✨┃vfx-and-particles

[warm torrent]

Animator would let you arbitrarily determine the transform of each sprite in its hierarchy, which is more convenient for complex effects
But if it needs to be always facing the camera you won't get that automatically like with particles but instead need a script or a shader for that (billboarding)

[wind ferry]

if i should use particle system i think im fine then, thanks for letting me know

that should be all, :D

happy new year

[warm torrent]

Feel free to ask here if more questions pop up during the implementation, or otherwise

[scenic torrent]

I haven't done particles in a while, two questions:

• Why do my particles seem to anchor to the top left corner instead of centered?
• Why do the particles shrink into the top left corner instead of towards their center the way they're spaced out in the sprite pack?

Setting the Pivot to be -0.5 X and 0.5 Y seems to 'center' their spawn spot, but as the animation plays out it still moves/resizes into the top left corner instead of staying centered

Hm changing the sprite pack from tight to full rect seems to have fixed the positioning part, weird though. Doesnt that mean its added overdraw?

[hearty flare]

I've never used Sprite in VFX before, but your pivot in the sprite editor is in the top left; perhaps that's affecting it?

[slim bolt]

Hola! I'm a 3D artist using Blender and I'm trying to find a way to use an animated texture I've made using Blender's shader nodes system such that it can be read in Unity. Does anyone have any thoughts?

[ashen robin]

Messing with anything shader related in blender will probably not import into Unity beyond the standard Blender shading

you can bake the textures and flip book it

otherwise just do the texturing in blender then do the shadering in Unity

[slim bolt]

Here's the setup I've got working in Blender. (The blender folks sent me here btw lol so sorry if you don't understand much of this)- I could possibly bake the lit and unlit texture seperately and transition between them in Unity?

of course I'll have to plug it into a BSDF shader

[ashen robin]

Yeah not entirely sure about that. It's not like this is some GLSL code you can just copy paste over

lot of the Unity's shaderlab stuff has its own shadering syntax of its own

baking it into a flipbook would work though if you want to do that, but I would just suggest learning to write it in Unity

the shader graph is very comparable too to that of blenders

[marsh drift]

I'm trying to use unity vfx graph and follow a tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAVCTR23CTw
But once I set the color intensity to 6, alpha doesn't seem to apply and it's always visible

Any ideas?

[marsh drift]

Or antoher way to look at it: any idea how to create an effect like this, specifically the lightning lines?

[tame geyser]

how do i make particles load only near the player ?

[solar trellis]

parent the emitter to the player and make the size not that big?

[tame geyser]

how do i parent it to the player? i dont have any player in the heirarchy i only have the player spawner (this is a mod level for a game)

[solar trellis]

oh, never work using mods before, i tought you asking on how to do that for you unity engine game

[tame geyser]

ah gotcha, the mods are still made thru unity i just dont have a dedicated player model

i just want to make the snowflakes more dense without fps loss

[solar trellis]

yeah, not sure how to do that, i mean if you know how to detect the player then you can use script to do that (example search local player using layer/tag/etc)

then after you find the local player just parent it

not sure if the script could executed in the game tho

[tame geyser]

is there a way to parent it to a camera?

[solar trellis]

using script? yeah ofc

again, not sure if they have protection for 3rd party script or not

[tame geyser]

im sure they dont but i honestly dont know how to use script let alone even make it

[solar trellis]

you can hop to chatgpt and they will generate you to do that

Laugh2

[tame geyser]

oh yeahhh i forgot about that🤣

[solar trellis]

yup, it work very well for something that's not really complex

[tame geyser]

ill try that, thanks for the help

[royal osprey]

Any advice on improving graphics? I feel like something is missing.

bloom, gradient sky are added on hdrp

[marsh drift]

Any tips/guide on how to create a 2d electric floor? looking for something like the electric lines on this fence

[stark condor]

im having a hard time figuring out how to get a specific visual effect. anyone got any ideas?
general concept is: some outdoorsy level where the entire thing is absolutely smothered in impenetrable mist. think stephen king style mist. there are altars that the players unlock throughout the level that basically burn a bubble in the mist. totally clear up to some radius, and then gradually dropping off until a cliff is hit where it's "mist wall".

i screwed around with a couple different approaches using particle systems, doesn't seem like its going to give me the effect im looking for.

im looking into volumetric fog but the first vids im watching are just using it for atmosphere (har) not as some game system that can be manipulated.

any suggestions what i should start looking at for a way to do this?

[tame geyser]

some sort of volumetric fog would be sick

[deep tapir]

hello does anyone have any idea how this effect was made

I'm trying to make similar balls of fog

without it being a smoke simulation

[royal osprey]

I will try thank you!

[clear spruce]

The graphics look good enough to me. The scene just looks too empty. Adding more props/assets would make the scene have more life in it

[steel bane]

imo volumetric fog is overkill. Normal fog will help, plus tuning a nice colour balance between light colour and shadow colour.

This, plus some bloom and some AO will do wonders.

[steel bane]

Definitely smoke planes, camera aligned. Could be placed with a particle system or by hand, but having them spawned/killed as particles dynamically will be most "alive" looking. Soft particle blending into the surrounding geometry will help with obvious clipping too.

Oh sorry, I actually thought you meant the mist. The black smoke is just a particle effect. It's very simple, just a round black smoke shaped texture spawned over distance, with size over lifetime.

Looks like it's got some turbulence on its movement too

[outer gull]

I have a partical system in unity with a 2D fire shader with render mode set to vertical billboard, when I get closer to the object it gets smaller, how can I fix this?

[clear spruce]

Could be done with particles with a trail as well I guess

[hybrid kestrel]

I would make a particle system that spawns smoke particles over distance or time, uses the size over lifetime module to have trailing particles get smaller, and maybe use subtractive blending in the particles material?

[ashen robin]

Oh, didnt realize you had a video

Ok, so those smoke balls you mean look like just a particle trail, which you can probably just use Unity's standalone module for

otherwise both VFX graph and the shuriken particle system incorporates it if you need a bit more customization

[icy wing]

Is your camera set to perspective?

[marsh drift]

The time node doesn't seem to update in the shader graph editor, but I know it should.
How to fix this?

Attached 2 images:
(a) where the multiply is 0, so offset is 0 - this is the original
(b) where the multiply is 1, so offset should be time, but it's just a constant yellow

[outer gull]

Yes

[icy wing]

Try orthographic and see if it fixes the issue. If not, let me know

[outer gull]

Ok ill try

I guess its works, but actually fire get smaller when i get closer with my first person character

[icy wing]

Is your game in 3D?

[outer gull]

Yes

[icy wing]

Well vertical billboard will scale the particles based off of the camera distance so i’d try to change the render mode

And change the start size to 3D if it already isn’t

[outer gull]

Where is render mode?

[icy wing]

The render module

[outer gull]

Lovely it works thx

[marsh drift]

Following this tutorial, where he adds a color with intensity to the trail: https://youtu.be/bAVCTR23CTw?si=GE6zKby582oGs2hg&t=386

And I've done the same - but mine is completely white, no shining blue in the middle.
What am I missing?

[zealous wing]

perhaps you have no post processing in the scene

[inland tusk]

I'm mulling over the possibility of creating incremental cracks in glass using particle strips, so a couple of particles move out in jaggy lines across a surface leaving particle strips behind them... reckon it'd work out ok?

could i for example lock particles to a mesh (stlil move on the surface)

[sinful light]

You can use pointcache and meshes to emit particles there. guess you might be also able to some how get a random point on that mesh and let a point run from a to b

[inland tusk]

mm, the only way I know of currently that would do it would be SDFs, but I'm not sure I have the gpu capacity for this.(gpu bound mobile vr). Maybe CPU calculate the initial particles (there shouldn't be too many/much) and feed in the positions by graphicsbuffer

[sinful light]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Jb9yHFSvtc So I mean this and go from there. Also works with animated meshes

[inland tusk]

yep, I know how to spawn particles on a surface, but I'm talking about animated movement along a surface

like, constrain a particles position to be locked to the surface but still reacting to forces etc

[sinful light]

And as you get the point mesh, I wonder, if you can just use the index of the point and iterate through that array of mesh vertices to move from particle startpoint to random vertice within a certain distance. Otherwise, you could always use shadergraph to move something visually along a distance or you could try to get the vector point from raycasting against the mesh and return your hit point for the animation running.

[inland tusk]

hmm random selection of nearby vertices as movement targets is interesting

[spring lake]

Check this one out > same guy https://youtu.be/_9XTglJTt30?si=R7o7HQWsaZqKNcoL

[rigid linden]

Hello there ! Using VFX graph, I'd like to use the life time (as float, not using GPU events) of an A block for a B block in the same system. The idea is to be able to move the shape spawner of B particles (which is a constant spawnrate) depending the lifetime of my A particle (which is a single burst) ! Does anyone know if there's a way to do it ? Thanks in advance ! :)

[ashen robin]

https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.visualeffectgraph@17.0/manual/Properties.html

[spark tapir]

I am trying to learn how to use vfx graph and stumbled across the issue: Every tutorial says about GPUevent node, but for me it just... not there :\ I cant create it any way I know, what am I doing wrong?

[drowsy coral]

My vfx is not showing color for some reason. If I apply an effect on default objects I don't see anything but if I apply it on an imported object I get this:

Shader warning in '[Slash] [System] Update Particle': Buffer count exceeding default GL_MAX_SHADER_STORAGE_BUFFER_BINDINGS. Shader might not work on all hw. Consider combining separate buffers into one containing struct elements. at kernel CSMain (on gles3)

[ashen robin]

If you're using any of unity's previous versions then you may need to enable the experimental nodes inside of preferences

[ashen robin]

Hard to really debug a lot of that since it's all internal to the shader code, so my suggestion is just try recompiling otherwise remaking the graphs

https://discussions.unity.com/t/vfx-stop-working-when-update-2021-3-16f1-to-2022-or-2023/904038/3
Probably related

[spark tapir]

okay, thank you!

[deft forum]

Is there any way to alter the frustrum culling settings for particles in VFX Graph? In particular, to add some extra padding so the frustrum culling is less aggressive

[deft forum]

Found something in the LOD settings 👍 ^

[light beacon]

I've set up a replacement shader system that replaces the opaque material (on the left) with a transparent one (on the right), but it messes up the particle depth. With the left, the different particles actually have depth and appear to combine together to form a single cloud, but with the right, each sphere renders right over the others as a single circle and it looks 2D instead of 3D. How would I fix this while still allowing a transparent effect?

[trail vine]

I'm working on a cloud shadow effect using VFX Graph. Is it possible to blend the opacity of my particles so that their opacity doesn't stack like this?

[ashen robin]

I'd probably tackle this issue by drawing it as a single mesh and such that this shaders acts on object space as a whole instead of independent meshes

you don't sort transparent pixels by depth, not that easily at least

[ashen robin]

Here's a solution if you want to do it on the editor UI (site not loading that well for me unfortunately)
https://www.fraculation.com/blog/overlapping-mesh-render

Otherwise doing it through shader code:
https://discussions.unity.com/t/2d-issue-with-overlapping-transparent-objects/597558

[trail vine]

Thanks for the answer! I'll give those two options a try.

I’ve actually experimented with using a shader before (link to code), and while it did work, I ran into issues with its interaction with the UI Mask component. The mask wouldn’t function correctly in areas where the cloud texture was present. You can see this in the attached image. Perhaps my shader wasn’t well-coded, though.

[ashen robin]

Right, the UI mask also uses the stencil buffer. If you actually open up Unity's UI shader code it'll be exactly like the code linked above

So probably need to work on another stencil buffer index

[trail vine]

I see.

So probably need to work on another stencil buffer index
Not sure how to do that, but I'll do some research. Thanks!

[ashen robin]

It may be better to render the UI after flushing the stencil buffer via multiple viewport, but using the URP render objects and filtering by layers does give some independency and control over rendering ordering.

Basically the operation you're doing with the stencil comparison is setting your pixels to a value when drawing, and to prevent it from overdrawing you're doing a comparison on these set values; if 0 -> draw shadow, if not -> ignore

But the problem here is if you're comparing by the default stencil value of 0, then it'll replace the UI if it doesn't update its own stencil values beyond the default... but that would also mean that the UI is being draw first which really shouldnt be the case so I'm a little confused here.

[trail vine]

Thanks again for taking the time to respond and explain things. I’ve spent the last few hours trying to fix the issue. Tweaking the shader, messing with the stencil ID, and even asking ChatGPT, but nothing seemed to work. Then I thought maybe the way I’m masking the dev console’s scroll view was the problem. I swapped out the Mask component for Rect Mask 2D, and it just kinda works now. I’m not sure if this is the right solution, but it seems to have done the trick. 🤔

[ashen robin]

Ah, apparently Rect Mask 2D doesn't use stenciling. I wonder how it works internally then

Looks like it clips the actual quad

[trail vine]

Ah, I see. And it seems RectMask2D is just for rectangular masking, but that works perfectly for what I need right now. Hopefully, I won’t run into a situation later where I’d need to use an image or sprite for masking, but for now, I think I’m good!

Thanks for all the help!

[light beacon]

Does that mean I'd have to procedurally generate a mesh at runtime, based on the orientation, mesh and scale of each particle? Or is there a simpler way?

[light beacon]

Actually this is also something I've been dealing with. I'm currently making do with a dithering effect, which works well enough for my use case, but learning how this works for real would be nice.

[light beacon]

also that first link is helping me learn about stencil stuff, so thanks for that

[ashen robin]

Are these 3D meshes (not quads) and are they being used with Unity's particle systems here?

[light beacon]

Yes, a particle system using sphere meshes instead of billboards

[ashen robin]

Oh, and is the opacity completely solid here cause I can't really tell

I assume it is cause I'm not seeing any overdraw

shader is interesting cause it looks like quads to me

[light beacon]

With the replacement shader, it's technically transparent but uses a stepped dithering effect, so each pixel is either completely opaque or completely transparent

[ashen robin]

The way it's popping in and out is kinda strange as it should just be overdrawing if it's being rendered with the particle system. It's not like you're sorting between different transparents

or to get an idea what I mean is just use a standard transparent shader and see the behaviour from that

Another experiment you can try is making two large independent transparent spheres and try to get one to render the other and vice versa

[ashen robin]

I'm using the term overdraw a little too loosely here. You get overdraw regardless since that's just the nature of alpha blending. What I'm trying to say is that Unity's transparent sorting axis does not apply to each independent particle, only the particle system itself. So, when you create a bunch of transparent particles, it's just drawing the particles as-is (system will usually draw them by index value) because when dealing with transparency you don't write to the depth buffer - but you do test against it.

https://docs.unity3d.com/6000.0/Documentation/ScriptReference/ParticleSystemSortMode.html
There's a few sort modes you can play around with here on the system

Not too sure if custom shader options override them though

Actually just testing it and the depth sorting is basically z-sorting, so that's probably what you got going on. Regardless, the question about the shader I can't say for sure, but creating a vertex shader is an idea.

[errant terrace]

Has anyone ran into this issue where all rendering breaks (pink materials) and unity starts to reimport seemingly every VFX asset in the project?

I have no idea what triggers it, happened a few times over the past couple of weeks. I'm on HDRP, Unity 2021.3.39f1, with Visual Effects Graph package 12.1.15

It still happens after I nuked the library

After it breaks for the first time, it starts reimporting again usually when I select something, recompile scripts or enter playmode. Reopening the project fixes it

[light beacon]

same popping in front/behind effect when tested with the standard URP lit shader, set to transparent and with opacity at 0.5

same deal with the thermal shader placed onto two regular sphere primitives

here they are after I changed the thermal vision material to be opaque

[warm torrent]

Like Mao said sorting of transparent meshes is never really accurate, since it's always per mesh
Or in particle system's case per particle as per the Sort Mode

Since you mean to use dithering that's either fully clipped or fully opaque, that suggests you don't need transparency at all

Opaques can be alpha clipped by the dither pattern and still benefit from accurate depth sorting amongst themselves

[warm torrent]

This started happening out of the blue on Unity 6 for just one person from the team, and we never fully fixed it
I think the bandaid solution was to keep the vfx graphs open in tabs, which at least seemed to reduce the frequency

[errant terrace]

I'll try that bandaid and hope for the best. Thanks

Unfortunately the VFX package was always pretty unstable for me

Most of my crash logs relate to VFX

[ashen robin]

Forcing depth on the transparents does actually give somewhat similar results if the opacity isn't needed lowered, but then you have to question why you wouldn't just use opaque shading. A lot of the problem to this question relies more on how the shader should work, if you need depth then it probably wouldn't work across independent renders, so it needs to be done in object space.

[errant terrace]

I'm doing grass rendering with VFX but I guess i'll have to ditch that for now :/

[warm torrent]

Definitely worth reporting if it's both this elusive and persistent
Weird that it popped up in both 2021 and 6 just now

[errant terrace]

Yeah I was hoping it would be fixed in newer versions but apparently not

I'll definitely report it if it persists

Didn't find anything about it online

[warm torrent]

We tried deleting library and updating the editor too but those seemed to have no effect

[errant terrace]

I need to remember to look at the logs files next time it h appens too

[warm torrent]

Would this kind of thing be logged? I've only dealt with crash logs so far

[errant terrace]

Not sure, maybe not

I think there was a unity tool that lets you inspect what triggered an import... I gotta find that

Aha, I think this is it https://docs.unity3d.com/6000.0/Documentation/Manual/ImportActivityWindow.html

Now I'll just wait for it to happen again.. This time i'll be prepared! 🪖

[warm torrent]

Yeah there's options with particular use cases like that writing to depth buffer, clearing other transparents with an empty pass, or even order independent transparency
Only assuming that they would actually be needed

[light beacon]

I wasn't aware you could have alpha clipping even with opaque materials, that'll be interesting. That being said, I do want to try doing it with actual transparency, since it's more complicated and I'm trying to improve/show off my shader skills

[warm torrent]

Since the result will look exactly the same (and perform worse) I don't think that's a good way to flex

[light beacon]

the dithering was for the sake of having multiple 'transparent' objects layered over each other while retaining the same opacity, but I was doing some reading on accomplishing the effect for real using stencil values

[warm torrent]

If you want to face that challenge in an appropriate situation, you'll want semitransparent meshes
Like a ghost that's wearing clothes

First problem in that example is that a concave mesh will be seen through itself if semitransparent
Second one is that if the clothes are a separate object, they get sorted by origin by default

[warm torrent]

There's two ways to do this generally
Either is the z writing + empty pass transparency method so only the closest pixel of the transparent particle is rendered and then blended with opaque geometry behind it (which means absolutely no other transparents can be seen behind it)
Or render them into an entirely new buffer as opaque and blend that buffer onto the rendered image

[light beacon]

so the first method will appear as if everything on that layer is opaque, but only to other objects on that layer?

Because that's basically exactly what already happens with my dithering effect

so that shouldn't be a big deal

[light beacon]

looking at this, I may need to do the latter. I'm getting too many annoying depth issues, from stuff rendering over other stuff in the wrong order, because the material I'm using is technically transparent.

[ashen robin]

Stenciling seems like it would produce similar results since it's not like it's a single* color of transparency

[light beacon]

yeah I just changed my material to be technically opaque but still use alpha clipping, and the 'meshes popping in front of each other' issue was solved, and I currently still get transparency due to the dither effect. That being said, I'm still going to try the 'render stuff to a new buffer as opaque then add it on afterwards with a decreased opacity' method, so I can ditch the dithering and make the effect look smoother.

[light beacon]

I'm also going to experiment with stencilling

but for now I'm happy to have my smoke clouds looking like solid objects and not clusters of floating 2D sprites

[ashen robin]

I'm still not too sure what results you're trying to get, but I'm just comparing the left shader to the right, and if you wanted say the left clouds to be transparent with outlining like that, then it needs to be done in a single rendering, otherwise a solid color shader of transparency then doing some full-screen post processing

Actually you could only get color from full-screen... so probably do need to do a lot of the edge detection in object space then (or do a ghost rendering for depth like previously stated to get edges from depth)

[light beacon]

well my initial question was to try and go for this, which now I've gotten

having the different meshes of the particle system look like a single cloud, rather than a bunch of drawn images layered on top of each other

[ashen robin]

Ah, so you do kinda want it to become this 2D type of illusion using 3D meshes then

then in that case that stencil page is probably all you need

[light beacon]

one wacky thing I want to try though, is if rather than just a keep/replace check, seeing if I can keep/replace the opacity but still blend the colours

but that's a task for another time, I'm getting tired

[ashen robin]

I would assume it would blend if the stencil test passes

There's probably more you can work with using custom pipeline passes if URP objects aren't enough

[light beacon]

I've already made a custom render feature for this mechanic (thermal vision), so I can do custom draw calls for scene objects with specific heat values

so I'm sure I'll be able to figure out a precise set of separate stencil values within the confines of the render pass

[ashen robin]

Doing everything in the fragment is probably the easiest way about it but again you'd be acting on that rendering only

but you can also get information such as scene color so there's probably a solution there

[nimble axle]

is there a way to get hdrp distortion in urp?

or something similar?

[light beacon]

Does the scene colour node still work if no layers are rendering normally? In my render feature, every layer is disabled, and everything is rendered custom using additional render features

[ashen robin]

It's basically some render texture, but I forgot it only captures after opaques are rendered and before transparents so it's probably not usable for this.

So the only thing I can think of other than fragment is doing some multipassing. You'd probably need to append to some color buffer then resolve it yourself after transparents.

[wind ferry]

whats the best way to get some sort of motion like this for a dash for a character, i did some stuff with size over lifetime and curves and velocity over lifetime but it just keeps looking so unnatural, do i just need to adjust it more or take a different approach?

[valid jacinth]

ok, completely new to particles but watched a couple tutorials and been playing around with some example assets. i need a wind streak effect to play over a ship model to give the illusion of the ship moving fast. is that just a curved mesh like this?

or would like an animated billboard sprite with a limited spawn arc be easier?

[ashen robin]

Try messing around with the standalone trail renderer as I've found it to work out pretty well with what properties it has

[ashen robin]

https://i.imgur.com/h25aWWc.png
Can make a quad like that and use another texture or a gradient and scroll it over the albedo

in this case black would be alpha ^

[valid jacinth]

oh yeah that might work

not a particle system?

[ashen robin]

could try particle trails over a path

or as I mentioned above, just using the standalone trail renders would work fine too

[wind ferry]

That sounds pretty smart actually, yeah, ill give it a shot, thank you

[valid jacinth]

first try, kinda works?

[ashen robin]

aye looking fancy

[valid jacinth]

i guess a quad to make it curve over the nose more like you mentioned would be the polishing touch

its just a flat cone for now

[rigid linden]

Hello there !

In my VFX, I have 2 systems (a and b) and I'd like to send information from one to another so when I modify the color of A one, it modifies the B one.
For example, I've a first system that is a single burst system which is looping and a second one which is a constant spawnrate. I'd like to use the "get age over lifetime" of my A particle and use it in order to modify a value in my B system. (lets say the size so every particles of my B system acts depending the lifetime of my A particle). I hope my question makes sense !
Thanks in advance !

[sinful light]

Hey there, I am wondering, if its possible to add a material to a rawimage, that "scatters" the images plane depending on a float. I could also shift to a simple mesh, but was wondering, if there is a nice shadergraph magic I could do which I could adapt to other UI elements too and not just the rawimage/image one.

Actually not sure, if this or shader is the right place. as it could also be a vfx graph or whatever. Let me know when to shift

[ashen robin]

Getting anything out from system is a pain as the last time I checked you could only send parameterless events from the output, so the more manageable way to do this is just handle any sort of synchronization outside of the system then update the properties of the systems via scripts. If this needs to be done per particle then you're looking into using graphic buffers and managing particle data through that, otherwise you can simply change the properties of the system if these are one-shots.

You can also use secondary systems linked by GPU events to spawn newer particles on top of the current system particles and inherit the attributes from the previous.

It's a shame how barebones GPU events are, because this would be a case of using them but they've not really been expanded upon for quite some time.

[errant terrace]

Can you elaborate what you mean with "scatters the image's plane"?

Shatters? 👀

[rigid linden]

Meh, I was afraid to go through scripting (which is definetely not my strong point :')). I hoped there was a trick using gpu event but sadly, I didn't find anything :/

[sinful light]

Hm yeh, maybe shatters is a better word. I was thinking of "vertices" being distributed in some kind of noise pattern. But yeh, shattering like shatter a mirror sounds closer to what I mean 🙂

[errant terrace]

Maybe some kind of voronoi effect? I have used this to generate voronoi meshes https://github.com/nol1fe/delaunator-sharp with poisson disk positions as input
No idea how you'd do that in a shader for a RawImage though

Maybe you could do some tricks by offsetting cells based on their IDs in shader graph https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.shadergraph@6.9/manual/Voronoi-Node.html

Do you have an example of the type of effect you want?

[sinful light]

I think I come to the conclusion, that it will be way simpler to step away from the UI entirely and just go with meshes. I assume, even the performance would be better taking into account, how the UI can add up very quickly to rendering issues in world space. As an example, I guess this video shows the effect in the best way I could find. So it is similar to a point cloud where the colors are based on the texture loaded: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qF_qbaWt3Q

And the farer away its from the camera, the more it willspread, but thats just a multiplier anyways

[hollow hemlock]

!code

[gleaming flicker]

Posting code

📃 Large Code Blocks

Use links to services like:
https://paste.mod.gg/, https://hastebin.skyra.pw/, https://paste.ofcode.org/, https://paste.myst.rs/, https://scriptbin.xyz/

📃 Inline Code

Surround code with three backquotes. Not quotation marks.
To format as C#, add cs to the first line:
```cs
// Your code here
```
Add a comment with a line number if there is an error message.

[hollow hemlock]

https://paste.mod.gg/zjkhrevdsauq/0

can someone help me why my muzzle isnt shooting

[warm agate]

when are you calling Shoot()?

also, unrelated to the previous thing

does this block even work? (VFX graph)

most of the stuff online i can find says that it just doesn't work. although i've also seen tutorials with it working fine

[ashen robin]

It works 'ok' but particles can, and will probably still clip through it

stick to baking the collision on your levels if you want a more hardy solution

Though, even in today games do I still see many particles clipping through walls so trying to perfect everything isn't always feasible

[warm agate]

oh. i guess im just using it wrong then

im not really too worried about particles clipping

but for me, the block just doesn't work at all

the particles either get stuck just above the camera, or dont appear at all

[ashen robin]

Seems like the skybox is getting written the depth buffer 0_o

[warm agate]

yeah, that's what i thought it was at first too. doesn't seem to be the case though

[ashen robin]

odd, I'd say try rendering it to a texture and see what's happening

[warm torrent]

I'd restart the editor when something this odd happens

[warm agate]

i would try that. but, im not entirely sure how. i did try searching it but i cant find anything that doesn't require a shader (i'll try making a shader though, if i cant find any quicker fixes)

[warm agate]

i'll try this now

[warm agate]

somehow, that made it worse

for context, it should look like this (currently using collide with plane)

[warm agate]

huh, this only happens when the vfx editor is closed

[warm agate]

imported the same thing into a unity 6 project, same thing happens

[warm agate]

*also i just realised i misread this *

[warm agate]

question, how do i do that?

[ashen robin]

Something to google but the camera has the depth information and you can probably access it directly and use Unity's API to get it rendering onto a RenderTexture, or access it via shader graph.

[warm torrent]

Rendering Debugger can also display depth
Quickly accessible with the play mode hotkey ctrl + backspace

[warm agate]

i knew there was a way to show the depth texture in the scene view. was having trouble finding it lol

(ignore the small white dot near the bottom left, that's just some random UI)

i think its using the wrong camera

i have a seperate camera for rendering the weapons so they dont clip into terrain

still weird how i got the same error in another project though, that didn't have 2 cameras

welp, im lost again. tried reloading the scene. for some reason it's still using other camera for the rendering debugger

well, i finally found a "it just doesn't work" comment that isn't from 3+ years ago. i officially give up

[ashen robin]

oh damn news to me

[ashen robin]

I'd just bake a collision map, especially for something like a FPS because the collision is temporary and only what the camera is rendering

for example if you wanted rain, it'll seep through the ceiling if you're not rendering it

[warm agate]

i'll look into it. i haven't actually tried baking a collision map before

[warm torrent]

What process do you refer to by "bake a collision map"? It doesn't ring a bell to me

[ashen robin]

https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.visualeffectgraph@16.0/manual/sdf-bake-tool-api.html

[warm torrent]

Ah right SDFs

[ashen robin]

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

[warm torrent]

Passing primitive colliders from collider components into a vfx graph may also be an option that's preferable in bigger scenes especially
Though I don't know if there's big issues doing that dynamically

[warm agate]

made a few tweaks and recreated LA's current state made this effect.

[warm agate]

next up on my checklist is to add this. i only have planes for terrain for now, but, i'll probably need it later

[ashen robin]

https://qriva.github.io/posts/how-to-vfx-graph/#how-to-bake-sdf-signed-distance-field
More info at the bottom there and how to do it at runtime (also examples on using combine mesh)

The tool itself is pretty good though if you've got it combined already. You can also export your Probuilder meshes and then use it on it all

[warm agate]

o damn, thank you. this looks pretty easy to use. its got a ton of other cool things too :O

[ashen robin]

https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.visualeffectgraph@16.0/manual/sdf-bake-tool-window.html
Oh that's the actual editor tool you can find on the editor toolbar

[warm agate]

o. i was just about to import it too lol

seems like it'll work well for terrain like meshes. shame i cant just use the built in colliders. i guess that'd come with a big performance cost though

i'll probably just use the built in particle system for particles that specifically need collisions. if i can avoid collisions though then i'll probably use VFX graph

(i am mildly rambling to myself here. im still pretty new to particles in general lol)

[ashen robin]

Non-static colliders like enemies/players I'd just use the shuriken system if you wanted collision

or dig deeper into that site I linked and learn how to manipulate particle data inside of the GPU

[whole hare]

been experimenting

[dim forge]

Why does my axe look so bad in unity compared to blender, Unity on left, Blender on right.

[whole hare]

you have to import and assing each material not just the base map

add cubemaps

or "reflection probes" for anyone who doesn't use Source Engine

[dim forge]

I did😭 thats why im confused

[whole hare]

Unity has different lighting than blender if you want exact lighting use HDRP and research that

too much stuff to say in here for HDRP

ask anyone in here theyll agree with me

ive only have a few months of unity and only a few weeks for URP and HDRP

[dim forge]

The weird thing is i tried on all of the render pipelines and they all look the same.

[whole hare]

NUH UH

maybe URP and standard but def not HDRP

[dim forge]

No i swear, tried all, nothing changed

[ashen robin]

Blender default lighting pretty fancy

but the edge itself looks like a specific reflective rendering which you'll need to play around with the sliders for

it's also reflecting the backdrop in blender's scene which you've none of in unity

[junior thistle]

That doesn't look right, shouldn't happen

It looks like only the roughness map was applied

And metallic

Can you show albedo and normal in the inspector with the object selected?

[warm torrent]

@dim forge This is an #🔀┃art-asset-workflow question, not vfx

Important to note that blender uses roughness maps, unity assumes the inverted smoothness map instead

[tired warren]

Hello, I'm trying to use a vfx effect of a blood spray which will spawn a blood splatter decal on the animated skinmeshrenderer it collides with. I managed to get the particles to shoot and collide with the character but the the splatter spawns in a random position on the skin mesh renderer instead of the collision point. I've tried various position nodes without success :x Here is my vfx graph, I used the default spark vfx as reference and add the trigger on die and depth collision nodes to destroy and spawn the decal which seems to work, only the position of the decal is wrong :x How can I solve this issue?

[long badger]

Could the VFX Graph be a suitable way to set up some basic enemy spawning and movement? (think Vampire Survivors) Until I make use of dots later on, I think if I could have the graph spawn particles and have those be attracted to the player, it could be a reasonable way to do something like creating a crowd of enemies

I havent really used the graph all that much, so I dont know its limitations/suitability for it

[warm agate]

no. collisions in VFX graph aren't as dynamic as shuriken's

you wouldn't be able to check when an enemy collides with the player

[ashen robin]

You can, but it's something I've not attempted yet as jordan mentioned that you do need some CPU communication every fixed frame for physics updates. It could potentially be a performance gain compared to dynamic batching (we're talking 2D sprites right?), but it's something that requires testing and tweaking as you'll be paying a copy tax to the GPU every time you want to feed it any updated positions.

Ideally you just want to do a single copy per per update, meaning you'll need want to gather all the information as possible and send it at the end of a frame, which could probably be improved by using Jobs.

For 3D you're having to also work with SkinMeshRenders which itself adds more complications, though Unity already does a lot of heavy lifting for you by doing a lot of the logic in the GPU. Not entirely sure how to optimize that further, but I've seen people mentioning pumping out a bit more juice using DOTS with it all

Unity 6 also has introduced SRP batching with spriterenders, but I've not tested it against dynamic batching so that's something to play around with

[warm torrent]

If there's so many enemies that VFX Graph for their behaviour starts seeming like a viable option, it sounds like it calls for pure DOTS system instead

For the kind of interactivity characters tend to need, you'll likely start fighting against VFX graph very quickly and lose its advantages

[ashen relic]

hey guys, I've generated a VFX graph that has a alpha parameter that is set in Initialize Particle - I then want to fade the particle out starting from the alpha that was set in Initialize Particle

so I don't think I can do a Set Alpha over lifetime block right? Is there some way I can do this?

[ashen robin]

https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.visualeffectgraph@7.1/manual/Reference-Attributes.html
Alpha is a standard attribute

[ashen relic]

uhhhh so I can get the alpha that the particle is initialised with

I'm a bit confused as to how to then fade it out over time

wait hold on

yeah

[ashen robin]

This would be setting the vertex alpha

[ashen relic]

I can lerp it

and then set alpha in update

[ashen robin]

Should be able to just set it in initialize and use the alpha over time, no?

[ashen relic]

but doesn't alpha over time hard set the alpha at t = 0?

like you create a curve that says alpha = 0.5 at t= 0, alpha = 0 at t= 1

but I need to be able to customise what the alpha is at t=0

[ashen robin]

Right, you're probably need to append to another custom attribute so you can always reference the starting alpha

[ashen relic]

gonna try the lerp first, i have a good feeling about this!

[ashen robin]

can always append to something like TargetPosition too cause it's just a value buffer that's not changed by the system

I mean, if you're setting it as a property though, you can always reference that

[ashen relic]

well the property is set globally per frame, but each particle needs to have its own alpha value that decays over time

I don't think refering the property will work

I also think the lerp works, but something else might have broken :Y

yep, everything works

so I initialise with the alpha, then I get alpha (current) and lerp it in update

[ashen robin]

no wait, I'm thinking of it wrong.
It's current_alpha = lerp(current_alpha, end_alpha, lerp_speed) so really can just reference the set alpha attribute

[ashen relic]

I think we're on the same page

[ashen robin]

lerp_speed = age/ lifetime*

ah ok

[ashen relic]

maybe a bit of optimisation to do where I can get the set alpha atribute instead of getting it every update

[ashen robin]

https://i.imgur.com/CTg2oqR.png
You can also send in animation curves

and so you'd sample the value with age/lifetime

assuming you want a more dynamic lerp instead of linear

https://docs.unity3d.com/6000.0/Documentation/ScriptReference/VFX.VFXEventAttribute.html
Doesnt seem like you can send it with vfx event attributes though which is odd

[ashen relic]

yeah idk - this seems a bit overkill to be generating and sending an entire curve

[ashen robin]

I guess you can just send in an array of values anyway

[ashen relic]

I'll survive with what I've got

thanks for the help!

[tired warren]

Anybody would have some tips about this issue ? How to make the decal appear at the particle collision point ?

[ashen robin]

You probably need a way to map the points on the SkinMeshRender to that possible collision points.

Not entirely sure the best way about it, but the SkinMeshRender node is based on vertices/faces/edges for how the particles decide to spawn upon

May be easier to bind Transform points of empty gameobject on your character and send those values as possible points for the decals

[tired warren]

Using a 3D gameobject than a decal might be better, but how do I get the collision position in the vfx graph?

[ashen robin]

Depends how you're creating these systems. Are you instantiating one system per blood splat?

[tired warren]

Because I did try with a 3d gameobject but the same problem of coordinates occur and the spawning sphere spawns in random body parts, and never on the collision impact

Yes, it would be 1 system per blood splat, I won't use many of those anyway so might simplify it a little

[ashen robin]

In that case you can use a Property such as a Transform/Vector3 and send in that value where you want it

https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.visualeffectgraph@10.2/manual/PropertyBinders.html
You got these too which is a more explicit type binding

Just remember all this stuff should be local to the mesh/bone and inside of the system if you want it to stick

[tired warren]

Hm, I'm not sure I understand how to use that despite reading the documentation. I need to add this binder component to the vfx particle but after that, how does that work?

[ashen robin]

If you're spawning the systems and disposing of them then it's probably better to change the property directly when you instantiate it, then run Play()

property binders are nice for for reusing systems if you want to spawn multiples with it

[tired warren]

Yes it's spwned and properties are changed when spawned but I don't understand what property I need to bind exactly. You said a Transfor/Vector3 and send in "that" value. What value? I still don't know how to retrieve the position of the collision in a vfx graph nor in a property binder :x

[ashen robin]

What are you using for collision? Rigidbodies?

[tired warren]

Depth buffer from the vfx graph

[ashen robin]

oh humm

[tired warren]

Then on die triggers since lifetime loss is at 1 on collision, killing the particle right away

[ashen robin]

So the depth buffer is not spawning in the correct position is that correct

[tired warren]

That's where I'm stuck. The on die triggers properly and the particle is killed and it does spawn a decal but in random position

[tired warren]

Exactly

[ashen robin]

So what does the SkinMeshRender have to do with anything or am I imagining you said that

[tired warren]

Because it collides with a skin mesh renderer which is animated

Doesn't that change the logic compared to astatic mesh ?

[ashen robin]

I was under the assumption you were using the SkinMesnRender node and populating the mesh with points. Not seeing the left side of the graph now that I glanced at it again

so depth buffer stuff sucks first off (I've seen a single game where it works fine and that's with a top-down fixated camera)

it's far from accurate

second, you want it to stick to the character when it spawns, but this requires matrix logic which you cannot get inside of the graph of that current bone

well, you can't decode that a point in the depth buffer == the bone hit

[tired warren]

I see, that makes sense.

[ashen robin]

best scenario, get the collision point from the CPU (collision.point) and send it into the graph then Play()

[tired warren]

And how to get the collision point from the CPU ?

Plus that's weird because there would be multiple collision point since it's shooting several blood splatter in one vfx graph

[ashen robin]

oh, but if you want the object to stick to the location then you must keep feeding it the local position of the character as well, maybe the bone specifically... or just instantiate the system on the bone and do everything with local space

[ashen robin]

Hmm, yeah you'd probably have to do a lot of that calcs outside of the graph which unfortunately kinda requires more scripting on your end.

[tired warren]

Well, I'm changing the original question a bit because I'm just looking into making this work, be it spawning a decal on collision or simply sticking the particle on collision. The main issue is that I don't see how I get the collision point in vfx graph meaning I'd need to not use vfx graph and go with physics instead?

[ashen robin]

I feel like it could be somewhat possible to get information of the skinmeshrender at the point of the depth buffer, since a lot of that stuff is inside of the GPU, but that probably requires some researching.

[tired warren]

But I'm surprised I can't get the collision position in vfx graph, shouldn't it be a default property ?

Hm ok.

[ashen robin]

You should treat VFX graph as asynchronous operations

in reality you're doing a lot of scripting outside of the graph to obtain what you want most of the time

[ashen robin]

https://discussions.unity.com/t/spawned-decal-to-stick-to-a-skinned-mesh/1541744/2
Check this post out, seems like what you're looking for

you can also find those samples inside of the Learning Samples provided with Unity 6

Looks pretty good. Dev really took a day off to write this up

[tired warren]

Ok thanks a lot, what' the difference between unity 6 and unity 2023 ??

Version names are confusing...

My project is currently on 2023, Is unty 6 more recent than 2023 ?

[ashen robin]

2023 could be considered the betas leading up to Unity 6

[tired warren]

Oh ok

Thanks, I'll give it a shot then !

[marsh drift]

Trying to create an effect similar to this, hopefully through shader graph - the lightning ring.
Any thoughts/ideas on how to do that?

[ashen robin]

Either can do the mathy way which you can probably find examples over at Shadertoy, or draw a circle then distort the UVs with some noise. Check over at #archived-shaders for more suggestions

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPh0jiqf0iQ
Gabriels got a few videos regarding the easier method

[inland tusk]

anyone know how to set a paticles angle/velocity/whatever from the normal map saved in a point cache?

I've got position but unsure how to get a euler xyz out of it

[nimble axle]

can VFX graphs update backwards?

if you manually update it

with like a negative delta time

[ashen robin]

pretty sure someone answered that for you, no?

https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.visualeffectgraph@17.0/manual/Timeline.html

[nimble axle]

without the use of timeline, though

but i suppose if timeline can do it then i can probably do it programatically

[ashen robin]

https://docs.unity3d.com/6000.0/Documentation/ScriptReference/VFX.VisualEffect.Simulate.html
I'm not entirely sure of this one but you can research up on this method as it offers some time control script side

if it's anything similar to the shuriken system it may just be what you're looking for

[nimble axle]

awesome, thank you

[lone imp]

Question having some issues trying to find Conform to Sphere in the visual effecct graph its supposed to be in the Force category right?

Ah I think I found it
Its called attractor shape now

[lone imp]

Hey having some issues with generating a decal through particle output and its not showing up
Is it being caused by this because im not properly understanding what its trying to tell me

Actually might be because this isnt forward particle

Was it renamed or somethin?

[ashen robin]

interesting error I've not seem, maybe it's related to the decal but it's saying do the size setting in update or initialize inside

also they renamed a lot of the outputs

a lot of stuff that was experimental like the decals are now just core

[lone imp]

Yeah
Trying to find Particle Forward Decal but straight up cant seem to find it or in a sub node

This is straight up the only thing I found relating to outputting a decal

[ashen robin]

Pretty sure that's it

[lone imp]

Oh I think it is

wow that is somewhat confusing

[ashen robin]

there is still the experimental check in the preferences I think?

[lone imp]

Do packages have their own preferences or is it just through the normal preferences window

[ashen robin]

"Forward decals in VFX Graph are very basic and lacks some features. We have no plans to improve them and they will be deprecated and replaced by HDRP and URP decals outputs which use SRP decals buffer/pass underneath instead of forward pass and inherits all their features."

[lone imp]

Ah so just use the URP decal system instead alright

[ashen robin]

URP for the longest didn't really have decal support but VFX graph did surprisingly, so they used this as a placeholder until they got the URP decals working

[lone imp]

Alright so good news I found the issue I was having. Learnt that the renderer doesnt support decals by default

[ashen robin]

Ah, you mean you had to add the decal render object

I thought those were in by default

[lone imp]

Didnt seem to be with URP

[ashen robin]

they work off the lightmap layers too which is pretty cool. Gives you more than the standard 32 physical layers to cull em

[rotund sedge]

Hey im looking for good stylized sprite sheets for 3D VFX work.
Most of what I have are realistic textures, but I want a more stylized theme.
A lot of packs are $50+ for just 5 sheets, so if I’m paying, I’d like real value. (I was looking at the kyeoms stylized earth, it's georgious, but id like to just get texture sheets similar to it and I can make the rest by myself)
Any recommendations?

[warm agate]

try checking sites like the unity asset store or itch.io

guh, just realised how late i am to reply to that

[pure gust]

hey, my particles are going really fast outside this particle emitter, how can i slow them down?

[warm agate]

have you tried lowering the start speed?

[pure gust]

yeah but it just makes the cone shorter

the particle still comes out at the same speed

oh nvm

that works

[tired warren]

When outputting decals, we can select the max numebr of decals allowed. When it reaches max value and the effect still goes on, it stops spawning decals. Is there a way to tell it to simply destroy the oldest one and spawn a new one?

[sour sun]

Hello, im new to this VFX and particle, i bought this vfx on AssetStore, and im planning to use this on my game 2D but when i tried to play it on Game Mode it look weird so does anyone have idea to make it look like there's no Z axis around vfx? so only X and Y axis im sorry for poor explanation idk the term when it comes to VFX for this kind of problem

[icy wing]

Is this a 2D game? Can’t exactly tell

[sour sun]

Yes! 2D Game. but i bought a VFX for 3D so i thought that i can just import it and view it on 2D xD

[icy wing]

Set your camera to perspective

[sour sun]

i already set my camera to perspective before.

[icy wing]

Show me the particle inspector, particularly the render mode of the particle and the top part of the component

[sour sun]

This one?

[icy wing]

ok the render mode looks correct since you are using a mesh to render, not a sprite. now scroll to the top of the particle system and show me the settings above

[sour sun]

This one is the main parent for VFX, the other 2 above it just a mesh collider and a script to handle damanged.

[icy wing]

that also looks correct. now show me in game, while moving towards and away from the particle, what happens

[sour sun]

Here you go, i have a feeling that i need to change the Fireball vfx/particle but not sure on how to do it... im still learning about vfx.

[icy wing]

that's the appropriate behavior. you cannot be 100% 3D in a 2D game because your camera doesn't render Z position at all but setting your camera to perspective will parallax the particle on a local space relative to the player's X and Y position

[sour sun]

Im sorry im not fully understood, so is it because of my Camera doesnt render the Z position it happen cause i setting my camera to perspective and that make the particle on a local space (FireBall VFX Child) to be "bound" to the player x and y position?

if only if i make this game to 2.5D will the vfx work normally?
wait that stupid question.

is there errm a good starting point for me to read on how particle and vfx work. it would be helpful

[icy wing]

not exactly bound but what's essentially happening is objects move relative to their parent, which is the offset based on camera's local position. in your case, using a perspective projection will allow you to only get 2.5D effects, not fully 3D. you can check the pins of this channel for more information though

[sour sun]

oooh i see.

[sour sun]

Thank you i'll try to read the information on this channel. Have a great day!

[icy wing]

you as well! good luck 🙂

[prisma lotus]

Hello

Can I use VFX graph to spawn particles/meshes over terrain mesh? I was thinking about procedural scattering.

[errant terrace]

Yeah, I have used it for grass rendering

[prisma lotus]

Could you explain a little?

[errant terrace]

I send a mesh to the VFX graph and it randomly spawns grass meshes on its triangles

With "infinite" lifetime

If you are using unity's builtin terrain, you probably need to make a mesh out of it manually

[prisma lotus]

Ok I was hoping the VFX graph can take the terrain directly.

[errant terrace]

You can also write a script or use an asset/tool that does the procedural scattering for you, and uses builtin terrain's grass

[mellow island]

Dont know if this is the right channel, i got a shooting script done and working but i want to put a "tracer bullet" or just to be able to see where the shooting goes, how could i make that

[quaint river]

Hi, im fairly familiar with the particle system in Unreal but struggling to use the one in Unity at the moment, ive a simple first question... how do I align the particle with the velocity from the cone? At the moment they just fan out

[ashen robin]

Look into the TrailRender component and slap them onto the projectile, unless it's a raycast method then look into LineRenders

[mellow island]

it was raycast will look at line renders ty

[quaint river]

ive decided to go worth the visual graph for the vfx, feels much more familiar coming from niagara

is there any reason why I shouldn;t use it, or am i good to go using that further? (Using URP and will have to compile a Browser version later down the line - its for a gamejam)

[ashen robin]

VFX graph can only work with WebGPU if you're porting to web as it uses compute shader to function

I've tried it out and it works fine, but you'd have to have the browser support to run them

I'd just stick with the particle system if you're currently doing a jam cause there is somewhat a learning curve with the graph

[broken storm]

Does anyone know how i can make my particles not clip trough objects and just stay on front?

[warm torrent]

Making it be seen through walls is not very complicated
But what then when it's completely behind a wall, or behind the character's hands
Do you want the effect be drawn in front of everything?

[broken storm]

I'd would like it too be infront of the wall

[warm torrent]

That doesn't sound very specific

It should be drawn in front of that wall but not in front of other walls?

[broken storm]

Sorry like i mean only infront of what it hits

Everything else would be as normal

[warm torrent]

There isn't a practical way to change the render order on the fly contextually like that

But there's a pretty elegant shader based solution, which is to move the vertices of the effect towards the camera in a vertex shader so it looks no different but is always a little distance away from what it hit
And additionally in a fragment shader a "depth fade" can be implemented so it objects that overlap with its offset position still will not cut through and clip with the effect, but instead fade the effect in space

If you're not familiar with shaders it can be a challenge to find how to do this, but depth fade at least is supported by Unity's own particle shaders

It's also an option to add the offset into the effect itself, or into the code that creates it, which would do mostly the same as the vertex shader but skip the need for custom shaders

[broken storm]

I think id go for that one since i dont know much about custom shaders

And thank you for your time!

[warm torrent]

Are particles, Shuriken or VFX either meant to be able to use reflections from probes at all

I know light probes have to be enabled separately for Particle System but I'm not noticing a similar option for reflection probes

[errant terrace]

Hmm have you tried enabling reflectionProbeUsage on the ParticleSystemRenderer component?

It inherits that from Renderer.
No idea if it works

[warm torrent]

Seems to work exactly right, thanks!
Wonder why it's so out of the way

I guess this might be a perfect spot for an extension method

[frank coyote]

This is a fun trick.

I've used it as part of a "fade out" shader -- I pull the vertices all the way into the camera (past the near clip plane) to completely prevent fragments from rendering at all

I was having problems with overdraw -- if there were five mesh layers on screen that all got faded out, the renderer still had to try drawing every single pixel on every single layer

[warm torrent]

Oh that's a fun way to use it
I assume you do that only for the verts that are completely invisible by then

[frank coyote]

Yep

[safe bramble]

has anyone seen something like this with vfx graph on android (galaxy s23+)? there's a weird strip just below the center of the screen where particle strip trails partially fail to render (ignore the chalices :D)

the same thing doesn't happen on pc or ios

using unity 6000.0.23f1 and vfx graph 17.0.3 with URP

[brave idol]

Hey yall! How can I make the particle system essentially bounce off thin air? I have a top down 2d game and when the player jumps i want particles to emit from the ground, and bounce off it. Can I like make an imaginary plane in a local position for them to bounce off of?

[errant terrace]

Sounds like something you can achieve with the Planes collision mode

[brave idol]

Yep, what I ended up doing

I just disabled the renderer on the plane

[errant terrace]

It can be an empty object

It just uses that object's orientation for the plane

So you can get rid of its collider and renderer

[unreal spruce]

Is there a way to fade out all spawned particles using a script?
So that at a certain time they all will disappear, ignoring their remaining lifetime

[ashen robin]

Particle system? I would think directly accessing the properties for the gradient and changing it would be the quick fix, otherwise using a custom shader and changing the alpha directly from that

[unreal spruce]

Assuming I can edit a gradient like this from a script, would that change the particles that already spawned?

[ashen robin]

Probably, I doubt they are creating a new instance of the gradient for each particle

[unreal spruce]

true

ill try it

[icy wing]

Why not just use color over lifetime and modify the alpha?

[unreal spruce]

I am doing that, for the particles to appear and reappear smoothly. But they are "spawned" from a light source, and when that light source fades i want the particles to also fade at the same time

[icy wing]

Then I assume in in your script, you would want to modify the particle system’s alpha in real time to synchronize with the light source fading

[unreal spruce]

Yes pretty much, but I think changing the color over lifetime gradient is what I have to do

[unreal spruce]

it worked:)
just lerped these keys: https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/ParticleSystem-colorOverLifetime.html

[errant terrace]

You probably want some type of "VHS" fullscreen shader/post processing effect

For the color fringe/chromatic aberration/whatever you call it

[ashen robin]

There's some downscaling the resolution on the render pipeline asset too I can see

[hollow nymph]

Been working on this top down shooter like game, and i need a artstyle but im a programmer and not an artist 😔 any ideas? Im thinking of going more retro-ish

[ashen robin]

I'd start throwing on some post-processing and setting the mood then decide from there.

obviously hotline miami is a great reference when it comes to that stuff

[hollow nymph]

oki dokie

thx :D

[leaden lance]

Hi everyone, VFX Graph newbie here, can someone explain to me the difference between Attribute and Properties ? Should I use one over the other ? At first I tought properties were what's defined by the user but I can create custom attribute too ? Can I Use them interchangeably ?
Thanks :)

[ashen robin]

standard attributes are variables the systems always instantiate such as Lifetime and Position. Properties are variables you can create in addition to these attributes that you can expose to be editable directly from the editor, and editable by other scripts.

[leaden lance]

Thanksss

[frank coyote]

Attributes are per-element (e.g. per particle). Properties are per-effect.

https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.visualeffectgraph@17.0/manual/Properties.html
https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.visualeffectgraph@17.0/manual/Attributes.html

[near wing]

Hello, is there a node for printing to console an output of a specific node?

[warm agate]

i dont think so. ,im pretty sure there's a bunch of visual ways to see the output of a node though. like a gradient for a float or setrotation for a quaternion

[near wing]

ah that's a pain, i have submitted a feature request tho so hopefully theyll add it

[clear spruce]

I'm not sure how that would work though. Even ignoring the fact that the nodes are running on GPU, the outputs usually also vary between particles so you would get thousands, likely millions of prints on the console depending on the particle count so I'm not sure that would be super helpful. Honestly getting that many prints would likely crash the editor too

[near wing]

That's true, however for the VFX I'm making, they're only around 4 or 5 particles actually. I think it would still be a nice thing to have

[clear spruce]

I see but I assume it would only be helpful for few people and therefore of high priority for unity (VFX specifically often aims for great particle counts). Now that custom function node exist, I assume you could create your own node that writes the value to a certain texture that is later read by a C# script. Don't know any specifics on that but sounds like possibility

[near wing]

Yeah that's sounds right. I have submitted a feature request so just gonna wait and see, Thanks for the replies though!

[warm abyss]

Is it possible to add a sound to a an output event on die in vfx graph?
You can use the output event for sound but this can not be added to a trigger "on die" events.
I have fireworks and when they die it starts the event trigger of explosion.
If i joint the output event to the fireworks trail(main event) the sound starts at the beginning.
VFX graph does not allow to join the output event to the GPU Event (trigger event)
How can I get the sound of the event on die?

[ashen robin]

Have you looked into CPU events oh you did mentioned output events, never mind!

[warm abyss]

never heard about it.. Could you give me more info about this way to make it?

[ashen robin]

https://discussions.unity.com/t/send-an-output-event-on-particle-death/912030/2

check that

Apparently doesnt work but there's a workaround

Seems quite a large workaround. If it's like a single firework that explode into smaller fireworks, you can potentially just make two systems and handle the spawning of the secondaries yourself instead of using GPU events

[hearty stream]

n VFXGraph how can I for example spawn several cylinders along the surface of a sphere, but with their "up" being away from the center of the sphere? I managed to make them spawn on the surface using Random Position (Sphere), but I'm a bit lost about fixing the orientation

[ashen robin]

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

You've also got Rotate3D, and Atan2. Unfortunately there isn't much of a Quaternion.LookAt or similar type node available

Well, technically LookAtPosition/Velocity orientation is very much a similar operation, but I would just like general quaternion nodes to work with.

[inland tusk]

is it possible to have mesh particles facing the camera in og/shuriken particles? (want to go for pent/hexagons)

when I set them to mesh they stop respecing the facing alignment property

[fallow star]

I'm working on memory management for a game, i've noticed that the particle system uses a bunch of memory, i was wondering if there is a way to reduce this footprint? i've heard that a particle system pre-allocates memory according to it's max particles count. is this true?

[frank coyote]

I'd expect this to happen, yes

It would be even worse if it tried to constantly reallocate memory as particles appeared and disappeared

[fallow star]

its a bit weird, since the snapshot B was the game with no changes done to the maxParticles while snapshot A was setting all particle system's maxParticles to 0

and somehow A's particle systems took more memory??

it didnt reach the same point where i took B's snapshot, that one i took it in the title screen while the A one i took it in the loading screen because it never reached it (bug cuz i forgot a build step in our pipeline)

[frank coyote]

I'd also expect the system to only reallocate if you increase the max particle count

Memory also might not get released immediately

[fallow star]

mh

maybe

i'm doing another build without particle changes where it should reach the title screen, which should ideally land me in a place where i can actually compare stuff

[frank coyote]

if you're seriously trying to analyze this, you should have a totally empty scene (well, exccept for the particle system)

and you'll want to be profiling the built game, of course

[fallow star]

ya

i know profiling memory in the editor is no good

while i'm rebuilding the game i just made a separate project with three particle systems using the default particle material

one is the default system, the other is a system that reaches 500 particles but has 1k as the max, and a third one which is one that reaches 1k but has 2k as the max

ok, decreasing max particles should theoretically reduce their footprint

A is No changes to the max particles.
B is MaxParticles set to 10

A difference of -88kb

This is another one
A is no changes to the max particles
b is MaxParticles set to 0

[fallow star]

ok i discovered something even more interesting

This is the default setup where the particle system had a max particle set to 2k, 1k, 1k respectively

And this, is the setup where i set the MaxParticle count to 10_000

reducing MaxParticles only reduces footprint IF the particle system was emitting more than its maxParticle count

dont think there is a way to reduce the footprint of these without reducing their average emission count

[vagrant juniper]

Help with SDF

How can I adjust the position so that it also matches the world position of the SDF mesh? I also have a gif with the mesh here. The particles are at (0, 0, 0) but I would like to have them inside my skinned mesh renderer.

[ashen robin]

If you have a skin mesh render, why not use the specific nodes for those instead of an SDF? Also everything here is in world space here without any sort of offset so I'm not sure what you're expecting.

[vagrant juniper]

i wanna have that so that the particles flow through the tube

[ashen robin]

Well, you need to pass the pivot offset to this mesh then because with what I'm seeing is that the SDF is just providing points relative to the zero point of the world

otherwise, child the system to the mesh and use local space instead

[frank coyote]

Transforming the points with the local-to-world matrix of the skinned mesh renderer object would do the trick

you should be able to reference the transform of that object and then use it to perform the transformation

haven't used the VFX graph in a bit, so I'm fuzzy

[ashen robin]

Ah, right the position itself isn't good enough so you do need transform values if you don't want to localize it. There's these things too which will allow some explicit binding:
https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.visualeffectgraph@17.0/manual/PropertyBinders.html

[frank coyote]

The transform matrix will correctly move points from one coordinate space to another

[vagrant juniper]

ah i will try it 🙂

[vagrant juniper]

well well well 😄

[vagrant juniper]

i wthink with splines and colission it is not working

hahhaa 😄

maybe i try it with particle force system

[vagrant juniper]

i mean it is kinda good with particle force system with adding mayb more force

[mossy brook]

Is there a way to make a particle register a collision, but not stop or get destroyed? aka pierce? I tried setting the lifetime loss, dampen, and bounce to 0 but it still hits an object and then stops/slides away

[ashen robin]

https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/PartSysTriggersModule.html
You probably want trigger events instead

[mossy brook]

True, I will check it out thank you

[severe wasp]

Does anyone know how to get stenciling working with VFX Graph? I've tried writing a custom HLSL block, I've dried finding a way to add a custom shader. All i need is to inject this:
{
Stencil
{
Ref 3
Comp Equal
Pass Keep
}
}

but i can't seem to find a way to do it in a way unity will accept

[ashen robin]

Haven't played too much with the HLSL blocks, but if you can't get stenciling to work you can always stencil local to the layer using render objects

the systems are affected by them interestingly enough

[severe wasp]

do you mean make a low res render texture and pass it to this?

cuz thats the best solution i've thought of so far, but havent tried it yet

[ashen robin]

https://docs.unity3d.com/6000.0/Documentation/Manual/urp/renderer-features/renderer-feature-render-objects.html

[pine remnant]

is playing a particle system each time my gun shoots optimized (high gun firerate)
and can I make the particle emit the burst without restarting the whole particle system

[frank coyote]

You can manually call Emit() on the particle system

I don't think that can trigger a burst, but you can just emit many particles at once

[stray bobcat]

Hi, I've made an simple vfx graph and it causes refresh of the editor every frame in the playmode - can I somehow avoid it like in edit mode with always refresh off, etc.? Because I just can't play in playmode with it, lol.
I've profiled it and this low fps is caused by constant refresh of editor.

[plucky patrol]

does this method of getting a particle to play on button click not work, or do I need to script something? because it's not doing anything, and Im not sure why

[plucky patrol]

figured it out, particles were spawning just not in front of camera and behind the BG

[tepid brook]

My praticles restart every second in unity how to fix that? It look very stutter. Even the loop is on

nvm, changing the sort mode in

rennderer fix it

[raw hollow]

my vfx doesnt work in game view can anyone tell me why this is happening?

[alpine oxide]

Does anyone find the best Black Hole tutorial? (System Particle Only)

[ashen robin]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlE8e1JwVzs
Gabreils' got the goods

oh if you mean shuriken uh nope ;x

Really it's just a bunch of shaders anyway

So yeah, first half of that video is relevant

[inland warren]

Does particle system emitter work with sprite atlas ? From memory profiler snapshot it appears particle emitter will duplicate a texture for itself instead of using the atlas texture

[stray bobcat]

When I'm using even one VFX Graph particle (I'm trying to make a simple fog around player which following him) - it bumps my cpu usage like crazy + ofc gpu is starting to work harder. I'm ok with gpu, but why is cpu has so much higher usage? I'm messed up some settings?

I just don't understand how to diagnose what causes it. It' using like 130+/sec spawn rate and 400 max particle count. I just can't find any info or anything related for optimization or tips with VFX graph...
I'm using Unity 6000.0.37f1 with last VFX graph patch and UPR too. I've done octagones as a particles, reduced range before camera frustrum, because it will cause my fps drop to 20 when particle is full screen, etc.

[inland tusk]

after rebuilding my library folder a bunch of my VFX graphs are invisible now, despite that efficiency debug says they are drawing etc. I've tried rebuilding the .vfx's. any ideas? (one or two work, but most don't)

[ashen robin]

If you're using record for the bounding box it may need to update, otherwise try playing with those settings directly

[inland tusk]

actually never mind, thanks though. I realised in git that rebuilding the library folder had edited all of my VFX files somehow, and when I discarded the changes they came back

strange though, luckily i'm not the type to hit stage all commit 😛

[ashen robin]

commit first rethink problems later

[inland tusk]

ehhhhhhh, kinda but not? I've had a few more git heart attacks than I'd like

being hounded by project managers while a whole team is scratching their head

[ashen robin]

it's a joke but yeah, push local check for changes then push to remote

[ashen robin]

There's some debug tools inside of the system graphing tools themselves, so unless you've some actual information to present for me to get an idea what it may be

[inland tusk]

oh speaking of bounding boxes I'm doing something probably highly sinful with all of these graphs, I have them at origin with world encompassing bounds.... and game interactions are spanwning events and stuff as and where I want them. how awful is this?

[ashen robin]

You mean like a global bounding box?

[inland tusk]

kinda, I guess I'm just ignoring the concept of a bounding box at all as each one is like a master system which creates events within itself procedurally with lods and frustrum logic and stuff

but it does mean I've thrown out the concept of bounding boxes entirely

[ashen robin]

Yeah, I kinda do that a lot too, but usually these systems are just a few quads worth. I really should look more into that idea if it's possible to actually provide with custom bounds that isn't tied to the master system.

[inland tusk]

it's all running great just wondering if I'm burying something nasty in there

[ashen robin]

I mean, if you're producing particles outside of the player camera, that's more of an issue with spawning them incorrectly.

[inland tusk]

I've been really surprised what I can get away with on a quest 3, to the point where a huge amount of my games systems are being rendered through them

mhmm. i have one of pebbles and one for bigger rocks, which are fed in by graphics buffers, spatial hash sampled by distance from player, though I haven't bothered not spawning them behind the camera yet, thanks for reminding me.... though I'm only updating it at the moment every x meters moved so would need extra thinking, and balancing if the act of resampling the particles is more performance cost than that.... i guess it's just a dot product and extra updates on player rotation.... thanks for being a rubber duck 😛

[inland tusk]

so I'm doing the above, and not quite understanding set alive functionality. where there are green spheres there should be rocks. On the left, it is working correctily, n the right not. The left result is without my set alive (in update) active, and right with it, it doesn't always not work but it happens sometimes

I am setting the positions and sizes of the particles in update every frame from a graphics buffer with index particleid. (there is a single burst of maxparticles on initialise)

could something be messing with particleid as a useful index? I can't quite figure out what's going on. maybe 1 minus'ing a bool doesn't work?

[gleaming stream]

Iam looking for somone pro who can create/help create this VFX and Shader.
https://youtu.be/gCCYWTAA2wQ
Willing to pay for this

[ashen robin]

take you two seconds if you read into distortion shaders

[craggy geyser]

Would anyone know how I can create a sorta of pixelated fireball

[warm agate]

pixels or voxels?

[craggy geyser]

Pixels

Sorta like 8bit style

I have a pixel shader already made but I can’t figure out anything else right now

[warm agate]

if you're using vfx graph, i think you can just directly plug the shader into the vfx graph

[craggy geyser]

Yea true, I guess I’m more so struggling on make the actual fireball

Creating some sorta firey aura around a sphere mesh I have

[warm agate]

there's a ton of fire assets on the asset store, could also follow a tutorial like this

[craggy geyser]

Sounds good thanks brother

[muted olive]

How do I create a particle texture that warps things like this? Or what this kind of effect is called so I can look it up?

[ashen robin]

#✨┃vfx-and-particles message

[muted olive]

Ah, distortion, k.

[wooden finch]

Anyone know what's happening here? The trails seem to bend out of shape at far distances, but if I move the camera closer they look perfectly fine. I've tried increasing the min vertex distance but that did not help.

It's just using a little bit of orbital velocity on the z axis for a continuous trail, and I'm just using Particles/StandardUnlit. It seems to get better the further away I am from the actual beam

[ashen robin]

In render there's view alignment or something like that you can play around with

[wooden finch]

Since they're only using trails I'm not actually using a render mode

[ashen robin]

oh that's odd. II'm pretty sure standalone trail module has those options though

[wooden finch]

"standalone trail module" as in the module shown here?

[ashen robin]

https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/class-TrailRenderer.html

[wooden finch]

Oh a trail renderer - Yeah I can't really use a trail renderer here without creating a new way to instantiate effects then set the target etc, which would be far too inconvenient 😅

[ashen robin]

You've render mode to None there, you sure that doesnt open more options?

[wooden finch]

None that I'm seeing, no.

[ashen robin]

oh yeah it seems that you're stuck to None using trails eh

freaking API is a headache

[wooden finch]

I guess it isn't a huge deal if it's not fixable, but it's pretty annoying to look at when they should be working perfectly fine

[ashen robin]

May not even be the problem, just that it's one of the things I know that the camera affects

[trail swan]

Hey, sorry if this isn't the right place to ask this question but how do I increase the bounds of the system? It ends halfway. I am a complete beginner bdw

[junior thistle]

Why can't I keep paretn particle system to play on awake and child particle system to not play on awake? They both change. WTF?

[icy wing]

Are you talking about the perimeter/shape? if so, it’s under Shape

[trail swan]

Thanks, changed the shape values and the origin and it's working👍

[nimble helm]

Does anyone know if its possible to make a volume to hide particles (for hiding rain or snow in a building)

[warm torrent]

Yes in many ways but you'd have to be more specific than that
Like what system are you using for particles

[nimble helm]

VFX Graph

I have a tileable cube emitting the snow to follow the player, but i want it not be visible indoors

[ashen robin]

vfx graph has kill planes you can use

https://qriva.github.io/posts/how-to-vfx-graph/#how-to-bake-sdf-signed-distance-field
and that

[warm torrent]

And boxes
https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.visualeffectgraph@17.0/manual/Block-Kill(AABox).html

[hollow harbor]

when a particle system sets the colour of a particle, how does it access the property on the shader? Does it look for a specific property name? If so, which one?

[ashen robin]

It changes vertex colors which is why you can actually use a single material with multiple different colors (for multiple different systems)

[hollow harbor]

I see, thanks a lot

[ashen robin]

You can access the vertex colors inside of the shader graph if you do want to make a custom particle shader too that way

[hollow harbor]

yeah I know, that what I wanted to do, but I didn't know what I should be accessing

[vernal osprey]

Hey, guys! For one reason, I have made VFX graph but I dont see the particle in my scene. Do you know maybe what's the issue?

[river pasture]

Does anyone know how I can hide these edges from this particle? I tried to tweak the shader with the soft particles for example and particle settings but nothing seems to help.

[river pasture]

I'm making a smoke particle for in VR

[errant terrace]

Do you mean these hard edges?

[river pasture]

Yes I don't like the fact that you can see them. It doesn't really look like smoke Becouse of that.

[errant terrace]

I haven't seen your material settings, but use a texture that fades out smoothly towards the edges

If you already have that, show the material

[river pasture]

Its the URP > Particles > Unlit shader. Also when I attach 1 of the sprites shown in my imports folder the particle does not visually show up anymore

[errant terrace]

Make the alpha higher in the color, decrease "Surface Fade", try a different Color Mode instead of Multiply

I think I still see the smoke in your screenshot on the back left/top left

[river pasture]

That doesn't work for me I already tried everything in the shader settings.

I just don't know why the smoke turns invisible when I attach 1 if the blur sprites to the base map

[errant terrace]

What are these grey things in your screenshot?

Oh you don't have a texture assigned in that screenshot?

[river pasture]

True and I use this mesh to render it because anything else in VR looks weird for smoke.

[errant terrace]

Well, that probably explains it

Is that mesh UV mapped?

If not, it doesn't know where to display the texture on the mesh

Anyway since you are using a mesh, the texture doesn't make its edges smooth.

[river pasture]

Not sure what that means. I exported the cloud from blender into unity as fbx and these are the settings

[errant terrace]

Usually we just use basic quads with a texture, not a mesh for this kinda stuff

You'd need some more advanced shader stuff to smoothly fade out the edges of the mesh

[warm torrent]

If the mesh is facing the camera and also UV unwrapped to display the radial fade texture evenly forward, its edges would be faded from the camera's perspective

But Soft Particle setting would be important to prevent clipping in any case

[errant terrace]

Now that I think of it it's pretty simple, just do an angle/dot check relative to view and adjust the alpha by that

[warm torrent]

Mesh particles can be billboarded towards the camera as well, so UV unwrapping it properly is enough for the effect

[river pasture]

So what would I need to do to accomplish that? I'm not familiar with UV unwrapping.

[warm torrent]

It would help for you to be since that's what you need to do

If you want to go with the billboarded mesh particle method I suggest starting with a hemisphere mesh with its round side facing the camera when used as a particle
Then UV unwrap the round side so your radial fade texture fills it evenly
Assuming a radial fade texture is the one you want to use for it

If you want an unevenly shaped mesh that does not always face the camera, you'll instead have to use a custom shader with the angle/dot check for alpha that Osmal mentioned
Or fresnel node in shader graph which you'd likely use

[river pasture]

ill see what I can do. Random idea but poiyomi shaders might help me here.

Thanks for the help!

never mind it doesn't support urp

[haughty ruin]

guys i am kind of new to unity i tried to search about particle system, so my problem now is i want to set this particle to an actual attack but i am stuck i do not know how to make an attack that follows this particle. the attack starts from the center it goes in a line, if someone knows a guide or can explain some stuff to me i appreciate it.

[ashen robin]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qh3TEYUN6cA
check that one out

Oh unless you've made the particle already?

[haughty ruin]

yes i did

my problem now is how do i make it for an attack that has a specific range

[ashen robin]

Well, depends if the particle has a very static make up, or did you make parameters to change the distance, ect

or, if similar to that video, it creates the particle as it moves

[haughty ruin]

for example lets say i have this ground slash, what do i need to make it for example hits an enemy

[ashen robin]

You need physics via cpu side

Depending how you made this particle, you're either projecting a large hitbox in the area, or you have a way to drive this particle like a projectile in the target space

[haughty ruin]

my problem is how do i make a hit box

that's my problem

for example if i click space it lanches this slash

[ashen robin]

You know the concept of raycasting and all of that right?

How to query an overlap sphere, ect

[haughty ruin]

kind of yes

i used that for gun

[ashen robin]

You need colliders because the vfx graph doesnt provide that

[haughty ruin]

yeah

[ashen robin]

https://docs.unity3d.com/6000.0/Documentation/ScriptReference/Physics.OverlapSphere.html
This is to query a sphere check onto a target area.

So the idea is you use the ability and also query that method in the area you use the vfx effect

[haughty ruin]

yeah

[ashen robin]

You can also do like a gameobject with a collider that has a predefined radius

and stick your visual effect system on that, so when the ability spawns, everything in that collider will be 'hit'

[haughty ruin]

this is what i mean

[ashen robin]

right, you will use overlap for that

[haughty ruin]

do you have any tutorial for it

or documentation

[ashen robin]

well, if you want to match the cone radius you do a mix of raycast and overlap

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUMEnIUeVro
Try that one

[haughty ruin]

alright i will check it

thanks you

[ashen robin]

Eh, I'm just skimming through it but he doesnt provide code just an explanation

I'd just look around on youtube, it's a very common thing

[haughty ruin]

i will look more

[queen plover]

Hey, I'm learning about particles in Unity and I'm wondering about the differences between ParticleSystem and VFX Graph - is there a reason why I should choose one over the other for my game? I'm making a 2D stylized game for PC. I've been told that VFX Graph would be a bad choice for 2D games, is that true?

[ashen robin]

ParticleSystem works closer with your CPU modules like physics, while GPU graph is a more optimized way to produce particles assuming the hardware is provided. Other than that, different interfaces.

[queen plover]

so either is good for 2D games? Either can be controlled via code?

[clear spruce]

When it comes to 2D, it think you might be mixing up hardware and game style. For mobile games specifically, VFX has very limited support, never heard either being better or worse for 2D games

[ashen robin]

Yeah the most to be concerned is the platform, but otherwise pick whichever works for you as far as creating the systems goes.

[queen plover]

I see, I'm making a small game for PC

[clear spruce]

You may use this table to choose: https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/ChoosingYourParticleSystem.html

[ashen robin]

As for stuff like projectiles and interactive abilities with FX, ParticleSystem can provide collision feedback and events which VFXGraph doesn't provide... but it's more of a preference thing as I find it easier to just make my own controller for this stuff.

I don't like my visual systems being in control much like animation

[queen plover]

same! on that note, do you have a way to avoid using animation callbacks in Unity, or are they necessary evil? I hate this feature with passion but it seemed unavoidable for stuff like "call this method on this specific frame" or "tell me when you finished the animation"

[ashen robin]

I don't use callbacks, but I will add logic to the timeline such that my colliders enable/disable if I am doing stuff like hitboxes (I will always add a fallback to disable the colliders if state changes)

It depends really. But relying on animation events is bad because animation can be interupted and animation states can be in many different states at once.

[queen plover]

Yeah, I agree, I also find it very annoying to manually be adding all the callbacks on the right frames, having them call my methods based on string naming, etc., but I wasn't able to come up with any alternative. I need to know when an interaction animation ends so the code can call the actual interaction logic.

[ashen robin]

I guess a better way to put it, if you're going to use animation events, you need some fallbacks in case the animation doesnt finish

[queen plover]

or align footsteps with SFX

[ashen robin]

Ideally, your statemachine (in the backend) shouldn't care what or where the animation is.

[queen plover]

how would the statemachine know that the jump animation (or any other) has finished?

[ashen robin]

Calculate the clip time beforehand

[queen plover]

or "pick up object" animation, that needs to call PickObject() at the last frame

oh, based on animation time, I see

[ashen robin]

Similarly, if the jump is canceled, your statemachine should know before the animation that it has collided

[queen plover]

I thought about it but I was worried I'd be making a hacky solution

fortunately I don't have animation cancels in my game, it's a way simpler game, no combat etc

[ashen robin]

I've made games purely with events, but these are usually small jam games I know I can get away with, but as your animation tree goes it can create problems if you start blending things.

Using them for visuals purely is the ideal solution such as adding particles like dust when jumping, ect / Audio

[queen plover]

that sounds excellent, I'll try moving from callbacks to calculating clip time, I understand that animation API allows to just get the clip time directly

thanks for help @ashen robin @clear spruce !

[spice mural]

someone help with this!!!!

the particle system lags when im close but not when im far away

[warm torrent]

Look into "overdraw optimization"

[eager shoal]

i feel stuck with learning sdf and visual effects graph. i think anikki was the one that told me about them, but im having a bit hard of a time understanding how particles effects can turn into physical meshes / work with changing meshes. does anyone have resources for how to wrap my head around this. (I found info on a output node called "Mesh Output" But i havent found anything else yet)

[spice mural]

looked at some stuff covering that, they seem pretty good. but i want the player to be blinded by the smoke, but i cant really do that without a ton of overdraw or a custom shader (which i tried, and didnt show up in vr)

[river pasture]

I'm back with another question but this time about interacting with a trigger collider.

I've tried everything to make the debug from the OnParticleTrigger activate its debug but no success.
Only OnParticleCollision works if I set the collider of the object to not trigger but that is not what I need.

[warm torrent]

Your trigger list is empty, in this case

Triggers to check against must be predefined for whatever reason, but you may be able to do it from a script

[river pasture]

ill try that thanks!

[haughty ruin]

does anyone know how to make a hitbox that follows the shape of a move

[river pasture]

If you can be more specific that would help. And is this about particles or vfx?

[haughty ruin]

for example this https://www.youtube.com/shorts/nAM-NGv5Epc

i do not know if it is a particle

but lets say i have made this

and made the attack animation,

so i want to make a hit box that follows the attack

the question is what is the red thing considered, and how can i make a hit box that follows the attack animation of that one

lets say the attack is that tentacle goes forward to hit a spot

for a specific range

[river pasture]

The red thing is most likely not a particle but a 3d animated model.
In that case you want to just attach a collider to the object that you want to attack with

[haughty ruin]

and that collider for example has a shape like a box or something

[river pasture]

depends on what you prefer or what fits the object

[haughty ruin]

like the problem is for example a slash

is there a way to make a hit box that follows the slash

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

this is an example for 2d

[river pasture]

This is how but you need a attack animation to begin with otherwise you won't see results of course

[haughty ruin]

i tried to find anything that can explain something like this but did not find

[river pasture]

Do you have the attack animation?

you want to use.

[haughty ruin]

yes

[river pasture]

does it already animate?

[haughty ruin]

ofc

i made a slash with particle

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qh3TEYUN6cA

something that looks like this

[river pasture]

In you're case I would suggest to look into animation events and enable the collider from that.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92P2Zz6K9vA

[haughty ruin]

alright

thank you

[river pasture]

NP if you have any other questions make sure to write them in the correct channel and people will be open to help you!

[pine copper]

I'm probably doing this in the worst way.. but can a pivot of a bounding box be changed? I don't want it in the center

I'm trying to produce the first way.. this is the closest I've got, using a collision shape. If I change the x size via the field, then it brings both sides in to the middle (demonstrated in the video second)

[wind ferry]

how can i make it leave behind a trail or like have little blaze particles around it when it plays, its made in shader graph

[deep bronze]

Does anyone have a good series or tutorial on youtube for how to learn VFX in unity 3d?

[ashen robin]

gabriel on youtube

[warm agate]

!learn
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwYuQIa9lgjvDiZryUVtFGw
https://unity.com/features/visual-effect-graph
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvZNVQuLDjI
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtRuo28h-g1mndib2hMyp-dVfx7Jq9cOH
take your pick

[gleaming flicker]

:teacher: Unity Learn ↗

Over 750 hours of free live and on-demand learning content for all levels of experience!

[warm agate]

oh right, almost forgot about gabriel

[deep bronze]

thanks!!

[ripe mantle]

Is there a way to make the particle rotate to a specific rotation during its lifecycle?

I only seem to have access to some angular velocity, which isn't something easily mapped out over a curve.

[ripe mantle]

When you guys create trails for your effects, do you use the trail component itself or the trail module of the particle system?

[craggy geyser]

woduld anyone be able to help me create a shader where i can render ants on a mesh? struggling with this right now

[icy wing]

what kind of trails are we talking about?

[ripe mantle]

Like streaking trails from a fireball or projectile.

[icy wing]

trail renderer would certainly work well but you can also use particle system for that too. whichever one you are more comfortable with

[ripe mantle]

Are either preferred?

[icy wing]

I prefer particle system just because I've used it a lot more and I would say it's more flexible if you want top tier visual effects

[ripe mantle]

Is there any advantage to using the trail renderer even?

[icy wing]

generally lower performance costs is all I can think of

[warm torrent]

Trail renderer has a few more settings to tweak
I find it more convenient when you need just one
Particle trails are tied to particles so you need to have those

[ripe mantle]

Really annoying how trail renderers don't scale with the object scale.

[warm torrent]

True
A lot of other things I'd like it to be able to do as well

[runic parcel]

hello, how do i make a vfx graph vector2 property output the separate x and y values? mine does not expand like the one from the video tutorial i'm following when i click the small arrow on top, i'm using unity 2023.2.20f1 and the video guy is on 2021.2.5f1

[hearty flare]

If it doesn't expand then it's probably a bug with the version of VFX graph you are using

your version of Unity is quite old too, the latest version of 2023 is Unity 6000.0.39f1, which is ages ahead

[gaunt frigate]

How do I sync rain particles with its water ripples?

I'm using Particle System for the rain. Latest LTS. HDRP

[pine copper]

There's a noticeable stutter when a new VFX is enable, the particle system had a prewarm option (which I believe stopped this?).. is there something similar for VFX?

[ashen robin]

When you click on the VFX system, on the editor side there's a prewarm option, but I forget if that's actually just a feature to advance the particle systems and less of a optimization feature.

Probably better off just pooling the systems when possible

[flint aurora]

hey so I'm looking for some direction on how I'd go about making a visual effect that would look similar enough to first person pov crying. like camera shake and blur I can do, how do I make stuff wrap like water does?

[runic parcel]

it wasn't me who chose this version, it was my superiors, but thanks for the help, apparently vfx graph just doesn't do this in this version (which is odd because the video guy is using an older version)

[prime dome]

For water distortion effect, you may need a shader.

Camera shake can be done through basic C# scripts.

Blur can be done many ways, you can just use Unity’s depth of field and make it intense— if you don’t wanna make a custom shader or whatever.

But yeah in general this just seems like a job for a shader

[ashen robin]

Unity comes with some post-processing effects like blur where you can adjust dynamically, while camera shake you can get some nice smoothed values using cinemachine

You can also use camera stacking to give you an overlay for just particle effects if you want some water particle effects that seem 'local' to the camera space

[nimble raptor]

I'm work on a 2D Game and the player character is supposed to be made of fire or on fire. I drew what I'm kind of going for. I want the fire to move with and react to the player moving and jumping or dashing. Any advice on how I can achieve this?
I was thinking maybe I can make the silhouette and use a particle system that emits for its edges or maybe a shader graph. In the future I'll add attack animations so if I can easily apply it to that it would be really great, but I could also figure something separate out for that.

[inland tusk]

I have a dream. A point cache like the vfx graph generator, and usable in the same way, that I can generate a grid of voxels of a mesh. Any idea if/how this could be possible?

[tardy nimbus]

Beginner question here. Im trying to make a 2d turn based rpg and been struggling with adding visual effects to bone animation. Like adding a slash vfx to a slash bone animation. I tried doing it using the builtin Animation Window but I cant add any sprites to it. I was able to do it before although it wasnt very optimal. Any tips on how I can do this?

[warm torrent]

If you want to make the slash effect a part of the character, then the sprites should be there to begin with and during the attack you enable the sprite renderer / gameobject and play the animation
You might as well make generic slashes that are instantiated as separate gameobjects, play automatically and are then destroyed
(or pooled rather than instantiated and destroyed but the effect is the same)

[tardy nimbus]

Thanks! Ill try it out.

[hearty lily]

Ink Splash effect from Frostpunk
I really like the ink effect from Frostpunk, how would one approach this correctly. I already thought about making it in after effects and rendering as transparent frames but i'm not sure.
Effect i'm talking about:
https://interfaceingame.com/wp-content/uploads/frostpunk/frostpunk-book-of-laws-transition.mp4

https://interfaceingame.com/wp-content/uploads/frostpunk/frostpunk-menu-transition.mp4

also you can notice there's some sort of mask effect

[inland tusk]

I have a dream. A point cache like the vfx graph generator, and usable in the same way, that I can generate a grid of voxels of a mesh. Any idea if/how this could be possible?

• further to this i was wondering, i have a blender where geometry nodes has generated a grid of volumetric voxels, and wondering if there's any way to get this into vfx graph? I've managed to export it as a csv list of positions and would wanna convert that somehow into a vfx graph point cache

[inland tusk]

could this be not actually an 'animation', but one frame which is a gradient from center to ouside, then in a shader you just play with something like a smoothstep or step to get a mask to use for the alpha to get the expanding animation

generating a nice gradient map would be trick I guess in that case...

which, I guess if you were into generating it as an animation anyway if you did some kind of simulation out from th middle and set color by age of particle or something....

[fringe ice]

Hello I am trying to make bounce effects for my player, however, the particle rotation is relative to my player's rotation, I do not want this. How do I make it so it stays at a fixed rotation?

[inland tusk]

so, I have instanced meshes in my VFX graph, and their normals seem to flip when I move around them irregularly and from some angles only, any idea why?

[warm torrent]

Set your particles to world space
Or instantiate them as a separate object

[jovial spire]

Hello guys, does anyone know how I can reduce over the lifetime the size of my Position Shape pls ?

[warm torrent]

Yuu have to change to access the shape module's relevant properties with a script
https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/PartSysShapeModule.html
https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/ParticleSystem-shape.html

Individual particles have a lifetime, the particle system or its modules do not

[full light]

How do I make the collision mesh on my particles more complex? I don't like that they bounce off things without actually touching them

[warm torrent]

Particles can only have radial colliders, determined by radius in particle collision module

For a collision mesh in 2d you need a polygon collider component, which uses the sprite physics shape determined in the sprite editor
But that can't be used with particles

[full light]

ohhh, I see, I thought it was based on the image. I'll use a smaller radius then 🙏

[full light]

can I offset the center?

[warm torrent]

Yes, renderer module has a pivot offset
If you're using sprites via the sprite sheet animation module for the particles they use the sprite pivot

[full light]

Awesome, thanks!

[full light]

hmm, some of these seem to have a different offset

[warm torrent]

Since they're different sprites, they'd be using their unique pivots defined by the sprite editor

Pivot offset from renderer module applies to all particles on top of that
So if you have both offsets it may end up going further away than expected

[full light]

they are not different sprites

I mean

ok that's a different sprite from the first particle system I showed you but there's only one sprite in each particle system

[warm torrent]

I see, I thought the other was a two-pronged thing
I guess it's possible they have 3D rotation which makes the pivot appear different from our viewing angle, though I'm not sure

[warm torrent]

If you turn off 2D mode in viewport and rotate around the particle system, does it seem they pivots are offset depthwise

Or just a varied X Y pivot

[full light]

wtf

[warm torrent]

Looks like the issue could be depthwise pivot + 3d rotation

[full light]

how would I change that?

[warm torrent]

Can you show the Renderer module in full?

[warm torrent]

Hmm, no cause here either that I can spot
The 3D view screenshot actually looks more correct, they all have the same offset

So I'm not sure what lead to the apparent offset earlier

[full light]

here's another perspective

[warm torrent]

If you want to export the prefab with the particle system as a unitypackage I could take a closer look

[full light]

hm, for some reason it wants me to include like a bunch of unrelated sprites and scripts in the export

maybe this worked?

[warm torrent]

There is no real offset

It only looks like it because the collider's visualization is updating at a different rate

Here's with simulation speed slowed down

Visualize Pivot in renderer module also has the same effect, but it doesn't affect where the pivot actually is

Currently the collider module does not do anything, since it has no collision planes defined
Alternatively it'd have to be in World and 2d mode for them to hit 2d colliders

[inland tusk]

I have a vfx graph which I use for different use cases, and the only thing that changes between them are the capacities/count..... There's no way to do this without duping out the VFX graph in different capacities and then if i need to change it go and change them all again?

[warm torrent]

You can add properties to the blackboard, which if exposed can be changed per-component
You can then use that property to control spawn rate, or any other logic

[inland tusk]

yep, thanks, I mean for the capacity itself

[warm torrent]

Capacity cannot be controlled by a property though

[inland tusk]

as I have some that are 128 some 1024 etc

[warm torrent]

My first instinct would be to look into limiting the spawning, rather than controlling the capacity

[inland tusk]

yeah... that'd be easy, though I'm in performance critical environment and spawning all particles once at the beginning from point caches

[warm torrent]

If they don't share the same capacity, they can't be instanced which could hurt performance

[inland tusk]

I wonder if an extension could be made to automatically generate versions at different capacities and automatically select which to use based on particle count... Hmm, I don't know a huge amount about how VFX graphs instance, I'd expect I'd only have a couple/few of these VF at a time

how small actually would be overhead difference between say 128 particles and 1024 in terms of memory allocation?

I'm on oculus quest and not exactly doing hundreds of thousands

[warm torrent]

VFX graphs can handle hundreds of thousands of particles easily, because it's designed to scale up
I doubt capacities are going to matter there

[inland tusk]

yeah, not on a quest at 72/90 fps though 🙂, and competing with trying to keep textures hi enough res for vr etc

[warm torrent]

The rendering cost is another matter ofc

Usually the issue is the overhead of individual systems regardless of capacity, which is what instancing is meant to alleviate

[inland tusk]

it's an interesting point I hadn't considered, thanks

could it instance graphs which have different attribute maps though? (particles are initially spawned from different position point caches)

[warm torrent]

I would expect so
Doesn't mention that as a problem https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.visualeffectgraph@17.0/manual/Instancing.html

[inland tusk]

ah, output meshes don't work, interesing I am using those, (even if they are just uv mapped meshes of cubes). perhaps I should look into the inbuilt particle cube output node, there was some reason I wasn't using that but can't remember it

[ashen robin]

Single system pool

[inland tusk]

hum?

[ashen robin]

Single system that just has a large capacity

[inland tusk]

ah, right. Doing that in many other places for more permanent systems... this one is for a building unit VFX which is only intermittently present during gameplay, and works on principles of particles not spawning but being always alive during their build process and animated through values like distances. I'm not quite sure how I could refactor this one

given me something to think about though, thanks

[ashen robin]

Looks pretty good. I think minimizing the emission shape and playing around with the noise a bit more can work

[sudden moth]

how can i make an animated mesh an emitted particle? I have a mesh of a bat flapping it's wings I want to use as a particle

[opal star]

You can’t output a skinned mesh. We actually use two approaches. One is to bake the animation into a VAT( vertex animation texture) and output the mesh particle with a shader that does the animating. This is the best quality option. If your bats are further away and don’t need much detail in the animation the second approach is to actually highjack the lod system and manually select a lod level where each level is essentially a baked out keyframe from the animation.

[clever ibex]

Hello guys, can anyone tell me how to make particle not to collide with some specific Object?
I'm on my 2D game project, I think I researched everthing so that I can make solution but I still have no idea

I found that I cannot use Physics class functions to Particle for disabling collide with specific object
And Found a way to make my particles to collide with specific Object only

[clever ibex]

Yeah I tried to do that

but I need to disable Collding with Only one Object

Using layer makes the particle go through any other Object with same layer

[warm agate]

you can make new layers

[clever ibex]

This is screen shot of my game

and those Black Boxes are particles

and I have to make a lots of layer to make those particles don't go through each other

[warm agate]

instead of having a layer for each gameObject. you could have a single layer called like "DontCollideWithParticles"

[clever ibex]

then should I have to set those Yellow things which are spawning Particles as Same layer name of "DontCollideWithParticles"

Isnt it make particles Which are made from upper Yellow Object go through the below Yellow Object?

[warm agate]

yeah it would.

not sure if there's a way to make particles not collide with the particle system objects. might need to double check that myself

[clever ibex]

Hmm.. then Do I have to make it as GameObject? not using Particle?

I found almost everything on Unity Discussion with it and Asked multiple time to GPT
But I found nothing helpful
I'm little confusing that Is there a way or not

[warm agate]

yeah that's probably a lot easier than trying to use the particle system. generally not a good idea to handle physics stuff with particles anyway. you can, but its usually more flexible if you use a GameObject

[clever ibex]

Got It, It was my mistake to use Particle system while trying to do some physics stuff

I could have waste more time if you didnt tell me

thx u for letting me know

[warm agate]

no problem, feel free to come back if you have any other problems

[clever ibex]

[modern sky]

does anyone know some good places to get free/cheap particle effects or textures for particle effects? I want to spruce up some effects i have on my projects but i'm not really a VFX artist so i don't know how to make the particles themselves. Either that or some tutorials on how to make some decent particle textures on my own.

[inland tusk]

I've been finding that my vfx graphs which are doing mesh outputs on them, sometimes flip their normals depending on the camera rotation... any ideas?

[native ivy]

hello guys. i'm new to Unity and trying to learn Vfx design. im simply testing my VFX to move around but the "play()" button is not working even tho i have changed the emission and the velocity around.
Thank you in advance

[fickle urchin]

Hey guys... Any idea why VFX is not displaying any particles in my scene viewer?

Despite having it enable in gizmo and that "see effects in window" option, installed and in play mode...

Unity 2022.3xx version.

It doesnt show up.

--

Nvm. Im into the mobile business... Apparently VFX is not really supported by most mobile gamers. So its not worth it.

How can i start learning to use particle system to add casting magic, AOE spells & skills, etc ?

[spring lake]

Unity has a bunch of samples. I would start by looking at those to understand how they work.

[harsh halo]

is there a way i can modify a subsection of particles or area of particles, maybe defined by a trail or something similar, to achieve an effect similar to this ? https://x.com/i/status/1899931349550850225

Cemhah (@cemhah) on X

Only forward

X · Mar 12, 2025, 9:11 PM

maybe i could just have 2 particles sysetms all along and mask one?

[harsh halo]

so I have my path rendered to a texture but how do i use this to control properties of my PS?

I guess i could do visuals by also rendering particles to a texture then using my path RT to affect color. But itd be cool if I could affect non-visuial properites as well like size or velocity, is that possible?

[ashen robin]

I'd do a texture though not entirely sure how you go about it using the particle system, but sending into the vfx graph is doable. As for size over time I'd use that modifier as a multiplier and not by a set amount.

Rather, the mask would dictate everything besides the emission so yeah

[harsh halo]

i kinda get the idea here but im not sure how to use the path rt to affectt particle proeprties im just treating it like any other tex agnostic to the fact that its source was particles

[ashen robin]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnkxR53zYSo
Gabriels got a new video on interacting with particles in the VFX graph using a shape as a mask if you're interested

[harsh halo]

ill take a look at that, thanks

[opal star]

This definitely seems like two particle systems to me. The white ones do not seem to morph into the color ines at all

[harsh halo]

in that case how might something like this be achieved? is the answer really just spending a bunch of time fiddling with parameters? Is there any way I can contain the path of particles to be within a masked screen region?

the answer might be in vfx graph idk i havent looked at that vid yet

[opal star]

Do you need the path to be dynamic ? That would make it a hell of a lot more complicated I think

[harsh halo]

yes i want to achieve something similar for the player's path

[opal star]

🤔 you would need some way to dynamically define two force fields

Maybe have a third particle system that emmits the path, write those particles to a RT, then use the RT to apply force, one to push the background particles and one to constrain the color ones

But this is just a high level idea the implementation would be complicated

[harsh halo]

thats kinda what im doign in the above example to generate the path mask

the lazy version where im just dropping off timed life prefab circles

[ashen robin]

Can probably just use two shaders really and just scroll the texture on this mask

[harsh halo]

sorry im not sure exactly what you mean can you elaborate on that approach

[little barn]

Hi! Recently I have started to add some lights and VFX to my project. So far everything works and feels really good. The fog of war adds so much to my scenes.

The only issue I encounter now is that I am not sure how can I make the fog of war cover the lights as well. In the image attached, the Sprite 2D Light I am using is still visible through the fog of war.

Is there any setting I am missing? Thanks a lot.

Also the bricks that have the lights attached are behaving correctly - they are "disappearing" under the fog

[ashen robin]

Instead of particles you just use 2 textures with a seamless wrap. First texture, the background, seems to scroll across a large quad and interacts with the mask such that it becomes distorted in the proximity of it. The second texture, the trail, scrolls across this shape's UV where the UV's are mapped tighter near the edges for that distorted look.

I think the hardest part for this is figuring out how to make the background pixels warp around the mask. Either you have some cutout/intersection method and reposition the UVs according to the mask, or maybe just use some distortion shader using scene color (render texture)

[ashen robin]

No clue how 2D lights are drawn, but if this is like a transparent draw pass I'd expect you can just rearrange the z-ordering / transparent queue of everything

you can change the ordering on the vfx graph systems themselves or through a custom shader, so it's more of a question of how do you manage when to draw those lights

[ashen robin]

Another idea is using the stencil buffer and making a mask, but again, not too sure what you can modify/access on these lights