]

Hello, guys! I have a question. How to optimize my game performance even if I am using fog particle effect with Unity's particle system? What I mean is that I have made a fog particle effect for my game and for one reason I saw performance issues not serious but yeah they exist.

The source of the issue is coming from the particles I am instantiating like I think and I am not sure how to optimize the performance without decreasing the number of the particles I am creating

[blissful iris]

hey I need help with adding fairy dust to my character when it fly

right now it looks so big and ugly

[warm torrent]

It sounds like overdraw could be the issue

If so, that's largely unavoidable if you use particles for fog

[nimble axle]

trying to access the vfx graph and im getting this error. how fix?

[spiral storm]

hi ! Can anyone point me towards some really wild and extreme examples of VFX graph?? Im looking for more variety in my arsenal

[burnt wave]

how do people typically go about doing rain and snow?
like sure i can make a particle system, but then, do I make HUGE to span across the whole map?
create multiple areas?
just place one above the player (as a children) but then it might seem a little off?

[ashen robin]

The transform property is local to the game object so you want to be using the vfx graph on the same gameobject as the mesh render, otherwise you can use one of these:
https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.visualeffectgraph@17.0/manual/PropertyBinders.html

[jaunty apex]

i do have a property binder already!

[ashen robin]

Well, if it's hooked up similar to how I have it up there and it's still producing problems, then perhaps the mesh import you have has read/write permissions disabled in the import settings.

[ashen robin]

It only needs to follow the player, so set the spawn area local to the player, but the raindrops move relative to world space.

[flint robin]

Is it possible to add lights to a 2D particle system?

Or are there workarounds to get it to function like for example, a global illumination volume restricted to only affect the layer the particles are on?

[flint robin]

Found a script that attaches game objects to particles, all good now!

[nimble axle]

is there any way to fix a broken vfx graph? unity wont even let me open it

[strange ledge]

anyone knows a good alternative to the unity trail renderer?

the trails it produces can look quite bad

looking for either a community option or something that's quick to implement

[ashen robin]

Not really besides asset store

vfx graph uses same logic

Other ideas is not to use trails and just have high emissive system of quads

[strange ledge]

by system you mean particle system?

[ashen robin]

shurkien, vfx graph, and the standalone module all are similar to how they work

[strange ledge]

i think in my case the main thing i need is smoothing (was initially thinking of splines), but maybe just high emission would work

hopefully not too distracting

[ashen robin]

https://old.reddit.com/r/Unity3D/comments/qgu7bc/unitys_trailrenderer_needed_an_upgrade_i_added/
This person did it with splines

[strange ledge]

yeah did see that

[ashen robin]

Wish I could point you to a free solution, but I don't know any of myself.

[strange ledge]

i found this one that i had hopes for, but the prefab is corrupted so was not able to set it up
https://github.com/AlphaMistral/Mistral-Trail

[ashen robin]

Was something a while ago called Better Trails, but that may be only a built-in solution

[strange ledge]

ohh, yeah i'm using built-in rn because i'm working with webgl mostly

will see if I can find it

seems like it got abandonned, no longer available on the asset store (and seemingly nowhere else for that matter)

[ashen robin]

Yeah I see that too. I've had assets delist and relist under a new name sometimes. Pretty scummy but w/e

[strange ledge]

oh wow, didn't know that was a thing

well i'll see if I can add emission or some quick hack to hide the flaws

[ashen robin]

spline idea sounds neat

[strange ledge]

yeah it'd be perfect for what i'm trying to do

just seems kinda involved but maybe i'm wrong

[ashen robin]

too bad one of the 100 things that unity hasn't updated in years

[strange ledge]

yeah..

[ashen robin]

You could try some vfx graph and throw on some turbulence

may remove some of the harder edges

oh wait you're using built-in

webGPU pretty good though should hop on that

[strange ledge]

ah yeah i think i heard of it

seems much better

also was looking at the code, the MistralTrail thing does smoothing, maybe I can figure out how to make that work

[warm torrent]

Bigger problem in my experience is that the trail vertices can get scrunched up

Can see it happening in the spline version too

[twin smelt]

Hello all! Please tell me I can somehow mask VFX graph particles with some mask or something!

[ashen robin]

If you want to do it in the graph then you're dealing with custom shaders with stencils

[twin smelt]

I need to mask particles inside card's frame. If I understand how stencils work then I could unmask particles from A card while writing into stencil from B card

[ashen robin]

You've also got Render Objects which allow masking via layer if you don't want to use a custom shader

https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.render-pipelines.universal@14.0/manual/renderer-features/how-to-custom-effect-render-objects.html

[twin smelt]

Thank will read and try tomorrow. Little bit doubt it will help because I can't separate each cards to it's own layer so problem with "cards unmask particles from another mask" remains

[twin smelt]

If my system in VFX graph use local space and I create node "Get position" then I'll get current position of a particle local to gameobject my VisualEffect component is on or local to it's spawn point?

[ashen robin]

Not relative to the spawn point but the most previous set position, which could be the spawn point if get right after setting.

And the space I believe depends on the system's space, but you can always use a change space node right after.

[twin smelt]

and not via shader graph because it can't write to stencil. Am I correct?

[ashen robin]

Oh, I'm actually not too sure if stencils are configurable inside of the shader graph, but VFX graph does have support for HLSL in the later versions. May just be easier to use a layer as a culling mask honestly.

[twin smelt]

What you mean "layer as a culling mask" ?

[ashen robin]

Render objects as previously linked or by writing some custom pipeline code

[twin smelt]

I think I've found approach that is acceptable to my case but that requires me to write custom URP compatible sprite shader OR make shader graph define stencil code block.

I see unity docs about writing fundametal unlit URP compatible shaders but nothing sprite related and I worry there is something special for Sprite Renderer to be in URP shader. https://docs.unity3d.com/6000.0/Documentation/Manual/urp/writing-shaders-urp-basic-unlit-structure.html

Any advice on that, please? 😬

[ashen robin]

SpriteRender's shader is pretty basic enough if you want to make a copy and edit it for yourself

[ripe mantle]

So I have some particles here and they're emitting from a circle shaped emitter. How do I make the particles move along a vector out from the center?

And rotated along this vector?

[twin smelt]

Well, your particles are already spawned inside circle so you just need to calculate direction out of that circle from center which is (particlePos - centerPos).normalized and then set particle velocity to this direction optionally multiplied by some float speed to control not only direction.

And I guess for rotation you can simply use Set Direction block

[warm abyss]

VFX graph. is it possible to add an output event to a gpu trigger event on die ?
i CAN USUALLY ADD IT TO A SPAWN EVENT CLASSIC but it does not allow me to do that to a gpu trigger event.
Any idea?

[twin smelt]

where can I find sprite-default shader, because this gives some barely readable mess

[ashen robin]

Either find it in the 2D packages, or on the Editor you can open the default SpriteRender material to get a link to it

[brisk basin]

Does anyone know how to do this within the unity shader graph

[ripe mantle]

Is there a way to make particles themselves act as a sprite mask?

[ashen robin]

Particle system? Doesn't that have a sprite mask option for that?

[ripe mantle]

It has options to interact with masks but not to act as one itself.

[ashen robin]

Ah, well if you scroll up a bit you'll find a similar case

Edit the shader to have stenciling, or make a layer to act as the mask

[ripe mantle]

Ya I assumed that was the solution. Wish they'd include stencil support in Shader Graph already.

[twin smelt]

I've found defaul sprite shader in packages folder. This shader contains 3 passes with only difference (at first glance) in lightmode tags. What is that for? There are 3: "Universal2D", "NormalsRendering", "UniversalForward"
As I know UniversalForward is kind of lightning tag for simple URP renderer. I guess Universal2D is for URP2D asset and shader choose between those passes depending on render asset lightning mode. Am I right? If yes then what NomalsRendering is for?

[brisk basin]

figured it out

[ashen robin]

Ah, so apparently the default sprite shader does seem to be compiled in, but if you were using 2D lights you're probably looking into editing the Universal Lit 2D. Not entirely sure what the Unlit provides that the built-in doesnt, but if you want to just use the built-in you'll probably need to grab that code elsewhere. Usually Unity's repo provides the source for built-ins.

[twin smelt]

No, I mean I found URP default sprite shader and I'm using regular URP asset, so it is right one shader, just trying to understand why it has 3 passes

[ashen robin]

Usually light related, but to get a better idea you'll need to read into each included file that's being fed into the passes

Like, these are way more extreme than the built in, that's for sure

[twin smelt]

Does renderer choose only one of passes depending on tags?

[ashen robin]

Some tags act as constraints like "RenderPipeline" = "UniversalPipeline"

otherwise it'll fallback onto some other shader specified

[twin smelt]

does LightMode of a consraint kind tag?

[ashen robin]

Something to read up on the docs for cause this stuff can get pretty complicated

https://xibanya.github.io/URPShaderViewer/

[twin smelt]

yep, I see in built-in docs that LightMode works as constraint tags

[ashen robin]

if you are wanting to go down the rabbit hole, then I suggest bookmarking that site

[ripe mantle]

What Set Direction block?

Oh are you talking about the VFX graph?

[twin smelt]

yep, u not?

[ripe mantle]

No I was talking about the build in particle system.

[twin smelt]

cool stuff, thank you!

[warm torrent]

Iirc if you want to enforce a particular emission direction and rotation direction, they will have to be mesh particles, potentially also emitted from a mesh

The mesh that emits them can be invisible

For non mesh particles there might've not been a way to define both up and forward axes

Only one or the other

[ripe mantle]

Hmm, alright. On a separate note, if I want to define a custom shape for an emitter (specifically 2D), what are my options?

I've been defining custom outlines in the sprite editor to get what I want, but I feel like that's... not optimal.

[warm torrent]

Custom shape meaning what?

Emitting from the outline of a sprite, I would assume?

[ripe mantle]

The mesh Unity was generating for this sprite didn't fit it very well, so I went in and defined it myself.

In Sprite Editor -> Custom Outline.

[warm torrent]

Particle system can use this sprite outline?

[warm torrent]

It seems type: vertex would be the optimal way you're looking for, if I understood correctly

[ripe mantle]

Nah that only spawns them exactly on, as you'd expect, the vertex.

And I want them spawning across the whole outline.

[warm torrent]

There probably isn't an easy way to do that
Could add more outline vertices instead and add some randomness to spawn position instead

[ripe mantle]

I mean I get it, from a mesh's perspective, I don't think it knows which edge is a "outline edge" and which is an inner edge.

[warm torrent]

Indeed it does not

[ripe mantle]

You can do some funny stuff with this though.

Like this one defines a hole.

[warm torrent]

If it doesn't have to be convex, then you have some more control over the edge density
But that probably has to be a separate sprite since non-hollow outlines are important for sprite rendering

[ripe mantle]

Which lets you do this.

[ripe mantle]

Nah that's the thing, I literally just have a sprite in the project whose sole job is to just be used as a particle guide 😛

The sprite is there just to remind me of the shape when I define it in the Editor.

Which is why I wanted to ask if there was a better way to do this type of shit.

Cause god damn does it feel jank.

I think the real answer here is "if you want a custom mesh shape then fucking do it in Blender you psycho"

[warm torrent]

It's not easier to make them in blender if you can make them in the sprite editor

But if you have a lot of sprites to do that for I'd rather look into settings like that shape randomness to make it workable with the unedited sprites

[ripe mantle]

Shape randomness?

[warm torrent]

"Randomize position"

So they don't all spawn at each vertex but with a random offset around it

[ripe mantle]

Ah I see. Problem is the specific area I want them to be in is kind of important.

Not going to lie though this Custom Outline window is pretty buggy.

[ripe mantle]

Got kind of an odd issue.

I'm using a sprite to define my emitter shape.

And for some reason as soon as the center goes off screen, all particles disappear.

This does not seem related to culling mode.

[ashen robin]

It's probably getting culled by the camera so you may need to increase the bounds for which this object is culled

[ripe mantle]

How do I set that for this specific object?

[ashen robin]

Unless it's something more system related which then I'd expect some bound parameters on it

https://docs.unity3d.com/6000.0/Documentation/ScriptReference/Renderer-localBounds.html

[ripe mantle]

Is there no way to define this in the editor?

Because this shape is being used to spawn particles.

[ashen robin]

Uh, usually I change it when I initialize it at runtime

VFX graph has its own bounding box that's not reliant on the gameobject so I'm kinda surprised if shuriken doesnt

[ashen robin]

https://discussions.unity.com/t/particle-system-culling-issue-please-help-explain-this-to-me/646828/25
Can you get that yellow box to show. That needs to be in the camera's frustum to not be culled.

Seems like some bandaid is to create some invisible particle far enough away to extend the box

[latent iris]

currently doing this tutorial:
https://youtu.be/dPJQuD93-Ks?t=132
At time stamp when I create the node myself im missing the Shader graph.
I have experimental blocks on
looked for a solution (screenshot) but can't find the option in the screenshot

[brave nymph]

omfg bruh

i just copypasted a block and this is now on for 30 minutes

(vfx)

[ashen robin]

Particle orientation and how it's aligned to face the camera.

https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.visualeffectgraph@10.2/manual/Block-Orient.html
VFX graph has this node, but there should be something similar on the shuriken

May just be easier to do a 3D tracer instead of a quad if you're still having problems

[warm torrent]

I'm a bit hard pressed to see what the "bug" is exactly

If the particle and trail are in world space, the effect that it seems to "jump" over a distance in sideways motion is natural in that context

[potent cairn]

When traying to apply a shader to the Shader Graph section of the Output Particle Mesh, no shader appears, despite hacing experimental blocks and and having shaders created?

[warm torrent]

What if you drag the shader into the field directly

Make sure the shader graph is of the vfx graph type

[potent cairn]

While dragging a little black "wrong" symbol appears

[potent cairn]

im guessing its not? Do Shade Graphs with URP do not work?

THAT WAS IT

Thanks

[viscid bridge]

This node exists to set the particle to a certain pixel size - I want to force the particle to not go BELOW this size. How can I do that in VFX-graph?

I want to eliminate flickering due to the particles being too small.

if there's other ways to force rasterize I won't complain either

[twilit lagoon]

Hey everyone, has anyone managed to for example sync visual effects to the beat of a song? I’ve tried somewhat successfully using OSC and receiving audio from an external source, But that only works well if the frame rate is constant, which is not always the case for me .. what I would like to try instead is to have the audio source in Unity, but unsure if that’s feasible? Thanks in advance

[spring lake]

There is a paid 3rd party asset that is built specifically for this purpose, but it's probably not appropriate to name paid products here. If you want a link, DM me.

[warm torrent]

Let me know if you find out
It never made sense to me why this is a block rather than an operator

[warm torrent]

It is appropriate since it's relevant, and not a promotion

[spring lake]

https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/animation/timeflow-animation-system-247895

Really quick overview here: https://youtu.be/A5FZstsdjTE?si=JFmbo-dmyyR7XDbx
Audio Spectrum Sampling: https://youtu.be/bq22h81Ofok?si=Qw4Q9CkbWP89RNsv
Audio Reactive functionality overview: https://youtu.be/hspI1hL-TDA?si=tTjWQ7rmooVPymgG

[warm torrent]

This is a whole animation suite, but I think ultimately fundamentally only need a time variable that syncs to audio time, or audio that syncs to your time variable

[twilit lagoon]

Thanks so much! So for example let’s say when I press play the visuals are playing back in a rate slower than the native audio rate, will the audio adjust, play slower and respect the game frame time?

Really appreciate the help @spring lake and @warm torrent

[vernal osprey]

Hello, guys! I have made fog with particle system and you know I am not sure if for a horror game it suits to be there. What do you think? My game is first person psychological horro do I need fog atmosphere or no?

I just want some opinions

[spring lake]

Are you referring to Timeflow or what Spazi was saying?

[warm torrent]

I expect the asset has its own way of syncing them, otherwise you'll have to handle the syncing with your own scripts

[twilit lagoon]

Ah right, I understand now it's two different things. I guess what @warm torrent said should be the easiest to test? Audio that syncs to my time variable, right?
How would you go about setting that up? I'd be happy to get timeflow asl well if I know it will allow me to do this

[opal star]

Is there any way to get a gpu event as output from a system subgraph ?

[edgy acorn]

Hello. Any idea how i can reverse Age Over Lifetime node, meaning 1 = start of the particle and 0 = end of it's lifetime? I'm trying to do fading over time controlled by it's lifetime but seems can't find a proper node or formula.

[ashen robin]

Age = 0 ?

Also disable culling of the particle if exceeds lifetime if you want to clean it up

Reap particles I think it's called

[edgy acorn]

No, no. I just figured out that Age Over Lifetime wouldn't work. Basically, i want to reduce velocity to 0 over X time.

[ashen robin]

Sleepy but I think you're looking for
Velocity * (1 - t)

~~Oh maybe it's | ( t - 1 ) | ~~ nah same as above ;p

one of those

Actually I think you inverse it such that:
(lifetime - age) / lifetime

[edgy acorn]

How does variable X goes into these formulas?

[spring lake]

Timeflow is pretty simple to use. You can animate/tween/etc any exposed properties and sync it to a master BPM, an individual BPM/time signature, or whatever other timing you want. Here I set up a point light to flash to 140 BPM on quarter notes. Then added a random range to the intensity of the light, no interpolation and then set the In/Out to make the flashes abrupt. The same can obviously be done with any VFX or other game objects, such as triggering a burst in a VFX or modifying other exposed properties. The properties can also be automatically controlled/synced to an audio source as we were originally discussing. I'm using this in playable cutscenes to sync the animation timing of various properties of lights and other elements.

[ashen robin]

( (lifetime - age) / lifetime) * Velocity

Lifetime = 10, Age = 3;
x = 0.7

Lifetime = 10, Age = 5;
x = 0.5

Lifetime = 10, Age = 8;
x = 0.2*

[edgy acorn]

It does work. Holy molly, i wouldn't figured it out by myself for sure. Thank you

[warm torrent]

I don't know the specifics, but syncing audio to anything is not trivial

If you can afford it, the asset is surely simpler
There probably are free alternatives if you only need to sync audio without all of the other features

[mint lintel]

Hey all, I want to create smoke for Smoke Grande for mobile what would be best Particle system or VFX graph?

I considering low-end devices.

[opal star]

if the target devices do not support compute shaders then VFX graph is out of the question.

[mint lintel]

okay! then particle system good to go.

[opal star]

like I said if the devices are really low end and do not support compute shaders then Shuriken is the only way to go

[rustic horizon]

How would I render a particle effect over the mesh that it’s parented to?

[ashen robin]

If both are transparent, make a unique material for each and change the rendering transparent queue for each to two different values. If one is opaque, you'll need to override the depth sorting or use stenciling to do pixel replacement

[rustic horizon]

Damn

[ashen robin]

Or, if you want to just render one object on top of everything in the scene you can always just use a second camera

[rustic horizon]

Pretty costly though isn’t it?

Would the depth sorting way be the best option?

[ashen robin]

Not really, but may not be what you're looking for if you still some sorting against other objects in the primary camera

[rustic horizon]

I just want it over one object

(The parent object)

[ashen robin]

Depth stuff is similar in that regard that if you override depth then you're changing the full sorting of every other object against that one in the scene. (But this can be somewhat minimized with custom pipeline code)

[rustic horizon]

Oh okay

I’ll probably just stick with rending it on a different camera then

How would I go about doing that actually 😅

[ashen robin]

https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.render-pipelines.universal@13.1/manual/renderer-features/renderer-feature-render-objects.html
You can also look into these as these give you a lot of control on the sorting of everything without having to do much in code, but a little more complex if you're not familiar with the concepts

As for the camera, just create another on the scene and cull everything but the object you want to render on top

and on your primary cull the object that is rendering on top

[rustic horizon]

Can you set the culling mask of a particle system?

[ashen robin]

The camera culling is based off layering, but Shuriken system may have some utilities like sprite masking

We're talking 3D here, right? Just making sure cause forcing particles above a sprite is simply changing the transparent sorting

[rustic horizon]

The particle is 2D but it’s a 3D project yes

[twilit lagoon]

Thanks man, I'm about to purchase it I think.. My only fear is that if let's say my FPS drops to 10 during play, does the audio remain synced to that or not

[spring lake]

No idea on that. You can always ask the dev on his discord. He's very active and has answered all of my questions so far.

[twilit lagoon]

I'll try that right now, thanks
edit, hm, the link is invalid on their site

[spring lake]

Try from here https://axongenesis.gitbook.io/timeflow/reference/support#discord

[twilit lagoon]

yeah I did, it says invite invalid

probably only for customers

[spring lake]

Strange.

I don't think so. I don't recall having to do anything fancy to join his Discord.

[twilit lagoon]

can you invite me directly somehow?

[spring lake]

Sent DM

[tropic vault]

Hey, any way to fix that?

Any particle in the project seems to blink and reset and cannot maintain the animation loop, I tried another version of unity and even tested it on another project

actually im using Unity 6000.0.27f

I also tested it by compiling the game build and this problem also happens there

[errant ember]

For some reason, my VFX from my VFX graph I made is not showing up. Whenever I create effects with particle systems, they appear just fine either on preview or when I press play, but the VFX graph created effects do not show up at all.

Does anyone know how to fix this? Thanks

unsure if this is part of it, but whenever I press play I get this (even though as far as I can recall I never set up the DontDestroyOnLoad feature)

[dire flower]

you need tom show us how you set it up. it could be your lifetime. looks like you have it on just a few second but looping. but thats not what you want i thinik 😄

[sour sun]

Hy guys i have a question about VFX. so i purchased a VFX from unity asset store and after playing it on unity and for me it's too big for my game ( 2D games ). so i want to make it smaller the particles and object. for example this VFX blackhole.
my question is should i manually from unity adjust the width and height? or using a third party apps to do it? ( i dont know which app this VFX used ).

[sour sun]

nvm i got my answer from the publisher...

[carmine ether]

Hi. Does anyone know if it's possible to change the output particle of the vfx graph depending on a variable?

like for example, let's say if a variable value is 1, I want the output particle to be the Unlit block, but if that variable value is 2, I want the output particle to be the Lit block

[tropic vault]

configs:

[violet pendant]

Hey guys, im a beginner here for VFX & Particle effects sharing my 2nd Particle effect i created which obviously looks galaxies apart from the refrence but yeah that's fine atleast i have something similar to ref.
I need help in re-creating the refrence VFX with particle effects, shader graphs i cant do.
Sharing Both Output And Refrence And Looking For Guidance

[ashen robin]

If you're using vfx graph check this out
https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.visualeffectgraph@10.2/manual/Block-ConformToSphere.html
Throw in some turbulence for more variation

[nimble axle]

I have an arc cone here, is there a way to set the velocity like this?

[nimble axle]

i've figured it out

new issue, is there a way to make the particles curve inwards around this area

[nimble axle]

how can i make trails shorter? they last the whole lifetime

[dire flower]

do you want it to be endless or how do you want it to look? atm it looks like the _Rim resets everysecond im guessing you want it to always spin? in the game for example how long do you want the blackwhole to show? I would try setting the start liftime to the same time on all 3 and see how that looks

[tropic vault]

yea, i would like it to look endless, i set lifetime at 3 and added a gradient with opacity 0 100 0 and now it looks much better, thank you very much!

[tight river]

Screens slash with VFX graph!

[languid sable]

Hello, so I want to connect my Shader Graph to my Visual Effect Graph, but in my Output Particle Unlit Quad is not the Shader Graph option where I could connect it. Both URP and Visual Effect Graph are up to date. Tried to solve it with checking Experimental Operators/Blocks, as it should "appear in there", but it did not... I am really clueless. Thank you in advance for your help

[dire flower]

nps i havent found any real endles version of stuff i usualy just put the life time as a huge number 😄 as long as the particle is supose to show.

[dire flower]

that one looks super cool 😄 that could be a cool spell for a game 😄

[dire flower]

now im in hdrp but it should be the same graphs this is how my output looks

[tight river]

Thank you! Yeah it's actually a hit impact effect of a sword or so

[dire flower]

that works 😄

[twilit lagoon]

hey all, I'm wondering.. my scene is mostly VFX, and I'm pushing them really far, but it seems the long frame is in the CPU? althought my GPU is topped off in the task manager and the CPU is perhaps sitting at 20% only.. I'm confused

I'm trying to understand where the bottle neck is..

[quasi halo]

hii! im working on a particle system where i want one particle system to be triggered after the other collides with a plane. what can i do ?

[warm torrent]

If you want the particle system to be created where the collision occurs, you can use sub-emitters
https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/PartSysSubEmitModule.html
In Collision or Death mode

[warm torrent]

Use the profiler, preferably in a build for accurate data
https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/profiler-profiling-applications.html

[tight river]

Yeah! Thanks man

[violet pendant]

Hey thanks for such a good reference it will definitely help me, but im mostly looking only for particle system not Vfx graph

[violet pendant]

I did some more tweaking and stuff in trying to get things done but still the output is not there yet, might due to my skills limitation

[ashen robin]

Looks fine to me. The more you work on it the more refined it'll become

What you're missing though from the example is some stylized windforce coming from the bottom, and most importantly you're missing the bloom and emissions

[twilit lagoon]

thanks! I tried it in Play mode.. I know obviously it's because of the amount of particles I have, but I just want to understand if I'm CPU or GPU bound, like what would benefit me the most, a CPU with more cores? single core clock speed? a beast of a GPU? 😄

very GPU bound then, I guess?

[opal star]

enable the GPU profile module and check in there as well

[late swift]

After watching Arcane, I felt like finally learning VFX graph.

[violet pendant]

still wprking on them, actually i forgot to build lighting data hence it's not visible

[late swift]

Does anyone know how you could add arcs above the particles like this?

[ashen robin]

3D sphere with transparent line texture

unity sphere might be garbo tho, so make some mesh with wrapping uvs

Half circles work too

[late swift]

It needs to deform with the particles, they move around with perlin noise

If I use a mesh, I would need to retrieve data from the GPU or something for them to match

[ashen robin]

Not too sure why you need anything back from the GPU, but you've also got particle strips which if you don't set a lifetime to will just live forever.

Not the easiest thing to really manipulate as they are composed of multiple quads

[late swift]

Yeah, I saw that when I looked it up. Sounds like a nightmare

[spring lake]

I would also recommend cutting your particles in half to see what the impact on performance is.

[late swift]

Does this count? 😄

[ashen robin]

Oh, you wanted more runes. I think I may have glanced over your post and assumed you wanted a trail based on the image ;p

Pretty good though

[late swift]

Oh, it's not what I had in mind initially

Just suddenly had the idea of doing it this way

[languid sable]

exactly, yet I don't have this in there 😮‍💨

[late swift]

Not really sure what it's supposed to be, but it's something

And then there are these spinny globe things

[stuck timber]

These are very satisfying to look at, very nice

[nimble axle]

how can i make two points that are parented to the head and make lightning effects with the vfx system?

[nimble axle]

i guess i could use a line renderer or something?

and a shader or whatever

[ashen robin]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NWqTKYEIlU
Gabriel has everything you need

[nimble axle]

gabriel my beloved

[nimble axle]

how do i fix a vfx graph?

i cant access this one i made from a newer version

it just wont open

[nimble axle]

are these correct

[quasi halo]

hey i have a vfx particle system project due tomorrow. can someone help me? i hav the first build up of my projectile vfx but its not emitting the beam when i have it set as my subemitter

[warm abyss]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKVdg8DsIVY

the video ends with particle strips.
I have not found it yet.
After decals samples is empty!
Did anyone find it?

[nimble axle]

does anyone know how to recover a vfx graph if its not openable?

[warm abyss]

reimport

[uncut forge]

delete library folder

[inland tusk]

I made a system where I raycast a bunch of points all over the map and save their positions into a nativearray and spatially hashmap it and send those near the player as a graphics buffer to a vfx graph to render it... this is all working pretty well actually, and was for a kind of hero game object.... it got me wondering though about doing it again just for smaller pebbles and stuff and spraying 10x more of them all over the map just for visual detail.. does that sound completely stupid? I did the first system as they would be getting added to and removed and I'd need to find the nearest and stuff, none of which would be true for the 2nd interpretation of it

does that sound like an insane idea? is it just doing the job of some existing unity system? I am highly performance focussed and this way avoids having gameobjects for any of it. I'm not using unity terrain as it's performance is trash so any kind of solution that would use that is a no go. I guess Im just thinking about some kind of super performant modded scatter really

[late swift]

Why raycast when you can sample positions instead?

[inland tusk]

Well i have a grid of 8 by 8 terrain tiles, which will wind up having skirts that go down at the edges to hide seams, so kinda figured just raycastcommandinging down from above into the terrain layer would be as good a way as any to do It, though i guess ultimately saving that info to a file and loading it rather than just doing it at the start of every play

Though it would probably be good to do stuff like take the slope of the surfaces into account and stuff, which could be done on hit normal, or vertex colour or something. I guess i was thinking more about the act of retrieving a graphics buffer of spatially hashed nearby nativearray list of info to draw near terrain details

[deft forum]

Sounds reasonable, VFX graph is incredibly fast and has minimal overhead + is easy to use. You are redoing Unity's terrain system but as we all know, Unity terrain is not blazingly fast (with that said - terrain in Unity 6 + HDRP seems to actually be quite usable)

[inland tusk]

Cool, i wound up implementing it, and so far it’s working pretty well, especially with frustum culling and switching between two output nodes on distance squared for lodding

[normal remnant]

What is the reason why VFX can render particles on top of everything? I tried changing the depth write/test, but it didn't do anything

[ashen robin]

Don't depth write, and make sure your geometry is opaque

[carmine ether]

does anyone know this please? It would really help so I can create like LODs for the particles that are further away

[ashen robin]

If it's different shaders you'd probably want two systems, but if you're using a single shader then why not just make a master output composed of every node it can use, then selectively populate what nodes each particle should use via events/buffers

[carmine ether]

what exactly do you mean by "master output"? Like a custom made output where I can decide if I want to use a custom mesh or a quad?

[ashen robin]

Ah, right I guess you probably do want multiple shader programs in that regard then. I'm not entirely sure you can choose between what shader to use in a single system, so I think the best way to go about this is to have multiple systems, and just disable/enable the particle that you want shown.

Assuming you do want a lit/unlit variation, but the mesh nodes already do have LOD settings themselves

[carmine ether]

Ah okay. Well thank you so much, I appreciate it 😄

[carmine ether]

yeah I wanted to do both things,😅

[mellow girder]

So appareantly in Unity 6 you cant use shaders or materials in vfxgraph?

the shader graph option just isnt there

I have Experimental Operators/Blocks on

[ashen robin]

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

Don't think it's experimental anymore

[mellow girder]

but I dont want to use a mesh?

[ashen robin]

Quad is there

[mellow girder]

quad doesnt have a shader slot

oh wait

I see it

[ashen robin]

https://i.imgur.com/jnoYL5H.png

[mellow girder]

thanks!

[carmine ether]

Why is it that when I connect the GetMeshIndex node, I get this error please? Like am I connecting it wrong or something else? Like I just wanted to get the LOD level to determine which texture to use

[ashen robin]

Not too sure what you're trying to do here, but usually for LODs I have a single texture map or texture atlas

[carmine ether]

oh okay. Well I was trying to use LODs so when the particle is far, it is just a billboard instead of a mesh, so it would have a different texture. But yeah I will have to use a texture atlas as you mentioned, thanks 😄

[manic shore]

how can I sample from a collection of different meshes in vfx graph?

I want each particle output to use a mesh in this collection via random index

[ashen robin]

Don't think you can easily send in an array of meshes, so you'll have to expose a bunch of mesh attributes. Then, in output you'll be doing some comparison operation for random seeded value, or use a vfx events to send in an index value and compare against that.

[polar oasis]

Hey all! I'm new to using Visual Effects Graphs so this is probably a stupid question. Unity 6, URP 2D project, trying to create a lit burst. Problem 1, the graph says "in order to record the bounds, the current graph needs to be attached..." but I can't find the Target Game Object Panel? Also, after removing the default Unlit quad block and swapping it for the lit quad block, the effect no longer shows up in Game or Scene window.

[ashen robin]

Record just requires you to toss it on the scene and it'll usually resolve itself. Not too sure why swapping unlit with lit would create problems but double check that the transparent sorting is correct if you're using 2D

[quiet zephyr]

hello guys, I have a question, how can I remove this dark aura around particles ?

[ashen robin]

https://i.imgur.com/ILlbYxF.png
Make a new material for your particle system, and use one of Unity's particle shaders then change the color mode: Multiply here to something else like Additive

then stick it into the renderer section of the system

[quiet zephyr]

oh well tysm :)

[half aurora]

How do I change the rotation of a particle over lifetime in VFX Graph?

I've tried setting an Add Angle over Lifetime block in Update, but it doesn't seem to do anything (even after recomiling)

[sleek cave]

where did "flipbook blend" go in Unity 6? (not regular flipbook)

vs in 2019

[warm torrent]

Right there behind the dropdown

[sleek cave]

oh my god thanks 😂

[sleek cave]

anyone else getting this in Unity 6 after saving vfx graph?
TransientArtifactProvider::IsTransientArtifact call is not allowed when transient artifacts are getting updated

possibly editor related bug, I am using URP.
https://discussions.unity.com/t/bug-in-unity-6-build-21-slots-have-been-resynced-in-set-lifetime-of-type-unityeditor-vfx-block-setattribute/1527620

[nimble axle]

How can i make vfx particle meshes have trails like in the particle system?

[warm torrent]

When you create a new VFX graph you can choose a template that has trails for you to build off of, and VFX graph has importable examples in the package manager that are your best resource

[nimble axle]

cool, thanks!

[gritty citrus]

How do i fix my particles phasing into the ground? https://i.imgur.com/7ghrLlX.png

I'm trying to make smoke

[ashen robin]

As in you can see them through the ground? If they are transparent, then the opaque geometry should be able to sort it correctly.

Also got options like soft particles to reduce the rendering clipping near the geometry

[nimble axle]

hey, i've created a new vfx graph and it doesnt let me choose templates, any idea why this might be?

[warm torrent]

iirc it gives you the templates when you create a new vfx graph from the gameobject menu, but not when you create it from the asset menu

[nimble axle]

oh right. one second

[nimble axle]

is this a visual effect asset? or a visual effect container? cause neither are showing up with a template for me

[warm torrent]

https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.visualeffectgraph@17.0/manual/Templates-window.html

[nimble axle]

yeah i read this document too, i cant find the plus symbol

[warm torrent]

I believe the templates are only in Unity 6 / 2023

Or they might be elsewhere

[nimble axle]

ah

great

[warm torrent]

But you still have importable examples available to you

[nimble axle]

where can i find them?

[warm torrent]

In the package manager under samples tab in the entry for that package, same as others

[nimble axle]

okay, tahnk you!

[ashen robin]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKVdg8DsIVY
You can download these right inside of the graph too if you need more templates

[warm torrent]

That's the same one

[ashen robin]

oh is it? I thought yall talking about the few or so templates that now appear when you create a new vfx asset

which are actually pretty helpful considering

[warm torrent]

That was option A but apparently they were missing
I can't check a <2023 editor right now to try to look for them but they had no docs page before that version at any rate

[barren zinc]

Hey guys, how are you? when the game is running and the enemy dies, it spawns a particle effect. very simple.. but from 144fps the game spikes to 120 and if killing a some enemies like 5 to 10 goes to 100fps.. just a simple effect.. any ideas how to improve that?

[ashen robin]

object pooling mostly. I also find generating anything but quads with the particle system tanks fps

I guess the better question here is it the CPU the cause of it or the rendering.
CPU -> ObjectPool
Rendering -> Simpler geometry + instancing

[ripe mantle]

How do I spawn particles in the VFX graph in this shape? I'm talking about the cubes specifically.

Is there a way to have them sample from a texture?

[ashen robin]

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

[ripe mantle]

I'm aware of this block but I think I'm misusing it.

How do I use it to define the spawn positions?

[barren zinc]

will try ty

[ashen robin]

https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.visualeffectgraph@12.0/manual/point-cache-in-vfx-graph.html
with these

I've not really done anything specific with textures, but I've used it baking SDFs from models

[ripe mantle]

Maybe I'm thinking about this wrong, but my initial thought was to create a texture for the "design" of the spawning area. Each particle would sample at some equivalent point in UV space, and if it was below some value, then just set their scale to 0?

Idk.

[ashen robin]

Well, the first problem you need to figure out is how do you iterate over some model/texture like say if you were using a fragment shader, and that would be through the use of the Attribute Map node

[ripe mantle]

The cubes also animate together, with waves moving across them.

[ashen robin]

You can also just do a lot of the positioning logic outside of the graph if you prefer that and just send in the positions

Not sure if you can send in an array of them through the property binders, but with graphic buffers you can

[ripe mantle]

Hmm. I guess the oddity here is, how do I associate each particle with some UV space coordinate, which I can then use to sample from a texture to drive animations.

And I guess the answer is graphics buffers 😛

[ashen robin]

There could be more ways about it. I know you can sample a texture2D inside of the graph, so perhaps there's some nodes to iterate over each pixel value

but like I was saying I've not really done much with the textures (which I should)

[ripe mantle]

I know there's some 3D sequential pattern thing. The question is, even if set up a grid through the graph, is retrieving/generating the associated UV for the particle possible/efficient?

[ashen robin]

But if you are trying to space out a few particles, it may be best just to send in a custom array of a few places

[ashen robin]

Once it's in the particle system it's basically free

invoking a copy is pretty much the only true tax to the VFX graph

[ripe mantle]

Aren't you able to add custom blocks to the graph to store user made values.

If I can set a vector2 for the particle then we're good, no?

Or is that not possible.

No wait things do work on a per particle basis I think.

[ashen robin]

It works similar to the shader graph, but for arrays you need to do it through buffers

https://qriva.github.io/posts/how-to-vfx-graph/#how-to-sample-graphics-buffer

The point graph baking tool does seem promising for textures so worth a look

[ripe mantle]

Feels insane to me by the way that the VFX graph sort of looks similar to Shader Graph but it clearly built from different stuff.

Like when I have a Vector3, I can expand a dropdown to expose all the individual elements like in Amplify Shader.

That's nice.

Give me that please Unity.

[ashen robin]

noice what did you go with

[ripe mantle]

Billion ways to filter.

And I probably chose the worst.

[ashen robin]

Aye pretty good. If it works it works

[prime dome]

Why won't my particles image display?

[mystic meteor]

i've got a shader i've made in shader graph and it works well for meshes but trying it out on a particle gets this weird result

seems like pixels at the end of the texture are being stretched

thats the shader if it helps with anything

[mystic meteor]

think i figured it out

turning off preserve specular did it

[frank coyote]

oh yeah -- you want the specular component to fade to zero as the alpha goes to zero

that's what the "Fade" mode does on the standard particle shader

Preserving specular is good for glass and other shiny surfaces

in that case, the object isn't vanishing; it's just transparent

[frank coyote]

I'm having trouble getting sub-emitter particles to align correctly.

There is an invisible particle system firing particles in a Cone shape. I have "Align to Direction" checked.

It has a sub-emitter that inherits its rotation.

I always get this "saddle shape" pattern, where the spikes point inwards on one axis and outwards on another

This is particularly obvious if I adjust the starting Z rotation of the child particle by 90 degrees.

oops, I had a wacky rotation on the child system in the first two pictures; reposting them now...

The second image has the parent's renderer turned on. It's rendering a mesh to show the orientation of the particle

ah! and of course I stumbled into the solution instantly after complaining about it. Setting "Flip Rotation" to 1 on the child is giving me a consistent orientation

plus a little X rotation -- looks good now

[wild mango]

Hey, i have a problem with my VFX graph. I didn't do that for a while, and so for take it from the start, i just added a basic one. (Here it is on the screen). However, i added the vfx object on the scene, and when it's play, i see nothing... I don't really know why

[open birch]

hey guys, I recently upgraded my project to Unity 6 and since then my rain particles have been acting up. I can tolerate the poorer physics which seem to have gotten worse, but for some reason I can see them through walls? the renderer has everything set to sprite so I have no clue what is going on

[ashen robin]

Make sure geometry isn't transparent
Make sure your particles are depth testing
Double check your rendering pipeline settings haven't been altered

I noticed some of my Render Objects were removed (and Unity shoved its own AO full screen shader in place of them)

[open birch]

geometry isnt transparent and I set the particles sorting layer to -1, still no change :/

also disable SSAO to see if that would change anything

[ashen robin]

to me it looks like it's not depth testing

[open birch]

yeah I agree but I just have no idea why

[ashen robin]

so it's rendering in front of everything

since transparents are drawn last

[open birch]

yeah but the materials are all opaque :/

[ashen robin]

the rain too? If you're using sprites, it's probably transparent

[open birch]

ohhhh I see what you mean now

[open birch]

thank you! I set the sprite material to unlit and its working now

[wild mango]

I still have a problem with this, i can't see any particle, i tried to create a new project with Unity 6 using HDRP or URP, but no particles are shown :/

[frank coyote]

Switch the bounds mode to "Automatic".

With the Visual Effect's object selected, turn on "Show Bounds". Do you see a rectangular shape like this that's changing in size over time?

(the mode is here)

[wild mango]

I've bounds, but i have found the problem... In game mode for no reason now it works, so i googled that this is not working on scene mode

So i saw that the problem was that my scene was not showing the VFX graphs

[nimble axle]

if i call vfxGraph.play while the vfx graph is already playing, will it start from 0 again?

[ruby stone]

yes it looks like it starts the effect again, but does not seem to change already emitted particles

[nimble axle]

so it doesnt delete existing ones? is there a way to delete existing particles?

[ruby stone]

Reinit does this

[nimble axle]

cool, just wondering. I'm using a rollback framework for a fighting game and would like to time the vfx particles to the animation, but i think thats a big pain in the ass so I'm just timing the start and then letting it play. But i would like the start to be rollbackable, which is why I wanted to be able to reinit an animation

[brazen pike]

hello, using the VFX graph i made a rotating circle of particles (8 orbs rotating indefinitly), it was pretty easy using "Set Position (Sequential: Circle)" in the init and a rotate 2D in the update particle.
My problem is i can't find a way to make my particles follow a square path instead of a circle, is there any easy way to achieve that ?
Edit: i'm using Unity 2022.3.51f1

[warm torrent]

Why would fading the alpha with color over lifetime make it so choppy
Or was did it always work like this an I just didn't notice

It's like alpha is restricted to 8 bit color or even less

I don't think there's any reason why the vertex color itself would have to be restricted to that even if the color picker was

A workaround would be to use custom vertex data for it instead, but it seems unnecessary

I would assume VFX Graph has more color depth for alpha by default?

[nimble axle]

is there a way to make UI particle systems yet?

[warm torrent]

Not officially

[nimble axle]

can I ask why it's something that's not available yet? I'm sure a lot of people before me have asked the same thing, is it hard to make or something?

[warm torrent]

I'd guess it's because Particle System and Canvas UI have not been in development for a long time, and their replacements have other much higher priorities
Meanwhile there are third party assets to get it working, and various workarounds so it never was a high priority to begin with

You can combine UI and particle effects, even just by translating screen coordinates to world position when instanting, with the help of different Canvas render modes, or even with camera stacking or render target textures

So there's a lot you can do even without true support, though what your particles will be missing without a full fledged solution are UI features like masking and canvas scaling / anchoring

[nimble axle]

are there any free assets you know of? if not do you have any tutorials for those other methods you've mentioned?

[ashen robin]

There's some plugins I've seen, but otherwise just using a world-space canvas is an idea

[warm torrent]

https://github.com/mob-sakai/ParticleEffectForUGUI this is linked around a lot, but I have no experience with it

[nimble axle]

will have a look at this. thank you!

[hushed fjord]

Hi everyone i got a question, i have a car with a particle system on the wheels that emits smoke when the car is drifting but when the smoke hits the camera, the worlds brightness is going down but if i move the camara away from the smoke, it goes back to normal.

Another thing i noticed is, in scene view, when i look down, the world is much brighter but when i start to look up everything is getting darker

How can i fix this?

[opal star]

That sounds like the adaptive exposure settings in hdrp

[ripe mantle]

I'm trying to do a trail with the following texture.

And for some reason the tail end of it looks extremely jagged. Any tips?

Am I just supposed to set the minimum vertex distance very low?

Also do Trail Renderers just... not scale with the hierarchy?

[warm torrent]

That's a fundamental limitation of not just the trails, but of all typical 3D geometry's UV mapping
https://discussions.unity.com/t/why-are-trail-renderer-uvs-distorted/856378
There's not much of a good workaround besides to not use the width curve, and to have the taper on the trail texture instead of possible

[ripe mantle]

Ah so don’t taper it off with the width and instead bake that fall off into the texture?

Kinda hard to tile that then

Also do trails not scale with the hierarchy? That seems really rough.

[burnt lichen]

How would I go about making a rocket plume for this?

[cobalt scarab]

@tawny delta !collab

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[normal remnant]

does it work with hdrp?

my bad, didn't see it

[stoic parrot]

Hello guys, i'm new to vfx and idk where to start, i dont have any drawing skill, is it fine?

I only have knowledge of basic C# (not OOP) and little basic of unity

Do i need to learn blender?

[burnt lichen]

Yes if you want to create your own assets, if no then no

[stoic parrot]

:0 ty

[humble sundial]

Hi, Im facing issue of normal mapped transparent particle (shuriken) in unity. As picture shows that the particle appears half black in certain view angle, using lit shader graph(HDRP). I have did some research about it and seems to be particle's normal/tangent issue, but im still very beginner with calculating normals and stuff with cg shader code. I tried a few way to make it work but its seems to be buggy at the end. Anyone have experience with this issue?

Here is something i found as ref:
https://discussions.unity.com/t/normal-mapping-particles-only-shows-on-half/594458/2
https://discussions.unity.com/t/normal-mapped-particles/635732
https://realtimevfx.com/t/unity-shuriken-custom-light-setup/24919
https://discussions.unity.com/t/normal-maps-on-shuriken-particle-system-not-working/549895/4

[tawny delta]

Inbox me

[frank coyote]

are you sure that's not just multiple overlapping particles?

probably not, given that you only have 30 particles there

[warm torrent]

Yep sure
In this example the alpha curve goes from 0 to 10 alpha at 20%, then back to zero

Which corresponds to the 10 steps we see for fade in, as well as for fade out

[frank coyote]

Yeah.

[warm torrent]

It doesn't seem so odd, but feels weird I haven't really noticed this before

[frank coyote]

I know that the Particle System doesn't really like HDR colors

I'm also sort of surprised. I guess this is a really slow fade

I'm used to spamming more particles that don't last as long

[warm torrent]

By not like you mean doesn't support at all I presume!

[frank coyote]

indeed! :p

I've worked around that with custom shaders before

You can access the particle's age in a custom vertex stream (i.e. shove it into UV0.z)

[warm torrent]

That's my first second option

[frank coyote]

ah, yes, brain fart

[warm torrent]

The real world use case here is clouds of lingering steam, which seems to make this issue unavoidable

[frank coyote]

You could also just make the texture less opaque, so that you can use the full range of alpha. But that's destructive.

[warm torrent]

Could work in this case, at least to an extent

Though 50% less alpha for half the choppyness might be a hard sell

[frank coyote]

You'd get the same maximum opacity; you'd just be doing it by using the full range of alpha values on the particle system

[warm torrent]

I wonder why there are no HDR colors anyway, seems like a trivial feature

[frank coyote]

I'd guess it's because that'd take up a lot of extra space per-particle

128-bit colors vs. 32-bit colors

It does stick out like a sore thumb

[warm torrent]

What do you mean by full range, if not by reducing the alpha of the source texture?

[frank coyote]

You'd reduce the opacity of the texture so that you can cover a wider range of alpha values in the particle system

That would mean that the texture's opacity has less fidelity (imagine crunching it down to "opaque" and "transparent")

0-100 alpha on a barely-opaque texture instead of 0-10 on a very opaque texture

[warm torrent]

I think that does reduce the maximum alpha I can have per particle
Since I am using 100% particle alpha at a point

[frank coyote]

ah, I thought you stopped at 10

(also, are there only 100 alpha steps in a gradient? that'd be funny...)

[warm torrent]

Ah, that was just to highlight the stepping

Alpha is up to 255 like the other color channels

[frank coyote]

ooh, okay, then no dice

[frank coyote]

You'll need to show your shader code.

I suspect you're working in the wrong coordinate space

e.g. interpreting world-space normals as tangent-space normals

actually -- show me the code and the normal map you're using!

the different kinds of map are very visually distinctive

[warm torrent]

Also if the normal map is not imported (or sampled) as a normal map, it can distort the lighting in a way that seems to cut off

[frank coyote]

mmmm, sRGB normal map

[humble sundial]

it is just simply using HDRP lit shader graph and assigned the material to particle, tried out with normal direction set to 1/0. What i did was testing out silly solution such as using different space normal/tangent to check out the results and try to understand how things work. Still, i cant get any progress or understand stuff after all those trials 😥

[frank coyote]

"set to 1"?

That would mean that the normal vector is [1,1,1]. If it's interpreted in world-space, that'll make the surface appear to be pointing in the +XYZ direction (in a world space)

Given that you have a gradient there, I'd guess it's actually in tangent space

although i'm a little unsure

[humble sundial]

i mean the "normal direction" in the renderer module

[frank coyote]

ah, I see -- I've never noticed that

so a 0 means it works like a sphere, and a 1 means it works like a flat square

[stoic parrot]

How long have you guys doing vfx? Looks cool

[hardy tide]

Cross posting in case anyone here knows

Anyone been able to create a custom output context in vfx graph? Want to build an add on that outputs a particle grid/can set the attributes of a single mesh based on particle index
Original thread:
#↕️┃editor-extensions message

[uncut geyser]

how can i make particles fade out instead of flat out dissapearing

[nimble axle]

why does set velocity along direction not exist in unity 6 vfx graph?

never mind found the problem

[nimble axle]

I'm trying to make rotational velocity, and this seems to work semi okay? how can i make the speed faster though? multiplying the multiply makes the velocity faster and thats not what i want. i want it to twist faster

https://i.imgur.com/LKOrp0z.gif

[ripe mantle]

Well this is horrid.
https://issuetracker.unity3d.com/issues/particle-system-emission-delays-between-particle-generations-when-playing-the-simulation

[nimble axle]

why does add angle not show up in vfx unity 6? I have experimental blcoks enabled

never mind

i had to click ab utton

[nimble axle]

how can i randomize adding angle over life in the vfx graph?

[tiny lantern]

Hi guys, In Unity’s default particle system, how can I address the issue of a VFX effect being obstructed by the ground? The effect is quite large, so adjusting its position along the Y-axis isn’t a practical solution.

[junior thistle]

You should be able to add a custom render pass to the particle material.

I have never used it on particles so I don't 100% know if it works in them, but I don't see a reason why it shouldn't

That's how you usually do it

[frank coyote]

presumably you'd want a stronger rotation

[nimble axle]

i actually forgot about the angle parameter 😭

[frank coyote]

forgor 💀

[nimble axle]

how can i randomize position better? I copied and pasted a system to change from a mesh to a quad, but all the particles spawn in the same place as the original one

[frank coyote]

how are you calculating the starting position right now?

[nimble axle]

in the initialise part

using a cone

[frank coyote]

well, don't use a constant for the position, then

Do you want the particles to emit from a spherical area? a surface?

[nimble axle]

its random isnt it?

https://i.imgur.com/4GKoEq9.gif

[frank coyote]

They're randomly spawning inside of the cone, at least

[nimble axle]

im trying to make a knockout effect

[frank coyote]

But maybe that's not random enough

[nimble axle]

so its meant to be coming out of a cone

i assumed the seed would be different per system

but maybe not?

[frank coyote]

What's the problem, then?

[nimble axle]

it looks fine cause i changed some stuff now

i guess i was using too many samey values

but i've varied it a abit

[nimble axle]

how can i make particle strips not last the entire lifetime and like shorten a bit?

[verbal gale]

Can I link to a Unity Discussion or should I repost the full question here?

[warm torrent]

If you link it, we have a chance to participate in the discussion rather than potentially spending time to repeat information

[autumn grove]

I'm trying to make a trail particle that fades out over time, but the particles do not fade out properly with mesh particles for some reason, even though I set its material to transparent. Can anyone explain how I can fix that?

[nimble axle]

https://discussions.unity.com/t/how-to-repeat-spawn-events-a-set-amount-of-times/1574656

can any vfx heads help me with this?

[verbal gale]

thanks. https://discussions.unity.com/t/particles-velocities-distances-on-the-y-axis-differ-too-greatly-for-what-id-like/1574370

[frank coyote]

Overlapping transparent renderers can get weird.

[ashen robin]

Stencils would fix overlapping transparents similar to how blob shadows work with overlapping

https://www.fraculation.com/blog/overlapping-mesh-render
Good reference

[frank coyote]

Yes, you could use stencils to prevent more than one renderer from ever drawing to a pixel

As long as the meshes don't overlap, it should work out properly

actually, even if they do, unlit renderers will look okay

Lit ones may produce weird results, since the angle of the surface affects the color

so the exact renderer the pixel comes from is more important

[ashen robin]

Actually the trail may be required to have an incrementing stencil index if they were fading it out

and probably not easily doable using unity's module

Or maybe I'm overthinking it

[hardy tide]

Is there a way to get the particleId of the previous/next points in a particle strip in vfx graph?

[ashen robin]

https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.visualeffectgraph@10.2/manual/Operator-GetAttributeParticleIndexInStrip.html
This looks like it and probably behaves similar to how you would use spawnindex standard attribute

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

https://discussions.unity.com/t/vfx-spawnindex-spawncount-relation/866176
Similar idea but per particle (strips count as a single particle by index otherwise Actually, I may need to double check on that as I do recall having problems when managing the indices manually)

[hardy tide]

The problem is I need it for a buffer. So it has to be a globally unique index

[hardy tide]

I've worked around it by having two buffers: one to keep track of memory allocations for each strip

[ashen robin]

Yeah, I think that's probably what I need to do too for my setup if I want to incorporate them, but the last time I've tried to work with them I was having culling problems when trying to control the buffers. Maybe it's just how the strips work, but it seemed like it was rendering all segments of the strips even if only the head of the index was active.

They could have been improved in 6 since they're not experimental anymore though

[inland tusk]

I'm thinking about adding (simple) health bars to my game, and I was wondering whether to do it with drawinstanced or a vfx graph being fed positions and values through graphics buffer (I'm currently GPU bound). any advice?

[ashen robin]

Either way would work, but if you wanted to pool the bars then doing inside of the vfx graph is probably more convenient

[inland tusk]

yeah... I guess my thinking was maybe it's easier to have dynamic numbers of healthbars, and doing more of the calculations etc on cpu but even just the ease of use of showing/hiding on fov and stuff in vfx graph feels more intuitive to me, but yeah I was thinking more of iterating through the data to draw them and not having gameobjects for them at all

[nimble axle]

can you manually update a VFX graph?

using a time value?

or like update it backwards or something

[inland tusk]

iirc backwards yes if you give it a control track on a timeline

can't remember more specifically I'm afraid

[nimble axle]

no worries. I'm just asking because I am using photon quantum, which is a rollbackable system, and I'd like to use VFX graphs in tandem with the rollbackable animations they have in the system to add effects for my characters

[inland tusk]

yeah i think if youhave a vfx control track on a timeline you can manually move around the time of it

[molten crag]

What's the current best performing solution for basic / old style particle systems in URP? I want to assume that VFX Graph would add unnecessary overhead, but I wouldn't want to make the wrong assumption and end up using the legacy particle system if it's worse performing

[ashen robin]

VFX graph will always be the better solution assuming you've got the hardware, but if you're just working with quads and want something quick then the particle system gets the job done

[warm torrent]

I think vfx graph overheard is still bigger, especially if the effects can't be batched, though it's much more efficient per particle

[ashen robin]

If you were to use one-shot systems there's probably a larger cost on instantiation but that's just an assumption

if there's a larger overhead I can only think that it's the GPU that's probably dealing with it

[warm torrent]

It was the official guideline from some years ago when the system was new so it might not be relevant by now
Testing should reveal which one has more acceptable type of cost

[molten crag]

Guess I'll be learning VFX Graph then, thanks 🙂

Does VFX Graph perform ok in webgl builds?

By which I mean the system itself, what I'm making with it is stupidly simple, that's why I'm more concerned with overhead

[ashen robin]

You'd have to build as WebGPU then so make sure to look into that first

[deft flax]

https://youtu.be/xHNSrjpiN2g

[warm torrent]

#1180170818983051344 is the place for dev logs and other showcases

[inland tusk]

    private NativeArray<VFXHealthbar> healthbarArray;
    [SerializeField] private VisualEffect healthbaVFXGraph;
    private VFXHealthbar tempemptyhealthbar;
    private GraphicsBuffer healthbarBuffer;




        int healthbarVFXDataSize = Marshal.SizeOf<VFXResourceData>();


        healthbarBuffer = new GraphicsBuffer(GraphicsBuffer.Target.Structured, maxHealthbars, healthbarVFXDataSize);
        healthbarArray = new NativeArray<VFXHealthbar>(maxHealthbars, Allocator.Persistent);
        healthbaVFXGraph.SetGraphicsBuffer("healthbarBuffer", healthbarBuffer);

        healthbarBuffer.SetData(healthbarArray);

is leading to this error, ArgumentException: SetData(): One of C# data stride (28 bytes) and Buffer stride (48 bytes) should be multiple of other.
UnityEngine.GraphicsBuffer.SetData[T] (Unity.Collections.NativeArray`1[T] data) (at <6ff3bcb667574bf9a8630184172fcfbf>:0)
UnitManager.UpdateHealthbarBuffer () (at Assets/Prototype/AI/UnitManager.cs:944)

but they are the same data struct? Any idea why?

[hardy tide]

Any reason why all the vfx graph stuff is internal to the package?
Would love to build some context extensions to do some more advanced simulations

[hardy tide]

I'm for example wanting to simulate ropes/cloth in an artist controllable manner. The easiest way to do this would be to create a custom update and output context that can run through all the graph code multiple times to help improve stability

[frank coyote]

The particle system component gets really mad at me if I don't have my sub-emitters as children

However, it looks like I can just...not do that

I have two particle systems that both target a third as a sub-emitter, and that system is parented to neither of them

It appears to be working fine

Are there any gotchas there?

The only issue I can see right now is that the third system is emitting particles on its own

but it looks like I can completely turn off its Emission module to fix that

[thin cove]

Are there any resources for 2d jrpg vfx like maplestory or https://youtu.be/SLiGI44LFG4

[jaunty stream]

Question, do I need to design all my VFX under the assumption that one Visual Effect object in the scene will be producing all of its effects, or can I safely use multiple Visual Effect Objects (that use the exact same effect) without risking slowdown issues?

I know not to pre-optimize, I'm just looking for best practices, in this case.

[ashen robin]

Best practice is to just reuse your systems instead of using one-shot effects, but if you're not running into problems then I'd continue with whatever method you're working with currently

mem vs instantiation/garbage collection

[jaunty stream]

I've only JUST started implementing VFX, is why I ask, so I don't actually HAVE a current method yet.

So best practice would be to have like, a "Slash" Visual Effect, and have scripts feed that one effect every sword's position in the scene that needs a slash trail from it?

As opposed to having copies of the Slash visual effect on each sword that needs one

[ashen robin]

1. Instantiate the effect then clean it up when the effect expires
2. Create a pool of effects that live somewhere on the scene and cycle through them; disable when they aren't being used
3. Create a master particle system from the VFX graph where you consult it to create a new effect

The three ways I go about making systems

[jaunty stream]

Okay, so it's fine to have multiple objects of a Visual Effect (using the same Visual Effect Graph Asset, as long as they're pooled/managed?

[ashen robin]

Yeah, sure why not. Particle systems technically are already pooling systems that pool your particles, so might as well go the extra step and pool the pools

[trim tide]

How does the camera depth sorting in VFX graph work? What's the algorythm?

[wind ferry]

i need help with this, layering system looks like this and i have to make this open and close in unity with correct layering, how should i take this approach

[warm torrent]

Export them as separate transparent images

Then order them in manually in unity in the scene as Sprites or Images or as whichever you need them as

[wind ferry]

thank you very much :3

[wind ferry]

ah this is kind of animation is new for me, would you mind if i dmed you for help

[warm torrent]

It is best to stay here and give more details what your goal is

[wind ferry]

alright, so im done with exporting them all individually

and now the goal is for it to play an animation where it opens and closes

but so far ive only used shader graph and particle systems for animations, im not sure if thats what i should use for this aswell

[warm torrent]

Technically you could do it with Animator, SG or PS pretty much just as well

Kinda comes down to how it's used in the end

Particle systems are very simple to instantiate locally
Animator can also do it in UI
Shader Graph gives you control over each pixel for fancier effects

[wind ferry]

its supposed to be for an ability for a character, like a top down game, it should appear when you press a button on an enemy

which one would you recommend?

[wind ferry]

also what does SG mean, and PS as in photoshop?

oh wait

particle system

and shader graph

my bad

[warm torrent]

Yes
In that case I might go with a Particle System, at least if the jaw motion is simple
Then you'd have one PS with a sub-emitter for each part that needs to move individually
Then the motion of each part comes from that particle's velocity which you'd control with the modules