✨┃vfx-and-particles

[turbid needle]

hmm i can copy/paste the node from another graph, just can't add it there

[prime dome]

activate it in the preferences

[turbid needle]

which preferences?

[prime dome]

@turbid needle

[turbid needle]

ah thanks oeLeo

that fixed it

[dapper pine]

how do i make particle system emit from opposite base of the cone ?? (from big base to small base)

(i try to make an effect like charge of goku's Kamehameha)

[dapper pine]

help pls

[prime dome]

@dapper pine just set it as target position, add the position and sample the location of the particles till they arrive. or let them collide inside con and give velo

[fluid grove]

I'm trying to use vfx graph and spawning a particle mesh, the problem I'm running into is the node won't accept the fbx for the mesh slot so I have to drill down into it to get the mesh I want, however the mesh is super small. How do I make it bigger?

https://gyazo.com/8345f95cdd3be01e1c4c4defd05b4bdb

[prime dome]

scale it up in inspector and then make it new prefab, or use vfx (set size/scale)

[prime dome]

how can i play shuriken via animator/timeline?

[tall summit]

Finally the Lit VFX nodes have made it to URP in Unity 2021.2, but does anyone know if they will ever get backported to Unity 2021.1?

Or is it something that can only work with the newer runtime version?

[prime dome]

i dont think so. they usually dont fix bugs of old editor versions besides the longtime support ones, (or update the old versions)

[elder latch]

I am trying to set the bounds of a particle strip trail which is being spawned over distance.
I was trying to create min/max bounds from the current position to the starting position, but I dont know how to get the position where the system first spawned:

It should also work by using the position of the first particle spawned, but I also dont know how to get this position

This should be a pretty common problem as a trail is a common effect but I could not find any references on how to properly calculate bounds for this kind of effect

[steady zephyr]

so I'm reading in particle position data into VFX graph at 10 fps ... what do i set my lifetime / spawn rate to so that I get a seemless transition between each timestep of my particles? i.e. getting one frame at a time correctly

[dull obsidian]

@tall summit most importantly, this omission is not / was never a bug, full URP support is a new feature. so it won't be backported to any long term servicing (LTS) release which receive bugfixes only.

[prime dome]

use a switch, remap, or a step node with a particle index node if you wanna get the first particle. then use the get position node. this way you can fake if-statements. why do you need bounds?

[prime dome]

you can set the vfx timestep, but with 10 frames you wont achieve much

[elder latch]

I need to set the bounds because otherwise culling is broken. The whole VFX will be culled as soon as the source of the trail leaves the screen

[elder latch]

does this actually work as an input to bounds?

[steady zephyr]

Okay... say its X fps. How do I make sure my VFX particles spawn at the correct rate?

[prime dome]

you can use the logic nodes (and or etc) and only set position if the id is 1 (for example)

[prime dome]

this depends on the whole project i guess. i always follow this path: if i want to have 30 frames, i use 1/30 as timestep. but this can also slow down the framerate. there is a good tutorial on timing by unity

[elder latch]

thx will try this out tomorrow. was about to go to sleep

[steady zephyr]

I'm not following... I shouldn't need to change any unity settings, just spawn rate and lifetime in the VFX graph

[prime dome]

oh ok

[prime dome]

The Constant Rate Block adds a spawn count over time at a constant rate. For instance, if the rate is 10, this block tiggers 10 spawn events per second for its Spawn Contex

so it depends on the capacity

spawnrate=1 and capacity = 10 -> 10 particles per second (if the lifetime is set to 0.1 i guess)

[steady zephyr]

Yeah I think the lifetime is the issue here, since if it's set to the wrong value the particles won't die in time for the next frame to be written, and if they die too soon that obviously leaves a gap

[prime dome]

you also can increase the capacity

[steady zephyr]

That shouldn't be necessary

And isn't a solution for my purposes anyways since I want exactly one frame at a time

[prime dome]

"Note: Fixed Delta time works in asynchronous update with deltaTime = N * FixedTimeStep (with deltaTime = min(deltaTime , MaxDeltaTime)).

N being determined by the current framerate.

In this mode, deltaTime can equal 0 at certain frames." https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.visualeffectgraph@7.1/manual/VisualEffectProjectSettings.html

[prime dome]

Does that mean that vfx is totally independent from the main timescale? i dont understand the function

[steady zephyr]

Yup I'm lost lol. Thanks for the link

[dull obsidian]

it's something like that.. somethings in visual effect graph are not frame rate independent: https://forum.unity.com/threads/vfx-particles-timestep-physics-simulation.983923/

and there is a roadmap item in regards to addressing this timestep limitation / frame rate independence : https://portal.productboard.com/unity/1-unity-platform-rendering-visual-effects/c/101-sub-frame-interpolation

[prime dome]

thanks landon!

[dull obsidian]

not that there aren't some possible workarounds to it, like resampling the data with compute or graphics shaders and buffers before handing it off to visual effect graph at full frame rate for the "slow motion" case

[prime dome]

haha omg 😉

[steady zephyr]

I am using a compute shader (thanks @slate sable) to get the data in. The data is a particle sim that runs at an arbitrary framerate.... In-game however the FPS is 30+

[slate sable]

You could set the Lifetime to 1/your frame rate you want and use periodic burst with count as the count of particles and delay same as the lifetime. Just a guess. :-|

[prime dome]

why shuriken particles dont spawn sometimes when using animator, or the spawnrate drops. i know it can be solved by restarting. but how can i test if i should restart unity?

[steady zephyr]

tried this, thanks. where did you get 1/frame rate? didn't really work :/

anyone know if you can check if a particle is at a given location, and if so, don't render it?

[steady zephyr]

so I got it working... don't assign a lifetime and use single burst

that makes them not overlap at least, not sure if it's the "correct" way

[elder latch]

Is there any difference in putting "Over Lifetime" changes in the Output block vs the Update block?

[steady zephyr]

good question lol

[pine copper]

I'm looking for a tutorial for the particle system, not having much look finding what I need. If anyone is aware of one, I'd be very thankful! I'm looking to create a particle system to mimic the dust circle that appears under a helicopter when it's near the ground.

[steady zephyr]

anyone? 😛

[prime dome]

update has always more power

for example with color: colors have higher intensity in update block

and some over life nodes dont work at all in output

[prime dome]

this cant be done in vfx alone. you would need some custom functions

[steady zephyr]

what? why?

[prime dome]

ones its in the gpu pipeline you cant do anything about that

[steady zephyr]

ah that is unfortunate, i need to send degenerate points at (0,0,0) (or wherever) for null data in order for my point cloud to be ordered

hope unity makes this more like an actual programming language

it is promising but very incomplete

[prime dome]

@steady zephyr but you could use a gpu event and sample the location of the parent and if location is matching you set the trigger spawnrate to 0

this shoud work

[sage nest]

Does anyone have knowledge about using the torus block?

I am trying to make the torus wavy like this

[prime dome]

this is a circle. set position circle + turbulence/noise

[sage nest]

It needs to have thickness though

Also, your statement is very vague, can you be more specific

@prime dome

Okay so I tried doing what you said, set position to circle, I do that in my initialize Particles, but for my update particles, I cant do this, because it forces all particles to be stuck in a very thin circle

[prime dome]

you could use a particle strip or basic quad. then use the set postion circle/torus and add a turbulance node.

[prime dome]

use a add position node connect it to perlin noise and set the range to actual position + set a range from -2 to 2

[sage nest]

In the update?

[prime dome]

yes

this is quite ez sht

[sage nest]

Literally yesterday was my first time using vfx graph, so its not easy for me

Thats what I have, and thats my output

the outer particles you see are what this part of the system I showed controls

How do I force the particles to stay within a torus/circle, instead of just moving outwards like that

@prime dome

If there was a Collision with Torus block, that would be great, but there isnt

[prime dome]

with the method i stated

[sage nest]

What is this connected to?

Can you show me the actual set up in vfx graph?

Please?

@prime dome

Managed to get this output

[prime dome]

maybe later

[copper river]

Hey guys, I need your guidance here.
In general terms. How would you go about achieving the smoke like effect around this orb as well as the dancing rings?
It has to be in a 2D scene.

[slate sable]

Maybe just set it's alpha to 0 when in that point? For example with distance between particle position and 0,0,0. If it's less than 0.0... set it to 0. Or if you aren't expecting these particles to get visible again you could set alive to false to kill them.

[prime dome]

i think the blue and pink things are made with shader around a sphere mesh particle -> 2 particles

which is also a force field for the smoke

visibility of smoke is set to 0 when smoke is to far and to close to sphere

[prime dome]

If anyone can teach me how to make a slash in unity please hit up my dms, all the tutorials online hardly go into depth.

[prime dome]

"Internal: deleting an allocation that is older than its permitted lifetime of 4 frames (age = 10" what does this error mean?

[fluid lagoon]

it's an error from the jobs system, which vfx graph uses. Basically. seems like a bug in VFX graph if that's all you're using

[prime dome]

are there any good tutorials for scaling a rendertexture the right way, so you can use it with the set position depth node without rescaling /transforming?

or maybe its a bug

[steady zephyr]

it's not just about visibility.. some effects i want to do are based on connectivity, so it will draw a line to the invisible point

[steady zephyr]

this sounds like it would work... so it would be two vertical graphs connected by a GPU event (I think that's green)? Not sure what node to sample

[prime dome]

so its just about alpha, i thought you dont want to render them

same approach: use get position/ target position and switch nodes to check if the condition is met

get the target position from the trigger parent (inherit). this is the easiest way nfor me

[lunar umbra]

Anyone know how to set the position of each VFX particle?

[fluid lagoon]

That's what the position nodes are for

[turbid needle]

can you use VFX particle strips to render trails? I'm having trouble syncing it with my camera/objects that are updated in Update

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/514215010562605076/866210017228488704/2021-07-18_16-49-24.mp4

i've turned off fixedupdate here

i'm guessing the problem is the spawn system's rate isn't perfectly synced to the frame rate, so it's not initializing a new particle at the front of the strip every frame

[normal flower]

Does anyone know any workaround to animate the color over lifetime module?

or get the same effect, at least

[crimson zealot]

like using a gradient for the color?

[normal flower]

Yes, but actually being able to change it via animation

Tho I gettin tired, feel free to dm me

[crimson zealot]

hmmm I would probably expose a shader value and animate that in the material

[normal flower]

I have big stupid, what do you mean?

Like, animate the color and the alpha in a loop?

I pretty much need color over lifetime for what I'd want to do so I'm not sure how one would do that via the material

Unless I'm just dumb

Also I must rest

[crimson zealot]

well i donno what you are doing, but you can pass the normalized particle lifetime to a shader, and you can have a color parameter in the material using that shader which you can animate with an animator (or a gradient you scrub along, or whatever)

cyan explains most of it in here https://cyangamedev.wordpress.com/2020/07/19/custom-vertex-streams/

[normal flower]

I will look into that

Thank you very much

Now, sleep

[turbid needle]

still struggling with this syncing #✨┃vfx-and-particles message

basically i need a new 'particle' (start of the strip) to be created every frame

[young swan]

does anybody know if the VFX graph scripting API is supposed to be complete? It feels like there's stuff missing or things that just don't work
I'm having issues with this API class in particular:
https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/VFX.VFXSpawnerState.html

delayAfterLoop, delayBeforeLoop, loopCount, loopDuration and loopIndex don't work at all

I'm trying to read the values that I use in my graph, but it just returns nothing

also, changing those properties through my code doesn't seem to affect the visual effect's behavior either

[upper geyser]

modifying particle systems yields this popup for like 3 minutes

even whe nthe particles are paused

not even being sarcastic 4:30+

[steady zephyr]

did you goof up and give some ridiculous value for something?

just restart

if you're rendering like a million cubes or something and accidentally give a very large scale that'll zoink you

[upper geyser]

theres like 30k particles max

its 4-5 minutes every click

but then it runs smooth as butter

until i click again

theres gotta be a better way to make tornadoes and storm clouds

without using volumetrics (very laggy)

[steady zephyr]

hard to advise without seeing everything ... are you sure it's related your VFX graph? you turned everything else in the scene off?

[upper geyser]

its a particle system, not sure what a vfx graph is (im a programmer not a graphic designer lmao)

[steady zephyr]

it's a visual scripting language for particle systems in unity

[upper geyser]

o

im just using the stuff off to the side in the particle system component

[fluid lagoon]

30k particles is quite a lot I think for Shuriken (the normal particle system thing)

[crimson zealot]

yeah, generally for something like that you should be making custom meshes/materials to drive whatever VFX you need. e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qyh9RPxeKcA

[upper geyser]

well ive got a particle system working well enough

[dull obsidian]

Visual Effect Graph / VFX Graph might be more appropriately named "GPU Particle System" whereas the Built-in Particle System (fka Shuriken) is the "CPU Particle System." they each have their pros and cons, large particle counts being much more achievable on the GPU with its massive parallelism. There's no solution / workaround to the inherent performance limitations to the built-in (CPU particle system) see here for a comparison: https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/ChoosingYourParticleSystem.html

@upper geyser or if you'd prefer not to use the Unity out of the box tools at all, you could always program a GPU particle system from scratch with HLSL compute shaders or a CPU particle system built with DOTS multithreading for performance over flexibility, or use an example implementation of either for a starting point.

Or go a route that doesn't involve particles at all but rather deformed mesh surfaces (as already mentioned) or volumes (if you want to be really physically accurate like volumetric cloud rendering, it's not inherently laggy but difficult to optimize.) but if you are set on sticking to a particle system, above are your options in that realm.

[dull obsidian]

all that said, this may be a completely different problem entirely, especially since you say it runs fine after the changes are made. are you having long delays doing other things in the unity editor? i would try removing the unity collaborate package from your project if it exists, it has been known to cause all sorts of weird issues like this in certain versions of unity (that also may be resolved in a new version of unity or at least the latest LTS, i've no idea what version you are using)

[upper geyser]

to be honest i just gave up with it, im gonna edit the particles during runtime via a script if i have to again

[upper geyser]

im gonna look at this because this sounds really useful for my purpose, im making full scale tornadoes with the cpu particle system

[summer drift]

Question - is VFX Graph unsupported on Quest 2 entirely? Note: I don't have Vulkan support on the project I'm in.

[oak summit]

For those of you who tuned into the Let's Dev : Principles of VFX livestream, I've updated and re-organized the repo containing all the samples. Feel free to play around with those and use them in your own projects 🙂 : https://github.com/Kodrin/VFX-Essentials

[upper geyser]

vfx graph doesnt work

at all

standard render pipeline

literally just imported it

its the default vfx graph

i havent changed anything

and it wont play

[upper geyser]

all of that stuff pops up when i compile

[slate sable]

@upper geyser VFX Graph is meant to work with HDRP or URP.
https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.visualeffectgraph@10.6/manual/System-Requirements.html

[upper geyser]

i switched to urp and still got that

[dull obsidian]

unfortunately, one does not simply switch render pipelines in Unity. beyond that, VFX graph support for URP was really only added in the latest 2021.2 beta releases , it is quite limited and unsupported in the current tech stream release 2021.1 and previous.

[upper geyser]

yeah i gave up and am using the cpu particle system

my poor i5 is gonna hate me

[dull obsidian]

@upper geyser fwiw, i have gotten VFX graph to work with Built-in Render Pipeline (BRP) but it's very much unsupported and requires a lot of integration legwork. It makes little sense for me personally to become an asset store publisher for these things as the currently internal APIs required for this often have breaking changes, but if you really want it / need it or other custom VFX graph or compute / sim / viz feel free to message me and we can discuss options. there are also some examples i manage to publish to my github from time to time if you want to have at them as a starting point https://github.com/landonth

[upper geyser]

if i have any issues with the cpu particle system from here on ill take a look

[dull obsidian]

@upper geyser but you might even be better off with GPU particle system examples and assets made for BRP

(especially if you prefer code over node based interfaces.. though it can be a lot of boilerplate at times)

[atomic otter]

Hi, everyone! I'm new here, but I'm trying to create a simple tornado-like particle system in Unity, and I had a question about the orbital velocity over lifetime feature.

When I create a particle system in Unity, it defaults to particles spreading outward in a cone shape along the system's z-direction. When I check "Velocity over Lifetime" and add an Orbital velocity like (0, 0, 1), then the particles start spinning around the z-axis, which is what I want.

However, with this orbital velocity, the particles no longer expand outward in the same conical shape; they become more tightly packed together towards the z-axis. As I increase the orbital velocity, the particles become more and more tightly packed; for example, at Orbital velocity (0, 0, 10), the particle system's shape is no longer recognizable as conical.

Why is this happening? Is there anything I can do to fix this directly?
I've tried searching online for more about this issue, but my Google-fu is apparently not strong enough.

I've also tried setting the Radial velocity to a nonzero value, which does make the particles expand outward back into a cone, but is there a better way? If not, how can I calculate the angle of the newly formed cone?

Thanks in advance.

[upper geyser]

im also making tornadoes with particle systems, i used a free asset on the asset store called "particle ribbons", it has orbiting particles done for you

[atomic otter]

This looks like a great start. Thank you for the suggestion!

[prime dome]

is there something like the step node but for negative values. i cant use one-minus nodes. i want to compare the highest and lowest vector (y component) of target position, to current position. if i use one minues i have no output in the end

[prime dome]

i guess i use the clamp node

no better: remap node to filter some values out and then go for minimum

[dull obsidian]

@prime dome what is the ultimate goal? how do you intend for the particles to behave or look by doing this?

i'm just curious even though you answered your own question

[prime dome]

i guess this can be done quite easy with a matrix

[summer drift]

my VFX particle won't let me apply "Gradient Mapping" to Color Mapping. If I try this setting, it just shows a white box (no color). If I leave color mapping to default, my particle shows up fine. Any ideas as to why?

nevermind solved it

[prime dome]

i tried to send you the graph, but its not possible. i want to reduce my amount of nodes. i want to morph between 2 font under certain conditions. and so im trying to find out how to use matrices with vfx

[dull obsidian]

@prime dome i looked at the screenshot you posted and have a rough idea now. Anyway, I understand your pain. any special animation or visual effects dealing with typography can be very rigid and finicky like this

[prime dome]

can i use the set position node multiple times if i address different particle ids? yeah sorry its seems to work

[dull obsidian]

possibly if it is additive and you only add 0,0,0 to the particles you don't want to change position at each time you get and set the position.. though for this alone there's no advantage to doing that versus setting all the positions at once. i would just use a custom attribute for "group id" or "character id" or something if you are trying to say, set the position by each character / letter made up of many particles for typography

[prime dome]

ahhhh allright. so you can store specific particles (locations) in this custom atribute right? but the manual says "based on location", so it does not store ids. so you could use the custom atributes to store locations and make changes to the depending particles repetitive, but this wouldnt work with moving particles right?

[dull obsidian]

you can store whatever you want in a custom attribute. positions, colors, some other id / identifier, whatever you want. but like regular particle attributes they are still stored per particle similar to everything you might do in a for loop, every time you get or set an attribute it's "for each" particle based on particle id. then you can assign additional ids or anything in custom attributes for particles to use to look up different information like for a group or groups of particles that you want to have a different color or position, etc

@prime dome i'm not sure what you want ultimately , idk if you want some behavior to happen on different frames / simulation steps over time or what you mean by repetitively or why that would accomplish what you want. if you can share more about that it would help

@prime dome this happens to everyone at every skill level at some point when we are in deep in the details while working on something and then get stuck and ask questions. you've shared a little bit of context but it's still an "x y problem" in that you are asking about the attempted solution (y) rather than the actual problem you are trying to solve and end goal you want to achieve (x) https://xyproblem.info

@prime dome maybe a better way for me to ask for more context:

• does this still have to do with morphing particle positions between the 2 text font shapes?
• is setting the position repetitively for each step of movement in a frame or for each font shape you want to morph to or what is the repetition meant to solve in making the particles move?

[prime dome]

the manual does not really explain how to use the custom attributes, so im just trying to figure it out. but anyway what i just didnt understand was the location keyword(data container). si understand this now, but not really ow to hook them up. i got my morphing working, but i have a new problem that maybe can be solved with the custom attributes. i want to change the color of specific particles (by id or location). can this be done with the custom atributes alone, or will that require custom nodes?

[dull obsidian]

if you just need to change the color of the particle it shouldn't require custom anything, you can use the color attribute

it's only if you want to change the color or other built in attribute based on some unique value that isn't already an attribute (position, velocity, id, etc) doesn't have some built in node or block, that is when you might want to use custom attributes.
attributes can pass through across contexts as well, initialize -> update -> output and also can be inherited in sub spawners / sub emitters. if you only need to do something simple in a single context like "set color from map/texture" in a single update context you might not need custom attributes.

[prime dome]

but i want to change the color of specific particles by their location. but if use branch and compare (for example every particle that is located at vector{0,0,0}, should have color = green-> all particles = green) it doesnt work

[dull obsidian]

hmm that might not work due to floating point precision error, i'd try changing that to a distance check. check if the particles distance from 0,0,0 is less than 0.1 or other distance and set green

[prime dome]

ahh ok ill try

[prime dome]

turns out that i cant set color by id (every id > 5 ) and i cant really use equal condition (due to floating point precision). but anyway it works for me now!!!. also really cool that you can store the ids and properties with custom atributes!! thnks bro!!

[dull obsidian]

cool i'm glad that worked anyway. you could also divide the id and round or cast it to the closest integer to make a new "group" id that is lower like first 0 to 99 particles have group id "0" the next 100 to 199 have group id "1" and so on. you could also derive a group id from uv texture coordinate or an attribute map or something else. and use a switch case instead of a branch if you want to assign more than 2 colors at a time

[prime dome]

yeah man storing particle ids is so cool and helpful!

now im starting to understand how this node based stuff is working!

[prime dome]

i can only filter certain particle ids via range/float if i use a modulo before the division node. i really dont get why. but it works now.

[dull obsidian]

interesting. maybe need to cast the id to a float first? could also try multiplying by a positive value less than 1 and avoid the division? either way i'm glad that's working in some way now

[prime dome]

modulo before division makes quite a sense because you just use every x step by counting down (depending on your rate), so the function query/id output happens every x seceonds

but still why isnt possible to use the id node directly? why do you have to count down with modulo?

i guess the only reason can be the update times. because the same approach works with every other property besides the damnparticle id.

[prime dome]

if its because floating point precision-> ceiling the id should be enough

[normal flower]

Although I'm gonna be driving soon, I can't seem to get the alpha part of a shader graph to work. This is my setup

I have all the relevant custom vertex streams on

And color over lifetime set to decreasing the alpha how I want

But even if I change the alpha to 0 directly, it still renders fully opaque, or at least seems to.

I can test if it's because I'm not using a vertex color to decide the albedo

Wait, I'm a fool. It isn't set to transparent. I'll leave thia here is case that doesn't fix it

[steady zephyr]

https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.visualeffectgraph@10.2/manual/Context-OutputMesh.html never used shader graph before ... can i use this to draw triangles between specific particles?

which afaik is not possible with vfx graph by itself ... ( you can only draw a triangle for each particle, you can't specify which particles you want for each triangle)

[prime dome]

@steady zephyr yeah that is possible, but you would need to trigger a random sampletexture/fliptbook texindex in the shadergraph from a property in the vfx (for example particle id, or just a periodic total time node with a max range= spawn capacity)

but its is actually possible with vfx alone. you just need to set the texindex of a flipbook to be related to your particle id spawn index

[prime dome]

and a mesh is not a particle. so you may better use mesh particles

[prime dome]

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

[prime dome]

the main reason why meshes are existing in the vfx graph is, that you can use nodes for your mesh (dont have to controll externally)

[opaque knoll]

Hi just confirming, in Shuriken PS, the subemitter Death will spawn the subemitter particle on the next frame?
I try check in Update, and at the moment the main PS particle dies, both main and subemitter's particleCount is 0

[nimble goblet]

hey all, looking for some help with the sdf tool... i can never seem to get a proper representation of the mesh, only a single cube....

[prime dome]

sdf tool hasn't worked for me from the start. so i wonder how you got it working anyways. im better off using houdini

[nimble goblet]

im running latest beta

[prime dome]

i though sdf tool is deprecated

[nimble goblet]

there's a native unity sdf baking tool

its only available in 2021.2.b...

[prime dome]

ahhh

cool nice to know

[nimble goblet]

https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.visualeffectgraph@12.0/manual/sdf-bake-tool-window.html

this is the expectation in the docs

i cant figure out how to not get the cube, and rather get my mesh

there's no info on any requirements of the mesh, listed in the docs

[prime dome]

thats kinda weird

[nimble goblet]

im assuming that the problem is me, i just have no path to determine what i am doing wrong

but i suppose it could be a bug

very scant details available on searches

[prime dome]

let me try this. lets see

wow the even have a native point cache bake tool. i didnt noticed

[prime dome]

is your preview window displaying the desired sdf outcome?

[prime dome]

no, i see

in houdini this is usually happening due to wrong mesh/wrong settings

[dull obsidian]

the docs do briefly mention this:

6. If the input Mesh does not explicitly separate its interior from its exterior (for example if it contains holes, self-intersections, open boundaries, or self-containing geometry), the resulting SDF can misclassify some regions. To help mitigate these artifacts, there are Additional Properties](#properties) that you can manually expose.

[prime dome]

@nimble goblet its because of the "In/Out Threshold"&"Sign Passes Count". activate live view and adjust this property

so just like @dull obsidian said, you need to activate the additional properties, or your mesh is just not suitable (not waterproof)

[nimble goblet]

ill try another model

just a subdivided cube from blender, with some modifications

all transforms applied before export, exported as fbx

ive also tried playing with all the values

always a cube in the sdf preview

[soft hull]

Prob was asked a multiple times already but will ever VFX particles collide interact with world colliders?

[nimble goblet]

you can construct meshes at runtime to interact with other colliders

[dull obsidian]

this HLSL compute shader kernel failing to compile appears to be the main problem. which is part of the mesh SDF baker itself. i searched the web for this text and found that it's a known issue in 2021.2 beta (12.0 graphics packages) with a fix in review (quality assurance testing phase) https://issuetracker.unity3d.com/issues/hdrp-vfxgraph-mesh-and-texture-preview-fails-when-selecting-bake-mesh-in-sdf-bake-tool-window

[nimble goblet]

wow

well done

nice find landon, thank you for the time and effort

[dull obsidian]

no worries! thanks for posting the error.

[nimble goblet]

i think i may have come across this, but in my lack of knowledge, disregarded it

is there a version i can downgrade to that still has the SDF tool, in a working state?

[near cloud]

When i exported a grass from blender to unity the particle settings didnt save how do i fix this

[prime dome]

still: if your mesh is flawed and not waterproof you cant bake good sdf

[dull obsidian]

well the issue tracker says HDRP, so maybe could try the latest beta with URP in a new empty project just to bake SDF. not sure if that will work but worth a shot. aside from that, as already mentioned you could just download the free version of SideFX Houdini (Apprentice) and install then Unity VFX toolbox and use its volume exporter. keijiro has an example described here, though it will take a bit of getting familiar with houdini as well: https://github.com/keijiro/VectorFieldExamples

[prime dome]

the same goes for houdini: if your mesh is flawed: you cant bake sdf

[nimble goblet]

thank you for the suggestion, but this was part of troubleshooting similar issues when trying to use the api directly

i'm looking to build meshes at runtime

for dynamic collisions

so when i was hitting errors, i explored the manual route to try and expose what was causing the issue

i imagine i will have the same problem in URP

but i'll try

[prime dome]

you cant bake sdf at runtime without enourmus laggs

[nimble goblet]

i think you can

i'm making small meshes

[prime dome]

if the resolution is small it would work

[dull obsidian]

as long as it's happening during a loading screen or something it'll be okay

[nimble goblet]

like this:
https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/18707147/118203358-caa49100-b453-11eb-9d3a-a5af4fff5cca.gif

[dull obsidian]

there's technically a way to do this multithreaded and/or async with your own custom C# and HLSL forked from that SDF baker or something

[nimble goblet]

yeah

i intend to multi thread

or at least have a thread dedicated to managing the sdf

not high resolution

[prime dome]

isnt possible to sample a mesh directly inside vfx graph as force field?

[nimble goblet]

i was wondering that

but couldnt figure out from what i read

[dull obsidian]

if you really want it real-time not just "bake" at runtime periodically you don't necessarily need CPU multithreading though you just need a different GPU compute shader approach, there is a real-time mesh to SDF generator pinned to this channel

[nimble goblet]

is that the better approach?

[dull obsidian]

it uses Jump Flood Algorithm (JFA) instead of ray mapping so it's faster

but it's not better quality

[nimble goblet]

lets say i wanted reasonably accurate steam being emitted from a broken pipe

with nice collisions with nearby pipes

those pipes are destructable

and likely to be destroyed

debris could be moved in front

etc

i got reasonable results for a vfx when using the depth buffer

[dull obsidian]

it's possible, you'd need to keep the voxel resolution really low, and/or limit the bounding box to a relatively small area. doing this at realtime is very expensive on the GPU

[prime dome]

but without a proper mesh: you will have the same problems, no matter what option you choose

[nimble goblet]

but i was exploring the vector approach with sdf

i intended to keep the bounding box very small, only around the point of impact

with small resolutions of 20-50

could go lower

the steam has a short lifetime

so 1 bounce would serve the purpose

yes oeLeo, but i dont think my mesh is the problem. it seems its a known bug

i've added to the post btw, landon

i will look into the mesh To SDF , thanks again landon

[prime dome]

just try houdini and compare the outcome

[nimble goblet]

i've used ordinary cubes, spheres....

[prime dome]

non of the unity sdf bakers have worked for me so far. this is my houdini pointcloud/sdf baker preset. just copy the nodes, import your mesh and paste the nodes. would be really cool to have a internal unity sdf baker that is working

[nimble goblet]

what initially led me down this path was the example code here:
https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.visualeffectgraph@12.0/manual/sdf-bake-tool-api.html

i was obtaining the same kernel errors

[dull obsidian]

sometimes these errors are "false flags" and things still work after they appear but it's a bug that the errors appear at all. so that's maybe why @prime dome is making sure. but yeah it's true the mesh topology has to be "closed" and non intersecting, without degenerate triangles, etc i think we are all on the same page about these limitations at this point.

[nimble goblet]

yeah, i dont mind, i learned a bunch, eventhough i didn't get to where i wanted to be at this point

[dull obsidian]

fwiw, this is an example of real-time SDF generation results i got working from aman tiwari's MeshToSDF from a skinned mesh renderer (a rigged / tracked "hand" mesh) https://twitter.com/landon_vfx/status/1410684627170304000

Landon VFX (@landon_vfx)

sph fluid particle hand tracking test #madewithunity #unity3d #leapmotion https://t.co/8mZabu0w45

Twitter · Jul 1, 2021, 7:39 PM

[prime dome]

anyways: with houdini you can create a unity procedural asset that is baking your sdf in runtime

[nimble goblet]

is the top right a slice of the sdf for debugging?

i guess a 0 point on the depth axis?

[dull obsidian]

yeah though unfortunately houdini and houdini engine only work with unity editor, not in unity builds that you can ship

[dull obsidian]

yeah exactly it's just a single z depth slice (likely in the middle of the volume) for debug view

[prime dome]

whats the difference`?

so you cant use it in the game, but in the editor?

[nimble goblet]

right

[dull obsidian]

yeah exactly

[prime dome]

ahh ok

so not at runtime

[dull obsidian]

by the time you build / ship the game, you need to have everything "baked" final and can't be changed at that point

[prime dome]

damn

[nimble goblet]

so, just trying to understand your video - you have a prebaked sdf, that you can transform due to the armature which is mapped to some vision input detecting your hand

[dull obsidian]

it honestly is licensing limitation. SideFX isn't sure how or how much they would charge to let developers ship Houdini engine along with each copy of a game or app. so they don't allow it, at least for now.

[nimble goblet]

a fair amount of the reading mentioned bones, but in my case, it isn't needed so i was wondering why you'd have bones

[prime dome]

so like a vertex displacement with a vector field?=

[nimble goblet]

although i believe thats realtime

so not pre-baked

[dull obsidian]

oh, while that is possible to deform SDFs, it's not happening here. it's a regular skinned mesh just like any character rig in unity, but it's of a hand that is deformed and then an SDF is generated from it after the deformation

[prime dome]

just like i thought

[nimble goblet]

i see

[prime dome]

but thats not really realtime sdf baking

or is it´?

[dull obsidian]

there are ways to skip the mesh altogether but for this hand tracking SDK it already had a skinned mesh renderer included to use

[dull obsidian]

it is, an SDF 3d texture is being generated every single frame from the triangle mesh

[prime dome]

but why cant we deform the vector field?

no sry you said its possible

[dull obsidian]

yeah it's possible just not necessary here

[prime dome]

but this would require quite an algorithm

[nimble goblet]

is there a requirement to reference the previous mesh?

(or sdf)

• per tick

[dull obsidian]

deforming SDFs for character skinning and rigging is something i've only seen in research papers, i hope we use it more soon but it's considered rather cutting edge

[nimble goblet]

i know nothing of character skinning / rigging

i'm coming more from a sim perspective

cfd, aero, etc

[dull obsidian]

some info on the algorithm https://blog.demofox.org/2016/02/29/fast-voronoi-diagrams-and-distance-dield-textures-on-the-gpu-with-the-jump-flooding-algorithm/

[nimble goblet]

hmm

[dull obsidian]

not in this case. but if you did that you could create a 3d motion vector volume to help with energy transfer in collisions, it would be nice to have!

[nimble goblet]

thats what i was thinking

but i dont see much energy loss in your fast movements

so you probably compensated some other way ?

and while you're at it, why not think about introducing a 1 frame delay

and doing a pre-frame prediction too

😛

[dull obsidian]

i'm using the SDF as a frictionless attractor, not as a collider. if i did i think there would be more energy loss

[prime dome]

i have this one question: i trying to check a requirement with the branch and switch node but i always end in a deadloop. i want to check if the actual position and the target depth position is > 0. if not i want to assign it to old position. but because of the default value i always fail

[nimble goblet]

i assumed the hand is the negative in the vlume

[dull obsidian]

it's just a a very slippery magnet as shown, and with zero gravity lol

[nimble goblet]

what kind of sdf resolution are you pushing there realtime?

it seems quite good

[dull obsidian]

i can't remember exactly, i want to say 64^3

[nimble goblet]

oh ok, thats good to know

i dont need nearly as much

[dull obsidian]

but even 32^3 would look okay with the interpolation

[nimble goblet]

i have some very cubic style / design

so i think with some custom runtime mesh construction, i can make the most of it

[dull obsidian]

and yeah in your case you could design the pipes to align with the voxel grid

[prime dome]

so i have to double check but this needs millions of nodes. im looking for a node that is just outputting "null" if the requirement is not met

[nimble goblet]

or at least rotate the vfx for that

really appreciate the info and your time, landon and oeleo.

thank you

[prime dome]

youre welcome bro

[nimble goblet]

ill dive into meshtosdf and share any progress

[dull obsidian]

this the original question that you have added more info to just now? about millions of nodes

[prime dome]

ok: i want to check if the actual position is > 0. if so: check if the depth position > 0, then assign it to the old position. but because of the default value i cant do the same with the target position (same procedure but <0)

so i want to assign y > 0 to old position and < 0 to target

but because of the default values of the branch and switch node, it does not work

so im looking for a node that checks a requirement but does not output default value

[dull obsidian]

@prime dome 0 position is only depth / z? is this still for particles rendering text?

[prime dome]

yes its still for a text

[prime dome]

it can be done by vector calculations an clamp nodes i guess

but with a null output as default value, this would work more ez. wait i send you my graph as image

[dull obsidian]

@prime dome also regardless you may need to use an epsilon / very small number like 0.0001 due to that floating point precision

i suggested 0.1 before just as a simple test

[prime dome]

but this wont work for set position

because you would just set it {0,0,0}

[dull obsidian]

i just mean for comparisons if you run into problems

[prime dome]

the problem is that i cant set the default value to the actual position. because this would mess up the other values

[dull obsidian]

anyway not sure what problem you are solving here that the particles need to go back to the old position if their depth position is above zero. what does this accomplish in the text rendering or.. how does it look now versus how you want it to look?

[prime dome]

this was my aproach

[dull obsidian]

maybe this would be a case to use custom attributes then? for "myPosition" or whatever other extra positions you want to get / set without affecting the built in positions attributes

[prime dome]

i want to move half of the particles up/ down to y target value and then i want to move them over to the right x value to morph the the font / create transition

[prime dome]

checked that. i cant assign position values to custom atributes

[dull obsidian]

ah this is why you were looking at matrix transformations before

[prime dome]

but i can rreserve a amount of ids for the upper half and for the lower half

but i dont get it working. only with modulo

but with modulo i just assign every x particle id to a group. its not all particle ids below x

like this

[dull obsidian]

@prime dome and this is for morphing text in one font to another font? but it's the same text characters / letter?

[prime dome]

not the same text

one text morphing to another tex. sorry

[dull obsidian]

like text thats says "lorem ipsum" in helvetica font will morph into "lorem ipsum" in times new roman font

[dull obsidian]

ah okay

[prime dome]

haha

[dull obsidian]

so, a single font but different text, of a different length as well? example: "foo" morphs into "bar" or "foo" morphs into "banana" ?

[prime dome]

exactly

[dull obsidian]

the last time i had text made up of particles morph into other text i had a lot of invisible particles that might show or hide again depending on if they were needed for the current number of "pixels" on the grid that would represent the text. though they didn't go directly to their target position either, there would be a turbulent transition state where the particles are just swirling around chaotically

[dull obsidian]

like the intro text here: https://youtu.be/TwkqT0krfKE

is that close to what you want or no?

[prime dome]

yeah i thought of invisible positions too

[prime dome]

the morphing in the beginning of the video?

[dull obsidian]

yeah the text particles swirls and morphs into a smaller amount of text

[prime dome]

cool video

[dull obsidian]

and the "extra" particles either fade away invisible or die, impossible to say which, same result

[prime dome]

no i have a completely different idea^^. i have one line of text that i want to morph into 3 lines of text. so i want to move the particles up to the correct y position. and after the break i want them to be transformed to the correct x position and then you can see the font

[prime dome]

but i guess i just need either to use the particle id method, or avoid branch/switch completely

[dull obsidian]

ah okay now i'm starting to understand. this is much more rigid and specific behavior. but it will look very cool i'm sure

[prime dome]

ill show you 😄

[dull obsidian]

if i were you i might even approach this by writing compute shaders for this custom gpu particle sim behavior, and using vfx graph just for the particle rendering. the new graphicbuffer support makes this easier https://twitter.com/_kzr/status/1418439725631754244

Keijiro Takahashi (@_kzr)

Trying out the newly introduced GraphicsBuffer operators with VFX Graph. Now I can receive data from compute shaders via GraphicsBuffer. No texture baking is needed any more. https://t.co/Z4snnbK7M1 https://t.co/wHkqGm1at0

Likes

276

Twitter · Jul 23, 2021, 5:15 AM

[prime dome]

i was wondering if it is possible to compile a vfx and run it through a compute shader/buffer on a mobile...

[dull obsidian]

there's a lot that VFX graph's simulation contexts do not currently expose access to that might make this more straightforward. steeper learning curve just to get the boilerplate gpu particle sim running but after that might be better for this.

[prime dome]

but how would this make it easier

ahhh ok

i understand

[dull obsidian]

you can have finer tuned control over everything and can do things like store attributes on a spatial grid for later use or have particles check neighboring particles for attributes data to affect what they should do

and just very rigid logic like this might be easier to write if you are already accustomed to writing code in this way

with vfx graph currently there is a lot going on implicitly that helps and limits what you can do, and is geared towards certain types of common use cases. not that it's impossible just something to consider

[prime dome]

so the keijro project only can read from graphic buffers right? so you would need other methods to write to a shader right?

[dull obsidian]

it's just an example project, you don't need the keijiro example to make it work, just for reference. here the documentation for this feature in 2021.2 beta https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.visualeffectgraph@12.0/manual/Operator-SampleBuffer.html

[prime dome]

ok i understand, but still, sample buffer only can read from a buffer. is that even possible to write to a buffer /compue shader?

[dull obsidian]

you can already read from / load / sample textures in vfx graph since the beginning this just adds graphicsbuffer (basically the same as computebuffer)

so you can use your own struct of attribute types and not have to pack / unpack data in textures that aren't meant for arbitrary data

[prime dome]

im trying to understand if you can use the vfx on the gpu via compute shaders

[dull obsidian]

to write to a graphics / compute buffer from vfx graph no, not officially.

[prime dome]

no sry thats bullshit. i meant: how to make vfx running on a mobile gpu chip?

damn

[dull obsidian]

i've done it but it's a bit of a hack that requires injecting code into the vertex shader and writing a custom pass for each render pipeline to allow the buffer to be written to, etc

[prime dome]

sounds like lot of work

[dull obsidian]

for vfx graph to work the mobile gpu needs to support compute shaders, newer mobile devices already support this. 2021.2 beta has this working in progress with URP

[prime dome]

you gave me a good hint. im gonna try to divide the id/100 , ceil it and then multiply it with 100

[dull obsidian]

to support older mobile devices without compute shaders (openGL ES 2) or webGL, you'd need to code your own GPU particle system using vertex or fragment shaders and packing data into textures it's pretty hacky but well known, many examples

[prime dome]

theres nothing on the internet about that, but you helped me with the branch node precision issue. so thanks again for that. i guess it would have take me months to find that out. floating point precision seems to be quite a problem with vfx

[dull obsidian]

it's not just vfx graph that's a general computing issue but GPU compute even more so as typically limited to 32 bit precision (64 bit double is possible but rare on GPU in game engines,) and some older mobile GPUs even more as they might only support 16 bit "half" precision

add on top to that with particle systems there are many factors that might cause particles to drift away from exact positions every step

[prime dome]

but im running a 4 ghz cpu. how can it happen that cant use the id node without modulo?

[dull obsidian]

has nothing to do with the CPU or how fast it is, i dont think this id node problem is even a precision issue, the equals comparison to position 0,0,0 was the more likely precision issue

[dull obsidian]

this just might be a type casting issue

[prime dome]

if i use a simple setup, it responds. but if i ad additionally requirements it fails

anyway, i have weird issues with vfx, i think i should be updating.

my rendertextures dont get updated and sometimes cameras fail to have output.

[prime dome]

so i guess i need to use modulo with the help of custom atributes! thnks bro!

[jovial obsidian]

didnt know exactly where to post this question but i want recreate something from a game called league of lengends. I want to add these arrows tha we can see when iwe use an abilty. Any idea about how to make the arrows

[prime dome]

this looks like a shader

[jovial obsidian]

ok

thx

[prime dome]

doing this with vfx will be quite difficult, but with a shader its quite simple

[jovial obsidian]

ok

youre right

[prime dome]

https://spritefx.blogspot.com/search/label/Dust

[jovial obsidian]

whats this

?

[prime dome]

its a site with lot of nice spresheets. you could use particle system to trigger your shader

[jovial obsidian]

oh thats interesting

thnkalot

thanks a lot

[prime dome]

there also some nice videos about flipbook animations. https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.visualeffectgraph@12.0/manual/Block-FlipbookPlayer.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40m_HUENh3E

[scarlet narwhal]

VFX Graph: Can you have a recursive event? Like a GPUEvent leading back into the initialise node? Obviously with an exit condition.

[nimble goblet]

what do you want to feedback?

theres probably a different approach to achieve the same result

[scarlet narwhal]

I want five or six little particles the same to pop out one after the other.

[nimble goblet]

from the preceding particle position? or all particles originating from the same source?

[fluid lagoon]

is it possible to cull a particle in VFX graph? For example, if the particle ID is less than some value, don't draw the particle

What I'm trying to do might be an abuse of VFX graph... not sure.

Maybe if I just set the particle's position way outside of the bounds of the graph?

[fluid lagoon]

Another question - is it possible to set an array of meshes as a property in a VFX graph?

such that I could do output particle mesh and pick a mesh from the array based on some other data

Also i just learned that Output Particle Mesh only works with unlit shaders in URP? 🤔

that's quite disappointing.

[fluid lagoon]

Based on this: https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.visualeffectgraph@10.3/manual/whats-new-10.html#multi-mesh-experimental I'm going to answer myself here with a hard "no"

[fluid lagoon]

I really don't mean to spam this channel... but I have a 4x4 affine transformation matrix (don't ask me where I got it from). How can I extract position/rotation/scale data from it and assign those to the particle?

[nimble goblet]

i think its the example for matrix4x4 in the docs

https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/Matrix4x4.html

var position = new Vector3(matrix[0,3], matrix[1,3], matrix[2,3]);

[prime dome]

im also looking for arrays.

[fluid lagoon]

That's all well and good in a C# script but not possible in VFX graph. This is what I needed:

[nimble goblet]

you should be able to right click on the names of the different matrix components

https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.visualeffectgraph@12.0/manual/Operator-InlineMatrix4x4.html

like these:

but, i've never tried so I don't know for certain

@fluid lagoon

[fluid lagoon]

it's alright I found what I needed with the Transform operator

[scarlet narwhal]

All from the same source, and then I’m going to randomly spread them out a bit.

[nimble goblet]

so what is the problem? thats the default behaviour isnt it?

[scarlet narwhal]

Let me say what I’m actually trying to do, might be an XY problem. When a particle dies, I want a few “sparkles” to happen around it, maybe 5-10. I want the time after death to be random, ideally a normal distribution around 0.5ish seconds.

[dull obsidian]

yes, you can set the alive attribute to false, as described in the docs for the built in "Kill" blocks. also note in the doc that you must enable reap particle on the update context https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.visualeffectgraph@12.0/manual/Block-Kill(Sphere).html

[dull obsidian]

good news, Lit VFX graph rendering for URP is already in Unity 2021.2 beta / 12.x graphics packages https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.visualeffectgraph@12.0/manual/whats-new-12.html

[nimble goblet]

if i have a low resolution monochrome texture, say 16 x 16, and want particles to be emitted from the location of pixels where the grey is closer to 1 than 0 (50%), what would be the right approach ?

[fluid lagoon]

Unfortunately this kills the particle rather than just not drawing it which isn't appropriate for my use case ( which admittedly might be a bit of an abuse of VFX graph)

[fluid lagoon]

Yep realized this after I posted it!

[nimble goblet]

i've got a decent rain effect working

[grizzled orbit]

what tool to use for URP for VFX?

i don't think URP support VFX graph

so just use particle system?

[fluid lagoon]

URP supports VFX graph

[grizzled orbit]

it says on note on package it does not support URP support for it coming soon

i always use latest LTS

[fluid lagoon]

where?

I'm l iterally using it in a project

[grizzled orbit]

on the package notes itself

[fluid lagoon]

for what version of the package

https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.visualeffectgraph@12.0/manual/System-Requirements.html

It's "In preview" I guess, but it works.

[grizzled orbit]

well m not using in preview stuff in mine

the project m working is for publishing and things needs to be stable

[fluid lagoon]

Then use Shuriken

[grizzled orbit]

ok

shuriken works great with urp right?

[fluid lagoon]

AFAIK

[grizzled orbit]

i mainly used SRP

darn this pipelines

i wish it was only URP

and no more time spent fixing assets and etc

[scarlet narwhal]

I converted a system to a subgraph in vfx graph and the resulting subgraph doesn’t appear to have any inputs for triggering it. Can’t find anything about this online. Can anyone give me a link or something?

[heady dragon]

question: using unity's default shuriken particle system, how can i prevent the particles from rendering over the skybox?

im getting this unwanted effect

i want the particles to not show in places where the skybox shows

[heady dragon]

(sound warning btw)

nvm i think i fixed it by changing the custom render queue from 3000 to 2000

but it seems to only work in debug mode :/ how do i change the render queue of a normal lit particle shader in urp

[heady dragon]

i fixed it, but now my only problem is the particle only renders at certain angles :/

[dull obsidian]

oh well in that case just set the alpha attribute to 0 and make sure you are rendering with transparent alpha blending and/or alpha clipping. that will make the particle hidden / invisible but still alive.

[queen cosmos]

Hey guys, I see a node called
SetPosition (Shape: Mesh) in the unity docs and on youtube vids

but i can't find the node in unity

VFX v 11

[slate sable]

Do you have experimental features turned on in preferences > visual effects?

[tulip rock]

how does one add circles to their particle system?
Its not a material

I want it to emit circles

[cobalt scarab]

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

[queen cosmos]

@slate sable worked, thanks

[queen cosmos]

anyone have a preferred vfx tool for authoring particle images for vfx graph?

ik a lot of ppl use Photoshop

[nimble goblet]

gimp would be fine too i imagine

[slate sable]

I use Affinity Photo. Great Photoshop alternative.

[prime dome]

isnt it possible to set lifetime via code and kill particles this way?

[prime dome]

there is a free photoshop version. its kinda old, but it works for the most things

[scarlet narwhal]

Is there any way to conditionally execute a block in vfx graph?

Oh and also from my problems yesterday - it seems you can't use a GPUEvent to launch a subgraph, is that right? If so, that's a serious bummer.

[prime dome]

no i dont think so because you cant use the "evt" (gpu event ), or the trigger nodes as a property

[scarlet narwhal]

The main thing I wanted to split my graph up by was spawning new particle systems. I hope they fix that somehow.

[prime dome]

what do you want to do exactly?

[dull obsidian]

not currently, but this feature is planned on the vfx graph roadmap. see the links pinned to this channel

[dull obsidian]

curious as well, there is often a way around needing this feature though it would be nice

[dull obsidian]

you can use a GPUEvent to trigger a new subspawned particle system that has subgraphs connected to blocks in its contexts, if that helps.

[scarlet narwhal]

Yeah it's that I only want to set the colour if x. I can do it by using Set Color with a blend of 1 or 0, it just complicates the graph.

[scarlet narwhal]

That probably would, I'll have a look at that, thanks!

[prime dome]

@scarlet narwhal this is a setup from last week that landon helped me with. is that what youre looking for?

[scarlet narwhal]

That's very similar to the kind of thing I'm currently doing, yeah.

For example:

[dull obsidian]

sort of but i don't recommend this, neither does the documentation. as i recall last time i tried this (because i forgot about the alive attribute) if you don't set alive to false and only set lifetime to 0, particles won't die reliably, or if you set lifetime to some small value they will die but not immediately or until the next sim step which could cause other side effects / bugs down the road regarding state. i'd only do this if i intentionally want a visible delay before the particles are "killed" say, 1 second from now, so i'll reduce the lifetime as such.

[dull obsidian]

what is this for / what is the end result meant to look like? something to do with a rocket being white? 🚀

[prime dome]

i had a lot of strange behaviour with add force(physics and timestep). when i shot an object towards a ragdoll, the physics-events had a strong delay, or they did not happen at all(even with fixedupdate). but then i noticed a force-command that is relying on the timestep. i cant find it in the manual. this is an example: function FixedUpdate(){ rigidbody.AddForce(Vector3.up * (expectedTimestep / Time.deltaTime)); } so i guess it is possible but a pain in the...because it requires framerate-related finetuning 😭

[scarlet narwhal]

It's fireworks - they're mostly multicolored but every so often there's a "white" one which is bigger and brighter.

[prime dome]

@scarlet narwhal i think you can use periodic flash in combination with particle id(just make some particles brighter), or you can use a gpu event (child has small capacity) with trigger over time node. the child then spawns the brighter particles

[scarlet narwhal]

that sounds interesting, thanks!

It's just a learning exercise anyway, might try and do fire or smoke or "mystical glowing" or something next.

[elder latch]

Is there any way to properly set the rotation of a cube particle? I would like to rotate it around a point affacting both its position and rotation.

[prime dome]

the easiest way would be to use a signed distance field and a set position circle before

[elder latch]

🤔 havnt really looked into the signed distance fields with vfx graph yet. can a signed distance field be manipulated at runtime?

[prime dome]

or you use a cone and rotate it or something

[prime dome]

@elder latch but you cant rotate cone with the node. but you can try to transform it with transform node https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.visualeffectgraph@12.0/manual/Operator-Transform(Direction).html

[elder latch]

thx I will try that

[prime dome]

np

[elder latch]

this transform vector worked

the weird thing is it couldnt be connected to the orientation input. I had to put vector blocks in between 🤨

[prime dome]

@elder latch why dont you use getPosition instead of your 2 vectors?

ah you mean the vectors connected to transform output?

[prime dome]

its because the transform outputs a direction, not a position

[elder latch]

but its even called tPos? 🤔

I dont even understand why vfx graph makes a distinction there. Position and Direction both are just Vectors...

[prime dome]

a h sorry, i thought its transform direction

[elder latch]

yeah its weird. on hover it does even say "cannot connect for unknown reason" 🤷‍♂️

[prime dome]

the reason is that direction is a velocity based transformation.

@elder latch for example: if you set pos circle in initialize and add random velocity from direction & speed in update, the particles will keep the circle shape and their orientation, but they move along the direction (circle is getting greater radius). its like transform.forward for particles

[elder latch]

I can see how that could matter for inputs 🤔 but not exactly why a e.g. a transformation output needs to be a 'direction' or a 'position'

is there any kind of input that takes both and has a different outcome whether its input is a dir or pos?

[prime dome]

@elder latch youre using the orient advanced node. it uses a vector1 as input, but send a vector3

the orient advanced node creates a third axis via dotproduct of the two vector1 inputs or something

[elder latch]

yeah I thought so. its basically a look at with up vector

would be better if I could just set the rotation directly by quaternion or matrix

but I guess it has sth to do how the rotation is stored internally

but the input is a vec3 amd the output of Transform(Position) is also a vec3 I guess

[prime dome]

but why dont you just use the position circle node in initialize and then use transform in update after that?

this way you would not need the advanced orientation

[elder latch]

the particles are arranged in a cube

and I need to rotate the whole cube and match the cube particles to the rotation

I am not even sure the circle node would effect the particle orientation

as the Sequential3D does not

it does only set the position

[prime dome]

sure if you dont spawn them constantly

[midnight grove]

Is there a reason why you're pinging me @mental onyx?

If there isn't, you're going to get muted again for spamming @mental onyx. So, let me know.

[mental onyx]

OSTEEL

I ping u cuz I wanted to say sorry but then I changed my mind

Cuz kinda wedo

Cuz sorry for being kinda wedo before

@midnight grove can I have mod now

I have all the requirements

I’m over 18, I can install unity on any computer, I don’t have a job, and if there’s any more I probly have

Jus tell me the requirements Beta

[midnight grove]

No, and this is off topic.

[steady zephyr]

where is the output particlestrip node?

[prime dome]

go to general chat

[queen cosmos]

would you guys recommend learning Photoshop or adobe after effects

if you had to pick one for authoring vfx textures

or any other program

[prime dome]

photoshop and aftereffects are completely different programms

if youre just looking for a program to create textures, there are a lot alternative programs, built especially for that purpose

[prime dome]

just learn blender https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dn4UFetEDWM

[queen cosmos]

@prime dome i'll look into it thanks

on a side note, if i enable visual effect

it takes up like 30 - 80% of my gpu, even though i turned off all the nodes

i have an rtx 3090

[prime dome]

you may have some strange settings in your graph like lifetime = 10 & capacity = 10000000

if theres an "!#" next to capacity, turn it down

[queen cosmos]

i disabled the spawn node and everything else, so it's not even outputting anything

the profiler shows it's a Gui update method that's taking up huge amounts of time

[prime dome]

can you disable the graph and create a new gameobject with a simple vfx(you find it under misc)? -> reproduce

[prime dome]

this is weird

[fluid grove]

Why when I import my model into unity, the model is scaled correctly, but when I pull the mesh directly into the scene from the model, its tiny?

[queen cosmos]

how do u get the uv coordinats to sample a texture in vfx graph

[fluid lagoon]

What are you trying to do with the texture?

YOu can use whatever coordinates you want that make sense for your graph

but a VFX graph is not a fragment shader

you're not coloring pixels in.

[queen cosmos]

i want to offset the uv's to create a scrolling effect

in addition to multiplying the colors and alphas of multiple textures

@fluid lagoon

[fluid lagoon]

offset the uvs of what

[queen cosmos]

@fluid lagoon the output quad

https://youtu.be/YPy2hytwDLM?t=1550

[steady zephyr]

Houdini

[queen cosmos]

I figured it out. You need to create a vfx Shader Graph asset and sample the textures in there to set the color

[scarlet narwhal]

This sounds like it might be related to what I was just coming in to ask. I want to use a texture with a red and green channel, and then do different things to the different channels before outputting. Will I need to do this?

[dull obsidian]

try the #🔀┃art-asset-workflow channel for those workflows

[dull obsidian]

maybe, not necessarily. depends on what those different things you want to do are and in what context they need to occur, which is determined by the end result you want.

[elder latch]

Can anybody explain me what happens here? Angle input from vector is interpreted as degree but input from sample curve as 0-1?

Sample curve input of 0.5 gets the same result as Vector3 input of 90 🤔

[queen cosmos]

yes, i would create a shader graph asset to sample textures and do math ops on it

[queen cosmos]

set the sample curve to start at the angle you want, like 90

[elder latch]

I set it to go from 0 to 90 but this resulted in 90 rotations in 1 seconds

I dont know what happend but now it behaves correctly 🤔

but in the picture you can clearly see that Angles was 90 and 0.5 and the result was a 90 degree rotation on both axis

but it seems to have randomly fixed itself now

[scarlet narwhal]

Is there any way to blend colors in VFX graph using different blend types (eg overlay)?

[fluid grove]

Hi, I'm trying to create a muzzleflash effect using vfx graph but running into a problem. I have a cone with a flash texture that I'm trying to duplicate into a radial type fashion to make 5 flashes around the cone. To do this I set UV mode to Scale and Bias on the Output Particle Mesh and then I set 5 on the x for the UV Scale but I see only 2 flashes going to either side. What am I doing wrong?
Normal texture(1): https://gyazo.com/26b11479d80b24689c2df9bf53b022a4
UV Scale X (5)
https://gyazo.com/4e348a644bf1cf0f8d2ad3e9c33eccff

[grizzled orbit]

can someone clarify that what to use for what platform and what render pipeline for making vfx for 2D or 3D games?

I think vfx for hdrp and 3D?

so its particle system for 2D?

does vfx graph support 2D games?

if so what is what for what pipeline?

[elder latch]

For 3D you can use either HDRP or URP although URP misses some features. For 2D I am not up to date.

Can anybody tell me if its possible to use Events to update existing particles in a different way (instead of just spawning new ones)?
I want some particles to hover in space (idle) and on an event explode in all directions.

[scarlet narwhal]

I've set up an output quad context using a PNG with alpha as the main texture, and then with double sided turned on and the material type set to translucent. The "other side" of the particles is bright green, any idea why?

viewing from the other side:

[dull obsidian]

looks like the default hdrp diffusion profile (which is bright green.) more of a general material / #archived-shaders topic. the relevant docs https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.render-pipelines.high-definition@11.0/manual/Diffusion-Profile.html

[dull obsidian]

• comparison of built-in particle system (fka shuriken) and visual effect graph: https://docs.unity3d.com/2021.1/Documentation/Manual/ChoosingYourParticleSystem.html
• visual effect graph platform requirements: https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.visualeffectgraph@11.0/manual/System-Requirements.html
• visual effect graph roadmap with info on future support for URP and 2D in progress: https://portal.productboard.com/unity/1-unity-platform-rendering-visual-effects/tabs/9-visual-effect-graph

[grizzled orbit]

hey thanks for the information i was googling for a while did not find the correct answers

thanks

i will stick to battle tested old particle system for now

its quite good

compatible with most devices especially mobile

[heady dragon]

hi! question, using shuriken, how can i prevent particles from rendering over the skybox?

i want them to not show if they appear wherever the skybox is

[crimson zealot]

https://answers.unity.com/questions/1502734/how-do-i-make-a-particle-system-render-on-top-of-t.html

[upper geyser]

help??

im on urp

vfx graph has limited support for urp i thought

but its just not working at all

i NEED this to work

like

desparately

im on 2021.2

where urp support is added

its looping this

this is so annoying i literally just imported vfx graph

i cant see the particles

[upper geyser]

NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object
UnityEditor.Handles.GetCameraViewFrom (UnityEngine.Vector3 position, UnityEngine.Matrix4x4 matrix) (at <bd5db0e0a5434805b15a1c521ea345cc>:0)
UnityEditor.Handles.DoPositionHandle_Internal (UnityEditor.Handles+PositionHandleIds ids, UnityEngine.Vector3 position, UnityEngine.Quaternion rotation, UnityEditor.Handles+PositionHandleParam param) (at <bd5db0e0a5434805b15a1c521ea345cc>:0)
UnityEditor.Handles.DoPositionHandle (UnityEditor.Handles+PositionHandleIds ids, UnityEngine.Vector3 position, UnityEngine.Quaternion rotation) (at <bd5db0e0a5434805b15a1c521ea345cc>:0)
UnityEditor.Handles.DoPositionHandle (UnityEngine.Vector3 position, UnityEngine.Quaternion rotation) (at <bd5db0e0a5434805b15a1c521ea345cc>:0)
UnityEditor.Handles.PositionHandle (UnityEngine.Vector3 position, UnityEngine.Quaternion rotation) (at <bd5db0e0a5434805b15a1c521ea345cc>:0)
UnityEditor.VFX.VFXGizmo.PositionGizmo (UnityEngine.Vector3& position, System.Boolean always) (at Library/PackageCache/com.unity.visualeffectgraph@12.0.0/Editor/Gizmo/VFXGizmo.cs:52)
UnityEditor.VFX.VFXGizmo.PositionGizmo (UnityEngine.Vector3 position, UnityEditor.VFX.VFXGizmo+IProperty`1[T] positionProperty, System.Boolean always) (at Library/PackageCache/com.unity.visualeffectgraph@12.0.0/Editor/Gizmo/VFXGizmo.cs:81)
UnityEditor.VFX.VFXPlaneGizmo.OnDrawSpacedGizmo (UnityEditor.VFX.Plane plane) (at Library/PackageCache/com.unity.visualeffectgraph@12.0.0/Editor/Types/VFXPlaneGizmos.cs:48)
UnityEditor.VFX.VFXSpaceableGizmo`1[T].OnDrawGizmo (T value) (at Library/PackageCache/com.unity.visualeffectgraph@12.0.0/Editor/Gizmo/VFXGizmo.cs:234)
UnityEditor.VFX.VFXGizmo`1[T].CallDrawGizmo (System.Object value) (at Library/PackageCache/com.unity.visualeffectgraph@12.0.0/Editor/Gizmo/VFXGizmo.cs:201)
UnityEditor.VFX.UI.VFXGizmoUtility.Draw (UnityEditor.VFX.UI.VFXGizmoUtility+Context context, UnityEngine.VFX.VisualEffect component, UnityEditor.VFX.VFXGizmo gizmo, System.Boolean forceRegister) (at Library/PackageCache/com.unity.visualeffectgraph@12.0.0/Editor/Gizmo/VFXGizmoUtility.cs:237)
UnityEditor.VFX.AdvancedVisualEffectEditor.SceneViewGUICallback () (at Library/PackageCache/com.unity.visualeffectgraph@12.0.0/Editor/Inspector/AdvancedVisualEffectEditor.cs:696)
UnityEditor.VFX.VisualEffectEditor+SceneViewVFXSlotContainerOverlay.OnGUI () (at Library/PackageCache/com.unity.visualeffectgraph@12.0.0/Editor/Inspector/VisualEffectEditor.cs:577)
UnityEditor.Overlays.IMGUIOverlay.OnPanelGUIHandler (UnityEngine.UIElements.IMGUIContainer container) (at <bd5db0e0a5434805b15a1c521ea345cc>:0)
UnityEditor.Overlays.IMGUIOverlay+<>c__DisplayClass4_0.<CreatePanelContent>b__0 () (at <bd5db0e0a5434805b15a1c521ea345cc>:0)
UnityEngine.UIElements.IMGUIContainer.DoOnGUI (UnityEngine.Event evt, UnityEngine.Matrix4x4 parentTransform, UnityEngine.Rect clippingRect, System.Boolean isComputingLayout, UnityEngine.Rect layoutSize, System.Action onGUIHandler, System.Boolean canAffectFocus) (at <6d2dc432fa464cada74124351940cbc5>:0)
UnityEngine.GUIUtility:ProcessEvent(Int32, IntPtr, Boolean&)

spammed

im trying to edit a plane

in a vfx graph

why is this so broken oh my god

[elder latch]

is it possible to kill all particles (e.g through an event)? OnStop only seems to stop it from spawning new ones

[upper geyser]

please help omg

[upper geyser]

try disabling the gameobject

[elder latch]

yeah that works. I would like to trigger a differnt part of the graph though

I could disable->enable->trigger event

[upper geyser]

you could have 2 instances

or do that

id do some investigation but my vfx graph doesnt work at all

i cant see anything in scene view

and i getloads of errors

are you on urp?

[elder latch]

what I try to achieve is some particles hovering in place with an infinite lifetime and then explode and fly away on an event

[elder latch]

yes im on urp

[upper geyser]

how did you get it to work?

what unity and urp versions

[elder latch]

nothing special. I just installed it

2020.2.3

[upper geyser]

im on 2021.2.0b4

[elder latch]

and 10.2.2

[upper geyser]

damn

this is frustrating

the unity packages are so messed up

[elder latch]

maybe there is sth broken in the beta version?

[upper geyser]

on older versions of unity, the input system package didnt work

the only fix was to upgrade unity

according to unity staff

[elder latch]

I am also using the input system

[upper geyser]

but now on the version of unity that the input system package works on, the vfx graph doesnt work

[elder latch]

and entities -> Thats why I cannot use 2021

[upper geyser]

is your project vr?

[elder latch]

yes

[upper geyser]

wtf

i got a bug from using the input system

in vr

it said "could not create device for oculus" or something

well i fixed one problem

theres a new button in 2021.2

that i just ofund

now i can see the particles in scene view

[elder latch]

do you know how I could make this work?

I basically try to have multiple different states/animations of the particles

[upper geyser]

ive never been able to use the vfx graph, sorry

its always given me issues

do you know how i can resize a plane collision?

[prime dome]

is it possible to use skinned mesh sampling with shuriken in urp?

[upper geyser]

my particles spawn in world space?

vfx graph

[slate sable]

You want to click this in top right of any of your blocks.

So you have local instead of world

[upper geyser]

i did

it was all local

[prime dome]

why cant i use sample texture 2d as input for branch/switch?

[prime dome]

and how can i fake it (using vector4 or something to transform the value)? fixed by using shadergraph and properties

[upper geyser]

ah found it these were "W"

guys this is a big ask but im totally at a loss, how can i make a tornado with the vfx graph?

the biggest problem im having is with the particles rendering right

thye just dont look right

i dont want them to look like individual particles, how do i get them to mix together?

ive seen people do it with like, fire

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCpiSPoI-gM&t=27s and someone did exactly what im trying to do

but way better than what i'll settle for

[wise moss]

how would I go about instantiating a particle system prefab with a set scale? the current explosion is far too big, and Ive tried to scale it down using the transform and scaling mode 'hierarchy' but nothing is working

[prime dome]

do you have set your particle sys to world or local space?

[upper geyser]

alright after a lot of work i got a great tornado but it disappears when the gameobject goes off screen

[upper geyser]

and it renders as alpha on the render targets

latter issue was fixed by enabling post processing

[prime dome]

If anyone Knows ANYTHING about making vfx in unity PLEASE dm me I really need some help with as I don't completely understand youtube tutorials that way so I would like to ask someone question in my own words.

And if you have Shader Textures for Slashes and stuff please send them as well

I'm also looking for animated textures

So if anyone could help with this I'd appreciate it ALOT

[slate sable]

You need to set it's bounding box to be bigger. I think it's in initialize. (not on PC rn)
Or you can set somewhere in the inspector, might be right on the asset to always recalculate the bounding box. Which might be more resource consuming than just setting it to a static one.

[upper geyser]

it worked thx

[summer drift]

Hi all, I'm trying to use VFX Graph on Unity 2021, but it's giving me shader compile errors. This happens even on brand new projects. Any ideas whats going wrong?

[Worker0] Shader error in 'Hidden/VFX/Bonfire/Flames/Output Particle Quad': Couldn't open include file 'Packages/com.unity.render-pipelines.universal/Runtime/VFXGraph/Shaders/VFXDefines.hlsl'. at line 96

[summer drift]

Hm. As usual, a bunch a crickets in the VFX channel.

[elder latch]

Does anybody have experience with infinte particle lifetime?

Infinity works as a lifetimy value in if VFX Graph Editor is open but breaks as soon as it is closed

[grizzled orbit]

most 2D games uses particle system right?

and they use sprite based stuff most of the time i suppose or particles?

for mine i mostly used sprite sheets for vfx too

[opaque knoll]

Hi all. My chara does teleport from the left colorful circles, to the middle as seen in the pic
Attached to him is a particle system with "rate over distance" emission
The emit seems to overshoot by 2x the teleport distance. Why is this?

[dry dove]

Could somebody advise why my particle effect's "size over lifetime" doesn't start animating right away when a particle is spawned? Basically I want this ring to start contracting immediately:
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/497872424281440267/872027621578387557/Desktop_2021.08.03_-_18.05.49.02.mp4

[warm torrent]

Particles have a maximum on-screen pixel size limit, which I guess you're hitting there

[dry dove]

Amazing, thank you!

I'll check it out when I get home

[warm torrent]

Yea it seems to be configurable in Renderer section

Suppose it's meant to be a failsafe against massive overdraw in case the player sticks their head right into a bonfire

[proper forum]

Heeey, I'm making an explosion effect, and for some reason, the particles aren't appearing in game view

Or, to be more specific, an instantiated particle isn't appearing

Oh, nevermind, I had playonawake off

[dusk aspen]

How do i make a rain with unity particle? (Edit: i found solution)

[prime dome]

hi I have 2 questions: first I have a vfx effect.. it spawns one object only and it goes in a line... pretty simple .. but I want it to destroy itself when it hits a collider .. NOT when it reaches the cube limits

[prime dome]

when someone who can help is here please tag me, because i am new to this and youtube isn't helping much with what i want

[warm torrent]

VFX graph particles don't have collision detection afaik, as they're entirely gpu based

The old particle system does

[prime dome]

oh

can you explain to me what those mean

what they do .. like do I give the particles colliders?

or they detect the collisions of those shapes?

[warm torrent]

I'm in the middle of something but if you search VFX graph introduction, there's surely an explanation how they're different on a technical level

[prime dome]

thank you and sorry for taking up your time

[warm torrent]

Collision against predefined colliders

Short story is that GPU and CPU based effects have different data to work with

[prime dome]

thank you , i dont want to destroy the object, only the particles

the thing is I am very new to vfx... I dont understand what those colliders mean or what they do with the vfx

i will try to see the decay thing ... hope it will work and thank you again

[fluid grove]

https://tenor.com/view/kylo-starwars-saber-sword-mine-gif-5306010

What should I look into for making a material that has a mesh distortion effect, something like kylo rens lightsaber

[crimson zealot]

do you mean to get the crackling and stuff? you could do it with scrolling textures

[crimson zealot]

something like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGd3nYXj1Oc

[dull obsidian]

idk, but you could file a bug report for this. I think It's coming from one of the samples (Bonfire) which were all made for HDRP anyway not URP which VFX doesn't officially support yet. and it's unclear if you are using the 2021.2 beta or 2021.1. VFX Graph for URP is in preview and not production ready regardless though 2021.2 beta has more features for URP it's also expected to have many bugs and limitations until it's production ready in an official release. https://support.unity.com/hc/en-us/articles/206336985-How-do-I-submit-a-bug-report-

[dull obsidian]

avoid comments like this or i won't be responding to your requests in the future. it just makes you look entitled and impatient for free support. this is a community chat not a dedicated support channel.

[wraith lagoon]

I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask but,I cant change the color of my Particle Effect

[dull obsidian]

need some more info. do you have a screenshot showing what you've tried so far?

[warm torrent]

How are you changing it and what kind of material are you using for it

[wraith lagoon]

I added particle system to 3d cube and changed the start color

[warm torrent]

Are you sure? Soft particles usually means that the sprites will blend rather than clip when intersecting visual geometry

[warm torrent]

Still not enough info
Your particle system could be lacking a material entirely for all we know
Anyway sounds like an issue that could be solved by following a basic particle system setup tutorial

[wraith lagoon]

I watched a video but still couldnt fix it

[wraith lagoon]

Can you tell me how to add materials to particles?

[warm torrent]

You have not given us clues what the problem is

[wraith lagoon]

When I change the start color of the particle it doesnt change the color in the scene

[dull obsidian]

@wraith lagoon try this official tutorial https://learn.unity.com/tutorial/modifying-gravity-color-size-lifetime-of-particle-systems?projectId=5f078cfdedbc2a3231d47753

[wraith lagoon]

ok thx

[summer drift]

Thanks for your informed response - I did get the answer quite a while ago that I was indeed hitting the indicator that VFX graph was not ready for URP or mobile yet. And I absolutely knew this would be a distinct probability as Unity has admitted they were hoping to have VFX mobile ready in 2021's lifetime, but weren't guaranteeing it. So I went back to Shuriken for the time being, knowing they'll get it eventually.

As for the snark - Sure it's off-handed. But after spending over a year hanging out (and helping) in General and Beginner Programming chats (here or there), I now see why people post their non-programming questions in there since it's the only channel with active participation. And I'm clearly not the only one given E's comments right beneath mine.

I'd say- feel free to block me now.

[warm torrent]

It's very rare that anyone knows what vague errors mean, on any channel or context
They're often system or project specific, or even entirely random

[dull obsidian]

sure, np. i'm not blocking anyone just suggesting as a regular that answers questions in this channel, that one may "catch more flies with honey than vinegar" as they saying goes. but you do you, and if other channels, servers or forums etc are more active and immediately responsive by all means try there. nothing personal. 👍 this channel is slower and less active but if you have something that you can't find info on anywhere else, perhaps niche or obscure about vfx graph, i try to answer those questions on here when i have time, albeit a few days or a week after at times. good thing about this being a less active channel is that if no one responds right away it won't be immediately lost in the stream of endless messages either. like, i've read every single message in this channel for the past 2 years at least because it's that slow for better and worse 😅

[summer drift]

I see so let me ask you this - how does one know which error is obscure? Or are *all *errors obscure and is this channel more for "how does one use VFX graph?"

[summer drift]

Fair. Though I think I'm going to just mute this and keep questions limited to other advanced servers. Truth is that I haven't really gotten much help from official unity discord for a while now which could be that I'm at an intermediate level, and these chats are more for beginners. Or maybe Patchi is right I just have off the wall, very obscure (likely Quest 2 specific) questions that don't fit will with Unity server

[warm torrent]

It's the right channel sure, but if no one here seems to know it's likely pretty obscure
Especially if you google it and find no clear answers

And if it's very specific to some technology, it doesn't have to be obscure for it to be unlikely that the person with the right knowledge will spot it on a big public server

[summer drift]

Maybe. Maybe not. Like I said - I've gotten a lot more help from other servers and sources as late. Don't know why. But I'll see ya'll on the flip side 😛 Have to focus on work

[warm torrent]

What type of servers if you don't mind me asking?

[summer drift]

I'll DM you

[hollow nymph]

I'm making a cloud and I'm trying to figure out how to stop the particle to go up and stay in the same place

ok found how

ok no it continued

sorry was doing things wrong

[feral cove]

Anyone know a tutorial for water particles? I need to emit water particles from a pipe

[graceful creek]

Hya. Im trying to get a basic grasp of Shuriken particle systems, and am running into a few problems I just cant wrap my head around

I'm trying to use this rocket trail prefab from the Unity Particle Pack (https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/essentials/tutorial-projects/unity-particle-pack-127325)

The problem is that the particle system Emits the rocket, rather then following a moving gameObject. I need the particle system to follow a gameobject

This is how it's build up. The parten particle system using subemitters..

I've tried a bunch of things, been fiddling with it for a few hours, but I just cant get the same effect. I've been trying to "stop" the velocity of the particle effects / make them stay in the same place, and then making them a child to the gameobject I want them to follow. This does not produce the same result as the original though. Its pretty much only about the Embers, Smoke and Fire Small gameobjects, they need to follow the rocket gameobject

Ive tried changing the simulation spaces etc, changing velocity over time and a bunch of other things, but the trail just doesnt seem to work: Smoke isnt following so much as it is just permantly right On the gameobject without a trail. Small Fire does seem to follow a bit, but it seems like its the same frame from the fire animation over and over, and does not resemble the original prefab, and I havent been able to even see the Embers particle system other then in the original prefab

If someone could point me in the right direction it would be Much appreciated! ❤️

[prime dome]

I am trying to make a vfx disappear when it hits anything ... any idea how to do that?

[prime dome]

I will write my questions in hope someone will answer later isince no one is active

how do I make my spawn stop after a bit ... I made a constant spawn rate but it isn't stopping, I want to make it stop ... must I do it in code or can I modify that in the vfx file

these are my 2 questions for now... I hope someone can answer me

[warm torrent]

VFX graph particles can't have collisions, except against preset shapes within the graph

[prime dome]

I didn't understand the shapes within the graphs what do they represent

like if the vfx particle hits a collider of a specific shape?

[warm torrent]

https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.visualeffectgraph@10.2/manual/Block-CollideWithAABox.html the docs explain it pretty well
You create colliders that exist within that graph

[prime dome]

thanks

😁

[prime dome]

In this video at about 8:45 they talk about the geometry, What's geometry in that case? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9aOtie1DKCc

I really don't get it

[prime dome]

I think I get it but not really, please if anybody has time to explain it to me do so!

I'll very much appreciate it

[steady zephyr]

is it possible to create custom nodes? like if I wanted to write a fluid simulator

[warm torrent]

Meshes are a collection of data, such as vertex positions, vertex normals, colors and UV coordinates
Geometry nodes use this data as an output

[warm torrent]

What's the correct way to make a VFX effect that follows its origin point but with world space particles

Why can't I find any info on this

[dull obsidian]

it's not officially supported and takes a lot of modification and/or override of VFX graph classes, but the FluvioFX project has proven it to be possible: https://github.com/fluviofx/fluviofx Also take a look at the roadmap items "Fluid Simulation", "Nearest Neighbor Search", and "Custom HLSL Block" under consideration (scroll down) https://portal.productboard.com/unity/1-unity-platform-rendering-visual-effects/tabs/9-visual-effect-graph

[fluid grove]

I have a lightsaber blade that looks like this with no material: https://gyazo.com/f07efc7d2d1efaa6694c1a829b1a8344
I have a shader that looks like this:
https://gyazo.com/c2b141431b8eb116bc9cd7d94f0730a7
Yet, when I apply it to my blade, I get this disaster:
https://gyazo.com/0933b8e2a05f3b6c348205fc39163780
Any ideas?

[warm torrent]

Hard to tell from the tiny image but it should be smooth shaded or vertex effects will break it into pieces

[fluid grove]

@warm torrent Just tried that and it worked. Thanks!

[steady zephyr]

cool thx

is there a node to mix between two values

like "mix" in glsl

[dull obsidian]

vfx graph is largely generating HLSL code and many built-in nodes are named after the HLSL counterparts. so when porting from GLSL we often can use resources about these languages to translate. bookmark this and refer to the table of commonly used functions and variables. https://anteru.net/blog/2016/mapping-between-HLSL-and-GLSL/

[dull obsidian]

which leads us to hlsl's lerp function, ms docs can verify the formula used https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/direct3dhlsl/dx-graphics-hlsl-lerp

[dull obsidian]

with this info we finally arrive at the corresponding vfx graph "lerp" operator node https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.visualeffectgraph@11.0/manual/Operator-Lerp.html

[steady zephyr]

Got it thanks

[prime dome]

so the only difference from smoothstep is the curve of the graph right?

smoothstep

linear interpolation (lerp)

[prime dome]

what is the sense of the "is alive value" of the sample pos depth node? the problem is that if "is alive" is false, i either need to kill those particles, or i need to relocate them/set alpha = 0, if i dont want them to be seen. still i dont get why there is no "null-output-node".

i can kill the none-alive-particles and hope that they get spawned at a is-alive-position, but this is wasting a lot of resources

what i want to do: use a camera + set position depth node outside the initialize-context. but the depth sample node works a little different

i understand that due to the non- initialize- context(its a sample node), the "is alive value" is needed (the particles are already spawned-> relocate particles depending on camera CULLING after spawn ). but without a null-output for is-alive = false, the depth position sample node is kinda useless

[warm torrent]

How would I connect the Color property of SG with that of the one in VFX graph

Docs say it should appear in properties when creating a SG for VFX but there's nothing

The issue being I can't use the Color over Life to control the SG texture

[prime dome]

the black color property underneath your alpha value is your sg color property. you can use "get lifetime" and gradiend outside of the context to feed it.

[warm torrent]

Totally perfect, thanks!

[near cloud]

i had this performance notification "this renderer has more materials than mesh has submeshes multiple materials applied to same submesh" Is there any simple way to fix this?

[prime dome]

@near cloud no, you need to go back to blender for this -> create submeshes. you simply cant have more than one material for a single mesh

a material is a shader that lies on top of the polygons of a mesh

[zealous sun]

HI! Look at my new vfx with work on shaders✨
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/d81EJx

[river shore]

Hey! I'm starting work on an open world rpg, and I can't decide between 2d or 3d. What would you guys suggest?

[royal tulip]

https://streamable.com/sfbjem VFX gods please help!

[dull obsidian]

no way to tell you what the cause is from the video alone but my guess it it's some kind of frustum / distance / bounds culling which may explain why you only see the issue in game mode view but scene view ignores the culling. those are the types of things i'd recommend searching for information on. also some very important context when looking for answers is what kind of particle system you are using, built-in particle system (fka shuriken,) visual effect graph, custom C# or HLSL you wrote, or a 3rd party asset, etc.

[royal tulip]

VFX graph using the forward quad

My bad sorry, i should of explained more

[dull obsidian]

well, posting a video isn't a bad start haha

screenshots, videos, and sketches can go a long way over text alone

[royal tulip]

Yea, i was a lil angry trying to get this work for hours so i was impatient, Is there any additional information you need to assist me? (if you want to assist me)

[dull obsidian]

since it's vfx graph, to follow up on original suggestion, there is some new documentation that helps explain how setting the vfx graph bounds work, though this is for Unity 2021.2 beta (vfx graph v12) so some of the improved features here may not be available in previous versions: https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.visualeffectgraph@12.0/manual/visual-effect-bounds.html

[royal tulip]

im on VFX 10.5.1

[dull obsidian]

beyond that, i recommend to search for information / examples regard frustum / distance / bounds culling. seems to be something in that category

that's all i can provide for now. good luck my friend, i believe in u 👍

[royal tulip]

I don't

[prime dome]

does "not render" mean the same as "alpha = 0" ?

why are there no bounds for killing particles?

[onyx lake]

Is there a way to get the vertex position of particles inside shader graph? I'm trying to create a simple local gradient for mesh particles. It is working when using a simple mesh (not a particle) and use the object position information for a gradient, but as soon as I use mesh particles it stops working as intended.

[royal tulip]

@dull obsidian Confirmed, I cannot do it

[onyx lake]

The green cube shows what I want, while the red ones show how it is currently behaving. They use the same shader and I would like to know how to get this behaviour working for particles as well not just meshes.

Here's the shader. I guess the object position does not apply to particles. Is there some kind of math to adjust for the difference between "normal" meshes and mesh particles?

[wintry gate]

guys, I have a question here. Can particles cast shadows?

I made leafs as particles and want them to cast shadows, so it will be seen in the room through the window. Is it possible to do it with particle system or should I combine shader with particles?

[median compass]

Hello all, I am new to the VFX graph, but is there a way to make the turbulence block work only on 2 axis (X and Y) ?

[nimble goblet]

you probably need to reference transforms in a local context, seems like your shading or alpha gradient is assigned to a position in world space and not local space

[warm torrent]

My guess is the "object" is the particle system, not the individual particle meshes
I don't know how you would refer to each particle, I suspect the renderer considers them to be a part of one single mesh, but you could get around the problem by using an UV mapped gradient cube instead of a procedural gradient

[hazy flicker]

how do I get the particles in my VFX graph to be pointed in the direction that they're moving?

I basically want to get the velocity of each particle and then have them oriented in the same direction

nvm I got it

[near cloud]

How would i create a submesh

[inland cove]

Hi guys!

I've started learning vfx graph, however I don't have enough practice...

So if you need a visual effect, I can try to make it as a practical example for fun

🤪

[prime dome]

i bought a 5ghz cpu. its much better now!

[hollow crest]

Hey there folks, I've been trying in the last 2 days to create an "eye trail" vfx, I'm having troubles getting the particles to form in the shape I want them to.
My goal is taking inspiration of the attached reference.

Can you suggest me references/guidance on how to tweak it the way I want it to be?

Thanks a ton

[granite cairn]

I've got a weird issue with my shader graph. It's supposed to take the object position and assign a gradient mask, so each object samples from a different position and shows as a different color. This works as intended in the viewport. However, when I hit play, all the objects are the same color. Any idea as to why?

[hazy flicker]

for some reason when I input this into my Set Position Module in my VFX Graph, it rotates around the world 0,0,0 and not the local 0,0,0. I'm trying to rotate my emitter around a point but since my emitter is in world space, it isn't rotating properly

anyone know how to fix this?

it rotates properly in my VFX graph

but in-game, it seems to rotate around world 0,0,0, and thus, does not look right

[prime dome]

i need help making a shader for my 2d game that will make things fade in and out like the TARDIS

[slate sable]

I think the [L] in the input position means what the node should be working with. So it's expecting a local position and you're giving it a world one.
You could try switching that.
Also you could use the Change Space node on your position to make it local and after the transformation change it back to world.

[warm torrent]

What is the correct way to get VFX systems to follow the gameobject anyway

I haven't been able to find that

Got it working but I had to do something very bizarre

without the division by 1 it was following the gameobject's coordinates with a multiplier of 2

what if math isn't even real

[hazy flicker]

Thanks I'll try that

[prime dome]

i also need help making a wind effect

[polar badger]

hi everyone, i would like to create an effect in my game but i don't know where to start, my idea would be to stain the objects procedurally, an example: a bomb bursts and a black halo remains in the surfaces near it. Is there any tutorial to do it? Thanks in advance

[prime dome]

i need help making a dissolve shader for my game so i can make an object fade in and out simmilar to how the tardis fades in and out

[warm torrent]

That could be a shader job

[prime dome]

do you know how to do this?

[warm torrent]

https://youtu.be/taMp1g1pBeE these concepts could be used for a fade effect

[prime dome]

nice

[warm torrent]

Trying to make spinning particles with Add Angle also makes them suffer greatly from gimbal lock

Is there a way to do rotation that doesn't have the limitations of euler angles?

[prime dome]

I made a shader graph, why do I have this quad??

[sour canopy]

any clue on a good way to make particles come thowards the player after their lifespan reaches zero? I wanted to make that enemy dropped loot but it auto collects effect.

[prime dome]

is anyone here that can give me some basic help online

[midnight grove]

#854851968446365696

[prime dome]

how do I make an orb (sphere) in vfx... all i can do is create a 2d circle

[bright current]

like spawn spheres as a particle? or make partials form into a sphere?

[prime dome]

sphere as a particle

[bright current]

It doesn't look like there is a way to spawn meshes in VFX graph least on my unity version

I know if you use the old system you can change the render type to mesh.

[prime dome]

can you send links of vfx tutorials

[bright current]

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtb1s859RTxx-RIgFs5ZVQA

This guy seems good

[prime dome]

thank you a lot

[cobalt scarab]

@atomic lion Try the one relevant channel you didn't spam in. #💥┃post-processing . Please remove all unnecessary cross-posting copies of your question.

[tough moss]

I'm able to view my vfxgraph in the game view and inspector preview but not in the scene view, which is making it very difficult to debug what I'm working on. Does anyone have any potential fixes for this?

[golden rock]

does anyone know why i dont get the shape module on the particle thing?

[hearty flare]

Screenshot what you mean. It cannot be missing afaik

[golden rock]

tutorial:

me:

beuh i am blind

i saw it now in the screenshot

another question why cant i drag and drop this