✨┃vfx-and-particles

[golden rock]

into this

[hearty flare]

You need to create a material using a particle system shader and assign the texture to it

and then drag that material into that slot

[golden rock]

how do i do that

[hearty flare]

https://youtu.be/oPUxv-zClNA?t=142

[lavish flare]

I have a simple particle system (a shining star). I just want it to appear and disappear and when it disappears I want it in a new position. So it looks like a new star. So I wrote this script

And this is my particle System

The issue is it doesn't disappear (fade out) on the first run, when the coroutine runs and spawns it in a new place, then the fade out works but the duration is just for 1 sec

Its not the random amount that defined in the script

What I might be doing wrong?

[crimson zealot]

well first off, are you saying the whole particle system is a star, and you are spawning and despawning/moving a bunch of them? can you make each particle be a star instead so that the particle system can just handle all of that?

[lavish flare]

Yeah its just one particle system. It basically just a billboard and it rotates, to give the feel of a twinkling star. I just want it to fade in then fade out and spawn in a new place

[crimson zealot]

so you can you just have the particle system shape cover the whole are you want them to spawn in, set the lifetime to what you need, have it loop, and delete your script?

[lavish flare]

No no there is no bunch. Its just one star. One particle system, One star

[crimson zealot]

yeah sorry, i should say it

[lavish flare]

I want it to fade in and then fade out, and when it fades out I want it in a new place

[crimson zealot]

it doesn't really matter either way though

right, so have it emit one every 1 second and have the lifetime be one second

[lavish flare]

yes

[crimson zealot]

and then it will have one at a time...use color over lifetime to have it fade out

[lavish flare]

I think its already set to that

[lavish flare]

yeah thats the issue

[crimson zealot]

it's not looping though

[lavish flare]

its not working

I dont want it to loop, check my script. I restart it when I have a new position

[crimson zealot]

right, what i'm saying is that your script serves no purpose

everything it is trying to do, the particle system can handle if you configure it correctly

so instead of trying to fix it, i recommend doing that

(or maybe i'm wrong, but i haven't heard anything so far that would make me think i am)

[lavish flare]

even spawn at random location after it fades out?

[crimson zealot]

☝️ does that make sense?

[lavish flare]

So you want me to put my star particle system inside another particle system?

[crimson zealot]

No. Your script picks a random x/y position to spawn the particle in. That's the same as saying 'spawn a star somewhere randomly in this box". So go into the particle system's shape module and set the shape to 'box' and give it the dimensions you have in your script. Now your star will spawn somewhere randomly in that area.

[lavish flare]

Ah I got it

[crimson zealot]

if you then have this particle system loop, it will spawn 1 star somewhere randomly in that area every 1 second

[lavish flare]

fixed it

[lavish flare]

Yeah that could work but I made other objects blocking the scene so I just can random spawn them in a box, thats why I have that while loop. It checks if the star is about to spawn in a place where it will be blocked from view

and gets a new position

so i guess Ill need the script for positions.

anyway thax alot

[crimson zealot]

I would still let the particle system handle spawning, and just move any particles in that area to somewhere outside of it as soon as they spawn.

then all your script does is say 'check if any particles are in the bad zone and if they are, move them into the good zone (and you can decide if you want to do that by finding a new random point or pushing them towards the closest edge or what)

and the particle system can handle everything else

[tepid current]

My Vfx ui looks like this does anyone knows why?

[tepid current]

the texts look weirder than the texts of the normal unity's interface

[frosty widget]

im trying to change the color of my particle using the particle system and "start color" isnt working when i change it.

fixed it, rendering was not set

[warm torrent]

Unity? 🤔

[warm torrent]

Using the included tools for animating and particle effect systems
What tools you need really depends what kind of animation you're envisioning

I cannot give specific answers to broad questions

Yes

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

[warm torrent]

Yes
Compared to sprite sheet animations, unity animator animations are computationally cheaper, take less storage space and for a simple thing like this are considerably less effort to make

The limitation is that animation is limited to altering variables such as position, size and color
But that isn't a problem in this case

[rich haven]

scale, tint, transform are all available in unity animator, but what is easier to work with?

mix matching sprite sheets and unity animation seems very painful

[warm torrent]

You should be looking at tutorials and documentation

This is not something you're going to guess your way through

https://youtu.be/sgHicuJAu3g apply these concepts

[granite fog]

Hello, how can I achieve this butterfly vfx? Has any tutorial?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LrbS_fACuU&t=22s

[warm torrent]

It's a very simple effect, so you should be able to recreate it using generic concepts from most particle system / vfx graph tutorials
-The butterfly is a spritesheet with about 3 frames of flapping animation
-No rotation, always faces camera
-spawned randomly inside a shape, like a cube or rectangle
-Alpha fades in and out over particle lifetime
-Noise controls motion, stretched on one axis to make up/down motion prominent

[granite fog]

I thought the butterfly was a mesh with animations, this was my only problem, the particle spawn system I did already

[warm torrent]

In Unity's VFX graph examples there is a mesh based butterfly effect, but it's orders of magnitude more complex

[opal star]

The new HDRP sample scene has a butterdly vfx graph that is really neat

[granite fog]

this?

https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.render-pipelines.high-definition@7.2/manual/HDRP-Sample-Projects.html

[opal star]

no just the sample scene that comes with HDRP package

but these have good things in them too 🙂

[pearl fern]

what's a way to make a pixelated effect on a sprite?

[midnight grove]

Get a new computer? Look at the release notes in newer versions of unity to see if there's been performance enhancements for VFX graph?

You can't "do" anything to the editor to improve performance, that's on Unity.

Did you try turning off the auto compiling in the window as well?

[astral stump]

If I have a subemitter that happens on particle impact and I put the burst count to 1 why does it spawn multiple particles and how can I prevent that?

[leaden cape]

Anyone had experience with resolving frame lag / hitches the first time visual effects play on device? after the first time they play fine. 2019/URP. Thinking its probably shaders but its not practical to preload all from a shader variant collection, or practical to use the warm all shaders call. I thinking it might be possible to build a collection on the fly with to warm just the shaders needed. But there doesn't seem to be an easy way to identify these from a Visual effect asset at runtime.

[craggy lark]

hay everyone, im just starting out with unity, and i haven't really found an example for this so far.
there's a fire effect I want to look a curtain way, and be dynamic (world space i think) since it'll be moving.
what im trying to figure out most is how to have the fire sort of... follow the outside of a sphere with its movement i think?
here's what I have so far.

[thorny atlas]

how would one go about profiling a visual effect to see how inefficient it is?

i made a VFX graph version of a particle effect thinking it would be faster, and it isnt, its actually doubles the load

[sinful light]

Is it possible to generate a point cache object in runtime, so I can animate the actual mesh while emitting from it?

Oh there is a feature for skinned mesh point clouds out there 🙂 Thanks anyway

[sinful light]

I love the skinned mesh node 🙂

[frank crown]

hello, is there any way to get multiply velocity over lifetime in vfx graph? I saw an old screenshot with the node but I can't find it, even with experimental nodes enabled
was it removed or something?

I tried doing this as well (taking the position and normalizing it to have the particles move away from the center of the sphere, and multiplying it by the time so that it slows down as it reaches the end of its life) but the velocity stays the same throughout the lifetime

[torn geyser]

In VFX Graph, Is it possible to have a boolean property control whether an entire spawn/init/update/output node system is enabled?

[steady zephyr]

Dont think so but I'm not totally sure. You have to find another way to disable it.

For example, bool->branch->set alpha.

[night saffron]

I have a particle explosion I am making but when my camera goes behind the big ship, the particles disappear. Does anyone know how to fix this?

[warm torrent]

@night saffron VFX graph? There's a "bounding box" field that determines when the effect should be culled when camera pivots away from it

[night saffron]

I have never touched particles before. How would I change that?

[warm torrent]

Depends, is it a particle system or a vfx graph?

[night saffron]

particle system

[warm torrent]

Then my guess about bounding box isn't correct, I believe the particle system generates its bounding box on the fly and shouldn't have disappearing issues

Going to need more info about the circumstances when the disappearing happens

[night saffron]

The particles disappear if the camera rotates around the particle system to the other side. So the images I took above is when I am looking at it from the front of the ship (shows) and then I went to the back of the ship and turned around (does not show)

It is not a distance based disappearance more of a rotation based disappearance.

[slate sable]

You could put Set Alive at the end of init. That would be your bool. As quat mentioned you can do bool -> branch and either set alpha or use it to set the spawn count to 0 or something like that.

[warm torrent]

Is the particle Render Mode under Renderer set to Billboard?

And Render Alignment to View

[night saffron]

Yes it is set to billboard and I don't know the render alignment (I am in bed now) but it should be whatever the default one is called.

[torn geyser]

@steady zephyr @slate sable thank you so much for your responses!

[sinful light]

Not sure if this is VFX, I guess its more shadergraph, but did anyone figure out if you can create a grass shader? not like for a single grass item but like a whole plane full of grass, some fancy vertex displacement or anything? I am not sure if its even possible after trying out and googling a lot

Or is it better to just spam grass prefabs all over the place with animated vertex and let the batching and stuff do its thing?

[warm torrent]

Geometry shaders can be used for that kind of generation, but that's outside of Shader Graph's capabilities at the moment

Similar results can be achieved with VFX graph's particles, as shown in one of the official examples, but the approach is somewhat different

[sinful light]

Thanks for that hint, I will check them out 🙂

[night saffron]

When viewing this particle system from the front it shows (top image) but if I moved to the other side of the particle system it is invisible. Does anyone know why?

[crimson zealot]

what's the view orientation of the particles? are they world aligned?

[night saffron]

As in simulation space? I have it as a world currently but I have tried both world and local.

[crimson zealot]

in the renderer, i think it's view orientation

[night saffron]

The only thing I can see that sounds sort of like that is the render alignment. The render alignment is set to view.

[crimson zealot]

haha sorry, that's the one. and the render mode?

[night saffron]

Billboard

[crimson zealot]

seems fine...can you tell what's happening? like as you travel around them and they disappear, what's that look like?

it could just be that from that angle, the ship is occluding them all, but i'm not sure why that would be unless it has some wonky bounding boxes

[night saffron]

I have made a quick video of it. File size is too big so do you mind if I send you a download link in a dm?

[crimson zealot]

sure

oh man yeah, basically those particles are too big

not sure exactly, but my guess is they are being culled because their pivot is behind the camera?

But really the solution is to use much smaller particles, and maybe tweak the min/max size. They might show up again if you change the min size from 0

and .5 max size doesn't really make sense to me...use 1 and set the start size to half

[night saffron]

Ok.

[crimson zealot]

you could maybe test my pivot theory by turning on 'visualize pivot'

[night saffron]

Ok

[crimson zealot]

feels like they should show up...what about if you fix the min size?

i guess they aren't 0 size, we can see that they are big

[night saffron]

The min particle size is 0 but the start size is between... 15 and 40

[crimson zealot]

hah, i think it might actually be because you are using a lit shader

and have a light on one side

probably you want to use the unlit particle shader

[night saffron]

Ah, yep that was it lol. Thanks, now it is super bright so i need to edit the particle a bit but atleast it shows properly. Again, thanks.

[crimson zealot]

Took me long enough 😛

[night saffron]

I am used to programming, and art but never touched materials in unity so I did not even know what lit and unlit did. So does unlit just mean it shows the exact texture without being affected by any lighting.

[crimson zealot]

well it could do lots of things other than showing an exact texture, it just means what it says on the box: the unlit shader doesn't get any lighting information (but you could simulate your own lighting effects in the shader if you wanted).

[night saffron]

Ah, ok.

[crimson zealot]

mostly for VFX/particle work, you want to handle that as part of the effect and not have the scene lighting messing with it, so unlit FX shaders are very common

but like anything it depends what you're going for

[night saffron]

Yeah, ok. That makes sense, thanks.

[prime dome]

Anyone know any tutorials or something that show off like

How to make an orbiting particle effect that emits a trail, follows an object, but always stays upright

[kindred wren]

If you want the object to emit a trail you could add the trail renderer component (right click the object > effects > trail)

[prime dome]

It’s been a hot minute since I’ve used unity lol

I’ll come back to this part when I’m ready to do it

[slate sable]

It's possible with parallax mapping. We used a custom parallax mapping node for this effect because we had to do some optimizations but it's possible. Spamming lots of grass prefabs won't probably look as good but it won't be as demanding.

[warm torrent]

How's the wind animation done if it's just a texture?

[slate sable]

It's just a noise texture getting offset by time. It affects the higher layers more.

[warm torrent]

Ah, so it's not just a height map
Do you mean layers as separate geometry, like some fur techniques, or are those within the shader too?

[slate sable]

The grass "blades" itself are a height map with some white pixels that are the blades.
These layers are not a separate geometry, they just look that way. That's what the parallax mapping does.
It's all within one shader.

[warm torrent]

Seems convenient!

[sinful light]

Dang it, wont steal but you got some hints? 🙂

[warm torrent]

I assume the gist of it is that the heightmap is turned into layers using a Step or Smoothstep node, then lots of those are combined using Blend

Though it may get expensive that way

[sinful light]

Just sounds like a geometry shader

[warm torrent]

Parallax mapping is a fragment shader, as it doesn't modify the geometry

Or vertices

It offsets parts of the texture based on viewing angle or other factors

[compact urchin]

Compiling Vertex program
Platform defines: UNITY_ENABLE_REFLECTION_BUFFERS UNITY_USE_DITHER_MASK_FOR_ALPHABLENDED_SHADOWS UNITY_PBS_USE_BRDF1 UNITY_SPECCUBE_BOX_PROJECTION UNITY_SPECCUBE_BLENDING UNITY_ENABLE_DETAIL_NORMALMAP SHADER_API_DESKTOP UNITY_LIGHT_PROBE_PROXY_VOLUME UNITY_LIGHTMAP_FULL_HDR UNITY_PASS_FORWARDBASE
Disabled keywords: UNITY_NO_DXT5nm UNITY_ENABLE_NATIVE_SHADOW_LOOKUPS UNITY_METAL_SHADOWS_USE_POINT_FILTERING UNITY_NO_SCREENSPACE_SHADOWS UNITY_PBS_USE_BRDF2 UNITY_PBS_USE_BRDF3 UNITY_NO_FULL_STANDARD_SHADER UNITY_HARDWARE_TIER1 UNITY_HARDWARE_TIER2 UNITY_HARDWARE_TIER3 UNITY_COLORSPACE_GAMMA UNITY_HALF_PRECISION_FRAGMENT_SHADER_REGISTERS UNITY_LIGHTMAP_DLDR_ENCODING UNITY_LIGHTMAP_RGBM_ENCODING UNITY_VIRTUAL_TEXTURING UNITY_PRETRANSFORM_TO_DISPLAY_ORIENTATION UNITY_ASTC_NORMALMAP_ENCODING SHADER_API_GLES30
``` I get this error when i make a vfx graph

How could I fix it?

[slate sable]

We have a custom parallax mapping node that basically has this code inside but a bit modified for our use.
https://learnopengl.com/Advanced-Lighting/Parallax-Mapping

[granite fog]

why my preview is grey?

[sinful light]

did you click on it?

[sinful light]

I have to rotate/drag the preview sometimes, the sphere, so it updates

[granite fog]

ye, when i create a material it wont show too, but the tutorial i was watching was fine

[sinful light]

did you try to rotate it, if it does not update, something in the shade ris wrog

how does your nodes look like

[sinful light]

your Out is going nowhere

you are not setting anything to the main node

see how something is attached to the main nodes on the right?

[sinful light]

right now you are just generating a voronoi or somethin, but it does not go anywhere in the shaders visual properties

[granite fog]

hmm let me try to attach it, in the tutorial he didnt attached it https://youtu.be/yJ0NRr-DdYU?t=325

[sinful light]

well... some effort in looking ahead a few seconds/minutes would have saved us time...

[granite fog]

oh, true, thanks

[granite fog]

now my main node is diferent, its dont have alpha and alphaclip, how i add it?

[sinful light]

I am working with some preview packages and Unity 2021, so you have some previous version and you are using unlit, i am using a lit shader

[warm torrent]

They have to be enabled in Graph Settings in modern SG

[granite fog]

thanks, worked ♥

[torpid compass]

hello i have an issue with reflection probes, whenever i add 2 reflection probes unity just freezes

this is how it freezes

and it stays like that

if anyone answers please ping me

[sinful light]

Does anyone know how to increase the particle strip segments? Somehow my quads are being output super chunky and the curve is more a blocked 3 segment curve here.

white dots emit the dark lines with GPUEvent

[sinful light]

Okay I am dumb, using a particle strip, you have to up the trigger event rate of course, otherwise it will stretch over a low count of particles...

[ruby ember]

why can't I change these values?

[opal star]

I have to ask since Im looking into grass as well is there any tesselation going on here or just parallax mapping ? How dense is the grass mesh ? And for the wind do you offset the heightmap with the noise?

[frank crown]

anybody knows how to do trails that follow the transform in vfx graph? kind of like the regular, non vfx graph trail that gets generated behind the transform when you move it
I can only get trail to work by moving their particles from inside the graph

nvm found how to do it

[slate sable]

Mainly my colleague worked on this but this has tesselation. We are using amplify shader editor because of that. Before that we used shader graph and made a small tool that would generate mesh chunks with LODs from the terrain. I think the height map stays the same and the wind is directly used in the parallax mapping to offset the layers.

[frank crown]

ok, so I'm doing this to spawn a particle, and then update a trail that follows this particle
it works but problem is, the size of each segment doesn't stay consistent relative to speed
I wanna use trigger event rate over distance instead but when I use it, no matter what the rate is there's just no trail
any idea what the issue is?

[warm torrent]

You can't change the default materials or shaders
You must duplicate it, or what's easier just make a new material and choose the same shader

[opal star]

Thanks for the info. Last questionnif you can. What are you using for the noise to get that wave across the grass effect

[ruby ember]

how do I duplicate it?

[warm torrent]

First you'll have to find it in the project file browser, but like all default assets it's hidden

I never can recall how to find them

[slate sable]

It's a texture. Look up flow maps.

[opal star]

Ah right cool cool. I was thinking you were doing something with perlin and octaves. I was considering using a flow map as well

[warm torrent]

Flow maps are just one type of distortion map, and in a way normal maps are too

You can use any distortion map as the wind direction

Flow maps and normal maps are just set up in a particular way to represent certain things

Flow direction or surface slope direction, respectively

[prime dome]

any website to download sound effects?

[slate sable]

I would probably ask in #🔊┃audio
Here are few huge free audio packs. https://sonniss.com/gameaudiogdc
If you are looking for paid effects, I personally like Epidemic Sound or BOOM Library.

[frank crown]

is it possible to recreate the "blend-add" alpha sorting described in this video in VFX/Shader Graph? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPy2hytwDLM

[warm torrent]

It's definitely possible, but out of the box you can apply emission with intensity to particles, which gives you effectively the same results

Additive, alpha blend, alpha blend with base texture used as emission map as well

The diablo way is cheaper arguably, as it uses the alpha channel for both transparency and intensity

[frank crown]

thanks

[warm torrent]

But yes you can do it in SG and use those as particles in VFX graph

If you want the exact same thing

[frank crown]

I'll have to try premultiply again but edit my textures to have their greyscale in the alpha channel as well cause right now they don't and I'm using the red channel instead, and for some reason that screws with premultiply

even with single channel textures

[warm torrent]

Premultiplying didn't seem to make a difference here, compared to alpha blending

I admit I don't even recall what's it supposed to do

[frank crown]

if it's anything like blend add, it's supposed to either blend with values or add to them depending on whether the existing values are higher or lower
so that everything blend together but without quickly being all white

[crimson zealot]

check out this tutorial https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jh7DtNXqnlM

I forget what he discovered exactly, but IIRC it seems like unity doesn't do premultiply properly

[crimson zealot]

Just to clarify, you mean you get the same results because it's an alpha blend, and then you can use another texture for emissive parts (which you want brighter) which is an additive blend? Emission is more than just an additive blend though, right?

[warm torrent]

Technically it's entirely different, but if the goal is to have a sprite effect that has both powerful luminescence and some shadowing underneath, then it's rather similar

Nice video
The part about premultiplied not working right is nice to see, means I wasn't confused for no reason

[vapid wagon]

Hi everyone, I was curious about how in genshin impact they were able to do this kind of effect :
https://youtube.com/clip/UgxMHAxTpX8P6cC4-ht4AaABCQ

It looks like the character is stretch away, and I would love to know how to do it, because I'm trying to find a way to make a vfx to show the speed of the character like this one. Have you got an idea of how they done it?

[hearty flare]

it looks like a well placed quad/particle with a blurred streak on it tbh

[vapid wagon]

So they only use a quad particule to do it ? Then they applied the texture on it with the colours of the character to make it looks like it is stretch away ?

[hearty flare]

That's my guess, yes

[vapid wagon]

ok thank you for your answer it really helps me !

[solar jewel]

working on some stylized fire fx. feedback appreciated!

[cosmic geyser]

This cool, the only thing is the upper part, the flames that appear and disappear, there are some that disappear being very large

[warm torrent]

Looks really good! Would love a little breakdown of it

[solar jewel]

I will look into that, thanks!

[solar jewel]

I've been wanting to make a breakdown of it actually because i think it looks really cool in the wireframe mode, imo it's not very abvious (it's coolness) cause its unlit and alpha clipped. Can't promise anything though. I will post it here if i ever make one.

[solar jewel]

And its inspired from this tutorial https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m0JkeK4m8E

[warm torrent]

Figured it must've been one or two mesh blobs with vertex wobble

[whole plover]

Hey folks, I don't know if I'm going nutts or this has always been this way, should I be able to modify a value of the main module while the particle system is in pause and see how it is applied?

[hollow crest]

Hey guys, how can I get my shader to hide edges and center of an object?

Just like a ring (Note, that I'd like to move the shaded area from the center until it reaches the end of the object and dissolves)

[thorny atlas]

does it sound right/feasible that a vfx graph effect on a console would be all round slower than the same effect in the particle system?

seems i can have 8 explosions going on shuriken for the same cost as one VFX graph based one

which in itself is not a problem, but i always thought the point of GPU based vfx is that is can cope with millions before it starts to hurt, so i was hoping for my small operations it would be almost free

[warm torrent]

Generally yes, but it depends on a variety of factors
VFX graph requires compute shader support and maybe something else from the target hardware to work / to work properly
VFX graphs have a resource cost when instantiating/destroying them, so if you're rapidly spawning effects that don't have a massive number of particles, Shuriken might perform better in that scenario
For that reason particle pooling is recommended if the effect needs to be used frequently
Still, a 8 to 1 performance difference is really drastic, and probably suggests to me that the console you're using isn't quite handling the GPU acceleration of particles

[thorny atlas]

its a short explosion, but even if i just have the sparks going, there is a big hit when the effect starts

since this is a test scene, specifically designed to stress test what i can get away with, the objects with the effects are not being instantiated, they are present on the scene and set active all the time on repeat

the console in question is an xbox one not UWP

i have found a couple of quirks where GPU based operations around compute are not actually faster on that

[primal lotus]

Anyway to disable the orange outline on particle systems when not in game?

(that is, the scene view)

[prime dome]

in my 2d game there is a spot of darkness where there is light and i have no idea why its there can someone help

[crimson zealot]

It's either this, or something else in that menu

[young swan]

Does anybody know if it's possible inside the VFX Graph to feed key values into a curve?

i can't find a way to change the keys based on other values. I just have to do it manually every time

I can't find anything on the documentation. Functionality for curves seems to be extremely poor 😕

[flint imp]

Hey! Does anyone know of a simple and performant grass shader which simply renders grass on top of a mesh?

[primal lotus]

Sorry @young swan, I'm n00b but I wonder if you could somehow leverage https://docs.unity3d.com/2018.3/Documentation/ScriptReference/AnimationCurve.Evaluate.html or something similar in this case

[slate sable]

You can feed in the curve with a C# script.
https://docs.unity3d.com/2019.1/Documentation/ScriptReference/Experimental.VFX.VisualEffect.SetAnimationCurve.html

There is no way you can "generate" the curve from values in the vfx itself. You could make a node that would take X values and lerp/smoothstep between them and then Sample the value.

[young swan]

Yeah it seems like as of now they haven't implemented a lot of functionality for curves in the VFX Graph.
So I guess the only other solution would be using the Has/Get/Set methods with an exposed curve

But since the data that I need to feed is all the results of data calculated inside the VFX Graph itself I think I'm just gonna need to go with the Math, Logic, etc nodes and make my own "curves"

or is there any way to read data out of a VFX Graph into a script?

I know I can read some data out, for example exposed properties and such. But it is possible to get the result of node calculations (for example lerp + multiply) and pass it to the CPU world?

[granite rivet]

are the cutscenes in genshin impact realtime?

[midnight grove]

That's not really related to VFX. But yes, they're most likely real time.

[frank crown]

is trigger event rate over distance in vfx graph broken? I'm trying to update a trail using that but it doesn't seem to trigger at all no matter what the rate is

using trigger over time it works fine but then unless I maintain the same speed for the trail origin it ends up with uneven segment length

[young swan]

Trigger over distance works fine for me

have you tried spawning a simple particle on teh GPU event to test that it's working?

[frank crown]

With a similar setup?

Well like I said, with trigger over time it works

[young swan]

https://gyazo.com/f1e618f06170e61ddbf1a98a71057f19

i just tested with these basic systems

works just fine

I'm on VFX version 10.4.0

@frank crown try your GPU event with the simplest particle you can

see if it works

[frank crown]

I'll try tomorrow it's midnight where I live

[young swan]

and check the inspector options on the contexts and blocks

sometimes it's easy to forget you changed something on those

[frank crown]

@young swan just tried with both over time and over distance and in neither case does the particle spawn for some reason

[frank crown]

also I get that a bunch

[young swan]

in that screenshot your Trigger Event Rate is disabled and your secondary particle has no lifetime

[frank crown]

oh right I'm dumb

[young swan]

no idea about the errors. I'm fairly new to VFX Graph too

[frank crown]

just tried that and with over time the particles spawn but not with over distance

and the inspector options are just this

[young swan]

check inspector settings for the Update Particle contexts

i know there's a setting that can disable particle spawns

@frank crown oh actually I know what the problem may be

your particles are not affected by any forces, thus they are not registering any distance changes (i think)

because you are updating the position of the main particle

[frank crown]

that might be it

any way to fix that without using forces?

[young swan]

dunno, maybe try Set Old Position in your first Update context

before you set the position

[frank crown]

I'll try that

[young swan]

I'm not very experienced with positioning particles, so that may not work

[frank crown]

didn't work

guess I could always like, calculate the force to always have my particle be on the proper position every frame but that'd be a bit excessive

also premultiply blending seems broken, at least with shaders
it just results in like, a flat 0.5x alpha

nevermind, manually multiplying the color with the alpha in the shader fixed it

[young swan]

maybe someone with more experience can help you figure out how to make the Trigger Event Rate work with position instead of velocity

if it's not possible, it looks like you are gonna have to use velocity

alternatively you could create a custom subgraph block that mimics the Trigger Event Rate over Distance

and make it use position and oldPosition instead of velocity
(if that's even possible)

[frank crown]

I might try that later, thanks

[young swan]

this is the code from the Trigger over Distance

seems like it uses velocity only

[frank crown]

think I'll just try calculating the velocity to follow the proper position

[young swan]

seems like the best option yeh

[lone citrus]

does anyone know how to add a glitch effect or static effect once i see something using raycast

[warm torrent]

To the screen or the object you're seeing?

[lone citrus]

screen as a whole

[warm torrent]

Some sort of glitch post processing effect that gets activated via script when the raycast succeeds

[lone citrus]

yea so where would i get the glitch post processing

and how would i activivate it

cuz the glitch stuff that i found so far are scripts

how woul di call a script from another script if the raycast hit

[warm torrent]

Searching with that will give you useful info I think

[jovial obsidian]

hey im using some explosion particles i made myself but sometimes they work perfectly but other they become kind of transparent could you help me??

[jovial obsidian]

help pls

[warm torrent]

I don't know what "kind of transparent" means

[jovial obsidian]

ok too late i fixed it

at this very momen

t

it was the water

the explosion got under water

when there was a wave

[slender fable]

Anyone know how I can enable view of the bounding box in Initialise Particle?

[slate sable]

When you put your visual effect in the scene and select it, there should be a little box on the bottom right of your scene view with an option to enable it.

[slender fable]

Omg, right in front of me the whole time. Thank you @slate sable

[west jewel]

With Particle Systems, which mode is like footsteps dissolving in snow, in that a new foot step takes the oldest one and uses it?

This is the Ring Buffer Mode setting, right at the bottom of the Main Module Settings. Options are...

"Pause Until Replace" and "Loop Until Replace", neither of which make any sense, to me.

[warm torrent]

@west jewel

Ring Buffer Mode Keeps particles alive until they reach the Max Particles count, at which point new particles recycle the oldest ones, instead of removing particles when their lifetimes elapse.

Loop means their lifetime starts over

Pause means lifetime stops at the end

So if you have color over lifetime with pause, the color is stuck at the final color
WIth loop it wraps back to the start of color over lifetime

[frank crown]

is it possible to have particle bursts with delay between individual particles? so that I can spawn like, 5 particles over the span of 1 second with 1 event call, rather than starting a continuous spawn then manually disabling it a second later
afaik the delay on single burst just delays all the particles at the same time

[west jewel]

Which one of these replaces the oldest one first, as in the example given in the question?

[slate sable]

There are some extra options in the inspector when you select the spawn nodes. Maybe some could help.

[frank crown]

iirc they're either the same as the ones in the graph view, or they turn the node into a periodic burst node, which doesn't accomplish what I want

[warm torrent]

Both

The Modes merely answer the question what should a particle do when it's waiting to be replaced by a newer particle

[west jewel]

I see. So Unity is just appalling at describing this functionality. And/or I'm not able to discern what they mean when they write.

[warm torrent]

I don't quite see what you think is wrong with those descriptions

The documentation is lacking or vague at some points but this probably isn't one of those

[prime dome]

is this the right place for particle system stuff?

okay so i need help making a particle system for like a wind effect

in 2d

can anyone help me please?

[warm torrent]

You'll have to be more specific
Everyone's busy with their own stuff

[prime dome]

i need help with a particle system in 2d
that looks like wind lines in a motion around the bottom of a square

[warm torrent]

Start by searching "unity wind line particle" on the internet

[prime dome]

the internet helped nothing so i whipped up a janky version of my own instead

[safe nebula]

this is kinda what you where supposed to do, start on your own with the internet and then come back with specific question for how to fix/improve what you have

[frank crown]

is there any particular reason setting the alpha with premultiplied particles just does nothing?

it ends up just using the texture's alpha, and ignoring the one I set

[warm torrent]

I heard some talk that the premultiplied alpha implementation is just wrong so it doesn't work right
But I'm wholly not sure

[frank crown]

I know it's not working properly to begin with but I thought it was something to do with how it does sorting in general
this seems to be more of an issue with vfx graph itself

and yeah it seems like premultiply has been broken for a while, which makes me wonder why it's not fixed yet

[steady zephyr]

Lmao

[prime dome]

Any decent particle and shader artists here?

Few questions

[warm torrent]

I doubt they'll reveal themselves until you reveal your questions

[tulip mirage]

How do you add "Soft Particles" to a custom shader graph for VFX Graph?

[crimson zealot]

Make sure you enable your depth texture. I forget if this actually works as-is or if I had to play with it. I think maybe I added some better control over the fade curve but it's been a while.

[tulip mirage]

I'm starting to see it, but I'm not sure where in my graph I need to plug this into. Do I Multiply the output of the shader graph (i.e. the final output for a Fog particle) with this combination you posted?

[crimson zealot]

depends how you're blending, but IIRC the idea is that you multiply that output into you the alpha (or whatever you are using for erosion) so that it fades out sections of the particle that are intersection with other geometry

[tulip mirage]

Hopefully you can read this

[crimson zealot]

what am i reading for? does it work? what's it look like?

i would start by taking everything else out of the shader for now and put a big debug texture on the quad so you can make sure the soft particle part is working

just feed what i gave you into the alpha and see what you get

[tulip mirage]

Fog

[tulip mirage]

It seems to be working, in that there are no intersections with the level geometry (not pictured).

[crimson zealot]

well, great

[tulip mirage]

Thanks for answering

[west jewel]

It's not clear, explicit, explanatory nor even rudimentary. It only makes some sense once you understand what this is, and what the two modes do. That's not documentation, it's bordering on being worse than having nothing there.

NativeArrays and NativeSlices have no documentation, which makes them better, because it's safe to presume I'll need to experiment and that Unity have used common conventions for their operation, mechanics and paradigms, and that this leaning on common conventions helped them feel there was no need to document the things. The writings for RingBufferMode give the opposite impression - that they thought they knew what they were doing, but went entirely their own ways in thinking how it should be done. Given how many things are Unity specific and don't follow common conventions in aligned or even the exact same fields, it'd be better if they said nothing than wrote a word salad of distractions.

[warm torrent]

I know it's pretty fruitless to disagree, but I really don't understand what's ambiguous about the description
We are reading the same part of the docs, right?

Keeps particles alive until they reach the Max Particles count, at which point new particles recycle the oldest ones, instead of removing particles when their lifetimes elapse.

I've never used the system but that explains it about as clearly as concisely as possible

[primal lotus]

@crimson zealot I'm still new myself but was looking into "soft" geometry a few days ago. Perhaps these resourses will help aid in what you were already given: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayd8L6ZyCvw&ab_channel=AETuts & https://www.reddit.com/r/Unity3D/comments/aczi9v/how_to_use_scene_depth_node_in_shadergraph/

Ooops, & I see I mis-pinged. These were for @tulip mirage

[slate sable]

@tulip mirage also, if you import VFXGraph Additions (from package manager > VFXGraph > Samples) you'll get a premade soft particle node for the VFX shadergraph.

[ruby ember]

while using Visual Effects Graph I get shader warnings and when I try to apply a texture to a mesh I get an error

Shader warning in '[SimpleHeadsAndSparks] [Heads] Update Particle': 'SAMPLE_DEPTH_TEXTURE': macro redefinition. Previous definition found at E:/Program Files/Unity Hub/2021.1.18f1/Editor/Data/CGIncludes/HLSLSupport.cginc:343. at E:/Unity Projects/VFX Effects Test/Library/PackageCache/com.unity.render-pipelines.core@11.0.0/ShaderLibrary/API/D3D11.hlsl(115)

those are the warnings that I get

Shader error in 'Hidden/VFX/vfxgraph_MuzzleFlash/System/Output Particle Mesh': redefinition of 'PackHeightmap' at game/Library/PackageCache/com.unity.render-pipelines.core@11.0.0/ShaderLibrary/Common.hlsl(1202) (on d3d11)

Compiling Fragment program
Platform defines: SHADER_API_DESKTOP UNITY_COLORSPACE_GAMMA UNITY_ENABLE_DETAIL_NORMALMAP UNITY_ENABLE_REFLECTION_BUFFERS UNITY_LIGHTMAP_FULL_HDR UNITY_LIGHT_PROBE_PROXY_VOLUME UNITY_PASS_FORWARDBASE UNITY_PBS_USE_BRDF1 UNITY_SPECCUBE_BLENDING UNITY_SPECCUBE_BOX_PROJECTION UNITY_USE_DITHER_MASK_FOR_ALPHABLENDED_SHADOWS
Disabled keywords: SHADER_API_GLES30 UNITY_ASTC_NORMALMAP_ENCODING UNITY_ENABLE_NATIVE_SHADOW_LOOKUPS UNITY_HALF_PRECISION_FRAGMENT_SHADER_REGISTERS UNITY_HARDWARE_TIER1 UNITY_HARDWARE_TIER2 UNITY_HARDWARE_TIER3 UNITY_LIGHTMAP_DLDR_ENCODING UNITY_LIGHTMAP_RGBM_ENCODING UNITY_METAL_SHADOWS_USE_POINT_FILTERING UNITY_NO_DXT5nm UNITY_NO_FULL_STANDARD_SHADER UNITY_NO_SCREENSPACE_SHADOWS UNITY_PBS_USE_BRDF2 UNITY_PBS_USE_BRDF3 UNITY_PRETRANSFORM_TO_DISPLAY_ORIENTATION UNITY_VIRTUAL_TEXTURING

this is the error

currently I can't apply a texture to a mesh

and the defaults won't work too

it is just purple

[dull obsidian]

Are you using Universal Render Pipeline / URP? you will need Unity 2021.2 or newer for Visual Effect /VFX graph to support URP. or if you are using Built-in Render Pipeline / BRP it's not supported to use with VFX graph

[prime dome]

@dull obsidian Hey

[dull obsidian]

https://www.nohello.com

[prime dome]

@dull obsidian Do you have portfolio?

@dull obsidian Im just looking for some help with VFX.

[safe nebula]

dont just tag people, write your question and wait till someone comes around that can answer it

[safe nebula]

which you where already told here

[prime dome]

...ok

Is there anyone here that is familiar with VFX in unity? Making particle effects and using shaders.

[cobalt scarab]

@prime dome You only have to ask the question. Consult #854851968446365696 on how to ask questions on the server.

[safe nebula]

the answer to that extremely broad question is: yes there are but as Patchi said, they wont reveal themselfs until you ask a specific question

[prime dome]

My question is "who is interested enough and somewhat knowledgeable enough to chat with me about general VFX in unity, such as particle effects and shaders. We just need a few tips and guides that it".

[cobalt scarab]

@prime dome If you don't have specific questions, please don't spam the channel.

[prime dome]

nvm jesus...

[dull obsidian]

@prime dome you got off on a bad start by tagging me directly and friend requesting me out of nowhere (something bots do and you can get banned for) so don't be surprised if you have a negative reaction from not following rules and etiquette. with that said / lesson learned, if you're looking for tutorials / guides, i highly recommend this series by Thomas Iché who works on the Visual Effects Graph team at Unity https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNJ_SU20-o0&list=PLtRuo28h-g1mndib2hMyp-dVfx7Jq9cOH

[safe nebula]

the reason you are supposed to ask a specific question is so nobody has to commit to unknown depths of questions, maybe the tips and guides you need are more specific than you think
if you are upfront people can decide whether they are willing and able to help

[prime dome]

👍

[dull obsidian]

I post some of my work to twitter if you're interested. https://twitter.com/landon_vfx/media
I've made no tutorials yet myself, but i have a few things on github https://github.com/landonth

[prime dome]

@dull obsidian Would it be possible if we had a conversation? like DM?

[dull obsidian]

we can just talk here. while i do private consulting, i'm too busy with jobs right now even if you were willing to hire me for consulting, i'm booked out for months. If we keep it here, either you can wait for my reply if / when i'm around here in my free time or someone else might be able to respond with useful info. 😉

[slate sable]

@prime dome I already responded to your random DM on how I think the effect you want is made. I don't think anyone here will give you any more insight or make it for you for free. You should search on Google or YouTube for some tutorials on how to make basic visual effects first to at least know how VFX works before asking very general questions here. The active people are here to answer questions they know an answer to or to try and find a solution to a problem they are interested in. You should ask a specific question ( like you asked me in DM ) rather than try to recruit someone to chat with you privately.

[warm torrent]

Fishing for free tutoring isn't nice

[cobalt scarab]

@prime dome You already have a warning to not send unsolicited DMs for people, and also making collab posts here, of which this was an attempt as well. If you continue ignoring rules of the server next infraction will result in a ban.

[ruby ember]

I'm very new to Unity and I actually have no clue what a render pipeline is so ye I was using the built in and right now I am downloading the Universal RP but I sitll have no clue how I switch to it and how it works

[safe nebula]

https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.render-pipelines.universal@12.0/manual/InstallURPIntoAProject.html

[ruby ember]

I'm stuck on updating my shaders to urp

[cobalt scarab]

This video is still relevant for the most part, I think. Should explain what it is. https://youtu.be/m6YqTrwjpP0

[ruby ember]

it tells me to go to edit > rendering > materials but that is not an option for me

[cobalt scarab]

Make sure you have URP installed

[ruby ember]

I do

it only shows "Generate Shader Included" option

ye for some reason I just can't update the shaders to urp

[warm torrent]

The option was moved in some editor version

[cobalt scarab]

Didn't you just start the project as well?

[ruby ember]

to where?

[warm torrent]

I forget

[ruby ember]

shit

[warm torrent]

Anyway, if your project is fresh I'm not sure all this is necessary

[ruby ember]

I mean ye I only got like 4 materials so

[ruby ember]

ye that just does not exist there is no "Render Pipeline"

[sinful light]

than you did not install the package

[warm torrent]

Upgrading things is a terrible hassle if you have the option to instead make a new project using the correct template

[ruby ember]

it says I installed Universal RP

[sinful light]

should be in your packages

[ruby ember]

my version is 12.0.0

[warm torrent]

21.2. moved that option

[ruby ember]

and I use unity 2021.2

[sinful light]

2021.1 here

well, that makes sense than that it has moved

[ruby ember]

it does

[sinful light]

In the end, if you have 4 materials, just go to your material, click on shader and go to Universal Render Pipeline and set it to your desired shader type

[cobalt scarab]

I'll tell you in a few minutes when it opens...

[ruby ember]

it works now thank you!

[cobalt scarab]

Window > Rendering > Render Pipeline Converter

[sinful light]

is it worth it upgrading to that beta?

well not a question for vfx, sorry

[warm torrent]

@ruby ember I believe all this could've been avoided by choosing the URP template when making the project

[ruby ember]

well I did not know I needed it lol

but ye thank you

[warm torrent]

There's a lot of pitfalls when starting out, understandably

[sinful light]

Well sometimes you just think you need URP and go off with the standard pipeline

you dont need

[cobalt scarab]

For short question it's fine. I think beta is mostly stable. If you work with 2d and using Post Processing you might want to wait for Beta 10 to come out, the next one. There's a UI bug disappearing it. It was reported to be fixed there.

[ruby ember]

thank you

[sinful light]

Oh okay, well I am workin in 3D right now, so no problem there I guess, but I just wait for the next stable one 🙂 Thanks 🙂

[warm torrent]

Upgrading an existing project is rarely worth it, and using a beta release is always a risk
But if you really super want the new features then it might be worth it

I think 21.2. is the version where URP is really starting to surpass buit-in RP

[ruby ember]

what does a render pipeline exactly do?

[sinful light]

Well, I disagree or rather I d say, it depends. Having an older project and you need to upgrade, there is no worth it or not worth it, its cheaper then rebuilding it 😉 Same goes for small amount of materials. But I agree with using betas in general, you can always get a bug that is new and get you stuck

[cobalt scarab]

You also get some .net 9, I think, features. (I could be mixing it with 8). But there are C# features in 2021.2 that are not in 2021.1.

[sinful light]

oh, well thats interesting

[warm torrent]

There's improvements to a lot of things besides rendering pipelines too definitely

[sinful light]

@ruby ember It tells the system how to render stuff, generally said. So it tells the system how to render depth or shadow and all the things that belong to rendering. In this case it adds or removes features to adapt to the system, so it can be more performant or sqeeze out more quality.

[warm torrent]

But they're more like nice to have stuff and workflow improvements than entirely new capability

[ruby ember]

isn't that just a shader?

[warm torrent]

It determines what rendering features the engine has and how you can work with them

[sinful light]

@ruby ember a shader tells the gpu how to handle vertices and fragments on a mesh, generally said again.

there is a good video about shaders by a girl, forgot the name, will look it up later. That explains a lot about shader scriptibng and how things are computed in that parts of the shader

[warm torrent]

Shaders are just a part of the whole rendering process

@ruby ember Comparing URP and HDRP gives you a pretty good picture what rendering pipelines do
URP is mostly just effects that work on both desktops and mobile, and are straightforward to configure
HDRP does a whole lot more things, but it's much heavier even when stripped down, and it gives you incredibly granular control over each effect, which means you need to understand them well before you can use them effectively

[sinful light]

and for most of the time, HDRP is overkill for one person projects, until you do realtime rendering or what not

[ruby ember]

so HDRP is better if you understand it technically?

[warm torrent]

"Better" is subjective
It can do photorealism better if that's your goal

[sinful light]

Visual quality especially on realistic visuals is better, yes

but if you dont know what you do, it will get worse 😄 for example not getting some LODs well setup and stuff might just eat up your time without satisfying result 😄

[warm torrent]

Yes, if you don't understand all the options, it's not only slower to work with but will actually hinder your visuals

[ruby ember]

is the build in rp good?

[warm torrent]

It's perfectly decent

[ruby ember]

is there a reason not to switch to urp?

or some other rp

[sinful light]

things like shadergraph are not supported by the default renderer I think. here is a list https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.render-pipelines.universal@12.0/manual/universalrp-builtin-feature-comparison.html

I start with URP right form the beginning, as I know I will use shadergraph, but thats personal preference

[scarlet narwhal]

I've just thrown together a quick VFX graph and I'm wondering - is there any way to make it always face the camera? It's a 2D effect really.

I know I can get each particle to do so, but I mean the whole thing.

[sinful light]

What exactly do you want to face the camera? If its the particles, you said, you know how to. But if you mean like the origin from where they get spawned, you can paste in custom positions / rotations for example. Can you explain a bit more?

[warm torrent]

If the VFX graph is in local space, you could rotate the whole object towards the active camera using a script

Might be a more elegant way to do it from within the graph but I don't know

[scarlet narwhal]

I spawn 5 particles around a circle that's around the Z axis, ie they are at different positions on a plane that has a constant Z. I want that plane to always face the camera. Maybe just doing it with a script is right.

[sinful light]

If you parent it correctly and set it to local, it should rotate with it, but yeah, I am not sure this is what you are after. some images might help 🙂

[scarlet narwhal]

What do you mean by "parent it correctly", so I can try that?

[lilac locust]

hi anyone an idea why i see my particle only in 2d mode (editor) in 3d its invisible, in game view it works aswell

[white palm]

https://drive.google.com/file/d/13UKgW8UzZAM-LDeHxeQavgXcG2128EMy/view?usp=sharing why my particle doesnt look correctly, i mean if you see on video if i turn off Texture Sheet Animation, its looks the way i expected, if turn on, its looks like that, anyway sorry for using drive, i guess you need download for view it, i dunno why i get banned IP from streamable

my material is set to Mobile/Particles/Additive

[warm torrent]

You can put videos under 8mb directly into discord

your texture is a texture sheet which means it has multiple images on one texture

Texture Sheet Animation divides the texture into tiles so it only displays one of those at the time, and allows you to decide how the particles switch between the tiles

[warm torrent]

Particle system doesn't have such functionality so you could just move the emitter

Nothing hacky about it

With VFX graph you probably could do that from within the graph I think

[white palm]

thanks for replying me, though my question hasn't answered yet, so let me explain better, about texture sheet animation, for what i see and read and translate from its name, its allow me to get multiple sprite, and that exactly what i want, i dont like just square, or star, but ii want give more randomness for what particle will looks, or its animating ffrom square to the last one, but what i dont get why its tranparent??, if you watch the video in game view only line particle are show, and in scene view the sprite texture are there but transparentt

[warm torrent]

This is probably beccause your "frame over time" is 15, which means it'll only show the 15th tile, which on your texture sheet is an empty spot
You'll want to randomize start frame to something like 1 to 14 (or 0 to 14), and make sure there's no change over time

[white palm]

ooo let me try

[white palm]

Thanks, that fixed my problem

[tulip mirage]

thanks

[fluid lagoon]

the planet is moving way too much

basically you need realistic parallax

the planet being really big and really far away means it wouldn't move much in the frame as the ship moves

https://tenor.com/view/mass-effect-andromeda-bioware-path-finding-liam-gif-16623532

Like the background in the window in this gif

[prime dome]

Yeah I know, but how can I achieve that effect?

[warm torrent]

The planet camera needs to move slower
If it moves at half speed compared to the ship, the planet will appear twice as big

One tenth the speed, ten times as big

[prime dome]

Is it possible to do it with camera settings or should I script it in?

[warm torrent]

Can't think of a way off the top of my head
I would just make a script on the planet camera that sets its position to main camera position divided by scale multiplier
If you do it in LateUpdate() it should be smooth

[prime dome]

Thanks, I'll try something when I get home

[tender yarrow]

Hello guys, is there a way to display a lit mesh in VFX graph in URP ?

[sinful light]

What exactly do you mean? Output mesh and put a lit material on it?

[tender yarrow]

I can only assign a texture 2D to my mesh, not a material

I saw on forums that lit meshes in VFX are only supported by hdrp but thought there is a way to bypass this

[prime dome]

hi foalks, how can i adjust the alpha of all particles (including subemitters) of a "Shuriken" particle sys?

i could write a script, but do i ha ve to?

[scarlet narwhal]

Any idea why the spawned particles for the "Trigger Event Always" event are all at local (0,0,0)? I mean it looks pretty simple

The stuff spawning in "trigger on die" also inherits source position and is fine

[scarlet narwhal]

Adding a Set Lifetime fixed it. That can't be right.

[sinful light]

Well there needs to be any lifetime, doesn it?

[scarlet narwhal]

They were visible though, just in the wrong place.

[sinful light]

Oh okay, hm thats weird indeed

[twilit lagoon]

In the vfxgraph we have the Collide with AABox (Axis-Aligned).. it would be immensely helpful if there was a Collide with Box block, which we could rotate in space.. is there a way to request it?

In fact, I believe all colliders should be allowed to be rotated

[young swan]

@twilit lagoon you can use Signed Distance Fields to use any shape as a collision

as far as I know they can be rotated

it would be neat if they added more functionality for collisions with primitives

[twilit lagoon]

@young swan I've tried using SDFs for collision, but they aren't as perfect as the primitive collisions.. Might give it another shot

[sinful light]

I am wondering, can you use a shadergraph distortion on screen color on top of a VFX effect? On my end, it just kills the distortion. you can see, the plane is a transparent distortion shader, it cuts the VFX:

So I can make it transparent with render queue but it does not affect the VFX effect itself

[lofty orbit]

is VFX pooling especially useful?

I have a usecase where a physics world has many colliding "metal" rigidbodies, and i want to generate sounds and sparks from onHit events....

i have made an audio manager with an audio source pool to handle the sound part, but what about VFX?

the thing that worries me is that a VFX pool would need to have specific VFX prefabs to handle different cases other than just sparks

whereas audio sources can be dynamically assigned audio clips

[warm torrent]

Yes
Apparently instantiating whole VFX graph systems is expensive and leads to drawcalls
https://blog.unity.com/technology/upgrading-vfx-in-the-fps-sample-with-visual-effect-graph
Though I don't know if this topic has changed since 2019, or if this is what you're asking exactly

[slate sable]

You can use one VFX Graph with huge bounds and pass it events with the positions and rotations where the sparks should appear. So one vfx graph object would handle sparks from all the objects making them.

[bold kelp]

heya, a rather simple question
How do I preview the system without the orange highlights?

[warm torrent]

From scene view's gizmos menu "selection outline"

[twilit lagoon]

I didn't know that, thanks a lot!

[bold kelp]

Oo okay I never went to that section before, thanks!

While I'm at it, how do you hide the empty space for the textures to remove this awkward line on the top?

[warm torrent]

From import settings change Wrap Mode to Clamp

The other options are situationally useful also

[bold kelp]

How is that not on default o.o

[warm torrent]

In most cases where wrap mode makes any difference, repeat is the most useful
Like common surface textures

[fluid grove]

How would you accomplish the blade heat distortion effect on the saber like in this video?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vBg9bR9q1I

[sinful light]

Anyone knows, why a trigger on die wont work at all?

more explicit with particle strips

Okay, seems like I have to generate a particle on die and than a trigger for a strip inside of that update

[fringe lake]

is there any way to make particles that cast shadows onto other things and receive shadows from other things but don't cast shadows onto each other?

[shadow thistle]

Is vfx graph gd for mobile now? If not, what are the restrictions?

[fluid lagoon]

it's not fully supproted for mobile yet

https://portal.productboard.com/unity/1-unity-platform-rendering-visual-effects/c/119-urp-support-compute-capable-devices-only-high-end-mobile-support?utm_medium=social&utm_source=portal_share

Listed as "In Progress"

[lofty orbit]

@warm torrent @slate sable just wanted to thank you guys for this information. I was about to start pooling many instances of vfx and manually setting their parameters per instance from a manager... (needless to say this would be overkill). I managed to figure out VFX event attributes (and a huge world-space bounds approach), which massively simplifies the VFX system overall

[lofty orbit]

bit of a shame that i can only spawn one burst of particles per frame with this method though

[spark spoke]

does anyone have wispy smoke texture sheet

[floral adder]

Does anyone know how you would make this kind of effect? I saw it in this devlog and it looks really interesting and i was curious how you would make something like that. It is Unreal engine though so im not sure if that makes a difference. https://youtu.be/ieXZgH3_ErM?t=330

[warm torrent]

VFX Graph package's "Additions" sample that you can import has many smoke sheets

[frank crown]

hi, I have a shader with polar coordinates + parallax mapping to make a portal, but it's got a weird line going from the middle to the bottom
any idea how to fix it?

happens even without parallax mapping

[primal lotus]

I've see similar issues in other engines. If you get close does it go away?

(Could be mips/compression in your polar coordinate texture)

[frank crown]

yes

[primal lotus]

Noticable with other textures?

[frank crown]

yup

seems to show up even when both "sides" of the textures are the exact same color too

[sinful light]

is there any limit for spawn and system trees in one visual effect?

[turbid acorn]

Hey Folks, i try to create a puddle from a huge rain drop on a floor in 2D Space. The puddle is the sub emitter of the raindrop particle system. The problem is, that the puddle appears above the collision ( on the centerpoint of the drop). I dont use a shape on the sub emitter. Is there any good way make the puddle appear on the intersection of the collision ?

[sinful light]

Did you think about using vfx graph instead?

[warm torrent]

Why not use Shape for that?

[grizzled orbit]

hey guys for some reason i can't change the colour of this

https://gyazo.com/873eb7799466fa7d9b742e78f83f1c11

when i change colour it disppears

new to making vfx with shader graph

and particle system

[grizzled orbit]

kind of fixed it and this is how it looks now

https://twitter.com/KalponicGames/status/1435761123199000578?s=20

Kalponic Games(Commissions Open) (@KalponicGames)

Tried the shader graph. This is the first VFX that I made using shuriken and shader graph. Followed the tutorial on youtube from @GabrielAguiarFX
#VFX #unity3d https://t.co/4QIiKojWFc

▶ Play video

Twitter · Sep 9, 2021, 12:25 AM

[sinful light]

Will there be depth buffer collision for URP soon?

[warm torrent]

https://forum.unity.com/threads/vfx-collide-with-depth-buffer-in-urp.1059341/ Who knows, but you can hack the support in with instructions from here

[ebon rampart]

Hi everyone! New here and this is actually my first question, hope it hasn't been asked before but, is there a way to isolate Graphs in VFX Graphs? Let's say, in Shuriken you can just turn on/ff the Game Objects themselves and just leave the one you want to test "isolated" but in VFX Graph when I have a bunch of Systems going on, sometimes is a bit hard to find the right graph I want to check and I get lost easily, mostly when the are a lot of systems in the same graph. Is there a good practice to avoid this or a way to just isolate systems? Thanks in advance! 😄

[sinful light]

Dang it, thank you! 🙂

[sinful light]

You van name the systems, right? 😉 just name them properly so you know whats going on 🙂 i dont know of a fast way like the eye button in hierarchy

[vapid wagon]

Hi I’m new on visuals effects I would like to recreate in my way the spear attack VFX made in Genshin Impact as shown in this video :

https://youtu.be/DzeGivT6wBU?t=1

I’ve already tried to make a texture that is similar to a spear attack (maybe this is not the best) and make a plane in 3ds to make it looks like it’s in 3d.

And for the moment I have this kind of effect which is good but it seems like this is a little flat while in the video there is a motion on the effect that makes it more realistic, I think that maybe they are playing with the offset of the UV/Texture to make it feels like it moves, but I don’t know how to do it and if it’s the answer to my question because maybe it also a spritesheet that make it looks like it moves idk actually.

I would like to hear your thoughts on it to show if I’m wrong or if I am on the right track for the answer.

[slate sable]

You can create prefabs for them and open that or you can look in the inspector. The visual effects have a preview that starts when you select the effect.

[slate sable]

If you look at it frame by frame, you can see that it's not just scaling. I think it's just a flipbook (<- spreadsheet) animation that some artist made by hand.

Btw, you can move a youtube video frame by frame by using [ , ] and **[ . ] ** keys.

[vapid wagon]

Ho so, they are not using the particule system / shader to scale it but use a spritesheet draw by hand ?

[vapid wagon]

didn't know about it thank you !

[slate sable]

I think that's exactly what's happening there.

[warm torrent]

Probably not flipbook, but a kind of a "burst spread" of the same slash sprites pointing towards the end which shrink faster than the main effect
Plus some extra that fade quickly dragging behind

[slate sable]

I guess you are right because some of the parts are in front of the player. I missed that.
Maybe they just took few of them and rotated them around the axis of the spear to make it look more 3D

[vapid wagon]

Interesting to see your thoughts on it, thank you for your answer! Seems like it will be more complicated to what I thought.

Actually my effect looks like this but it doesn't seems that satisfying as I would like x)

[warm torrent]

Looks pretty good!
The after-sparkles could have more momentum, but more importantly the pointy burst at the front would would really elevate it

Like these

[vapid wagon]

Yeah my particles are not perfectly set, ok I'll try to make it more pointy then thanks for the advice, I appreciate it ! ^^

[sinful light]

It also looks inverted to me, somehow. As if the arrow burst points to the right but it flies to the left, I like the general movement tho, would just try to flip the sprite to test it out

Like this moment, it looks like the arrows are pointing to the right, being thicker on the left side and loosing scale on the right. As you can see in the image above, the burst is more like growing to one side and then shrinking instead of shrinking in the form/sprite itself.

[vapid wagon]

Ho I didn't saw it but you're right ! I'll see it now, I'll try to create another sprite cause it is not enough pointy like Patchi says but yes it's definitely shrinking the wrong way ! Thank you for your advice, it help me so much, you guys are great !

[sinful light]

Looking forward to your update, and thats what the community here is for 🙂

[vapid wagon]

Yep, I'll keep uploading updates to have your thoughts on it! Thank you again for all of your advice everyone! ^^

[primal lotus]

Could be scaling in xyz seoerately

[latent chasm]

I have a projectile prefab from an asset that came with a script attached to provide movement, doing so by adding velocity to a rigidbody. I removed that script, adding my own projectile script which handles movement with Vector3.MoveToward, and transform.LookAt

The issue is, the projectile is moving in a straight line and not moving toward the enemies. There's no other scripts on the objects, other than my projectile script. Also, the enemies are actually getting hit still, it just appears to be a visual issue. Here's a clip of what's happening, is there something in the particle system settings I need to change?

https://streamable.com/lrdmrg

[prime dome]

is there even a particle system and where is it?

[amber trellis]

why can i not edit these properties?

unlit shader graph

here are the parameters but still unable to be changed

something is wrong I can feel it

in the tutorials people do have this droplists and I personally don't

ok I fixed it

[steady zephyr]

how come nothing except "base color" affects the color of a lit mesh?

trying to set color from map

[hearty flare]

The UI has changed, you select them and edit them in the inspector that's in shadergraph

[clear lantern]

How do I make particles not reflect light? I'm making black smoke but it turns a bit white at certain angles which leads me to believe it's reflecting the white light in the scene

[amber trellis]

why do I see my sprite lik this?

[flint saffron]

make sure that your color is connected into the Emission channel

[slate sable]

Try to change the mode from white to black?

[cold raft]

Hi, after adding a vfx graph, my parent game object's origin becomes offset and the vfx graph's origin is somehow in the middle, instead of in the start.

Any idea why?

[steady zephyr]

anyone

[steady zephyr]

does "color from map" not work on lit mesh?

k it was something in my volume settings

[proper forum]

Quick question, shaders can also apply to images, right? Like, 2d images?

[steady zephyr]

Yes. A shader is often just a program on the GPU.

Go to shadertoy.com for pixel shaders lots of 2d input

[shadow thistle]

Should I use post-processing v2 or URP for mobile? Mainly for the bloom.

[royal tulip]

using the Quad Node in VFX graph to render hit decals. but using a render scale of anything other than 1 stops it from working. Anyone know why this might be?

[vapid wagon]

Hi everyone, just wanted to have some feedback on the effect that I've made, the player is teleported before to make it looks like he is super fast in the attack, and then there is a combo of slash attacks in circles, I would love to have your comments on it, and don't hesitate to show me where I could improve things.

[slate sable]

Wow, it looks great! Maybe try adding some sparks during the effect and not at the end.

[vapid wagon]

thanks ! ok I'll try to make it during the effect ! Thanks for the advice !

Another video showing the effect with another dash attack effects and the spear effect of the last time too, sometimes at the end (the fix with particle during the combo slash attack was not fixed yet), here again, I would love to hear about your thoughts!

[proper forum]

Well, I guess right now I have a question with some VFX. Say I wanted an effect to play like uh
Like when the player 'time travels' or 'teleports' or what have you. How would I do that? Is it as simple as just putting a shader on an image in a canvas?

[warm sequoia]

Does anyone know how effects like these are created

these deffinitely aren't particles

and yes this is unity

[proper forum]

Yeah, I had the sphere idea too

No actually! What sort of stuff?
Also I guess I’m trying to figure out how to get this to uh
“Play” whenever the teleportation ability triggers
Coroutines are my best friend at this point lol

Well, that just made the glow a neat grey

[fervent falcon]

should i bother with learning lots about the particle system as an aspiring game/level designer / programmer

will artists generally be the ones handling the fx, or is a designer expected to create them as well in the game industry?

[fervent falcon]

how much should I know?

so basic understanding is enough?

no need to be able to make the coolest vfx

just know how much time and effort it takes and the limits of it?

got ya

[proper forum]

Is it possible to animate post processing effects? Mostly for special effect purposes

[arctic bison]

Is there any way to combine the blackboard and inspector graph in Shader Graph the way it is in VFX Graph? This two window thing is super shite and annoying af.

[dull obsidian]

not yet but i agree and work is being made to unify the common front end node graph editor UI, it's called graph tools foundation. no idea how long this will take for unity to develop and integrate, though

[fervent falcon]

how do i turn bounce off for particles..

[elder latch]

Is there any way in VFX graph to kill a particle which has no lifetime? For example when the effect is stopped?

[slate sable]

You could try setting Alive to false.
I don't think you can check if the effect is stopped or running directly in VFXGraph so you would probably need to have an exposed bool property that you would set using a script.

[elder latch]

Oh thx. Thats a good hint. I didnt even know/think of SetAlive. Its a pitty that events seem to only be able to spawn particles. I'll try setting alive via properties than

[bold kelp]

Hey guys, a little noob question
Which parameter is responsible for the length of the particle? Aside of the lifetime. I need to cut the particle as soon as it hits the floor but lowering the lifetime only quickens the entire movement

https://i.gyazo.com/3f7a4988d8a709451281cb5564e61610.gif

Should I be altering curves?

[slate sable]

Lifetime defines how long will be the particle alive. The Over Life nodes set some attribute during the particle's life. So you want the end of your curves to be the state when the particle dies (no alpha, ...) .

@bold kelp

[velvet bay]

Hey! Anyone can recommend good stylized VFX online courses for Unity?

[opaque knoll]

Hi all. For Shuriken, i turned off align to direction and spherize direction but it's still pointing outwards of the mesh shape?

[bold kelp]

Every curve should be till 1?

[slate sable]

Yes. The age is 0-1, like you can see in the Age Over Life node. So basically time / lifetime. That's what the Set X Over Life nodes use too.

[bold kelp]

Ah thanks, I was doing silly things like cutting off the gradient earlier, completely forgetting this x)

[bold kelp]

While I'm at it, why doesn't the size parameter react to any changes though https://i.gyazo.com/b192e5fbbabb64684692ff6b4de0be3d.gif

[slate sable]

Because you set size and then you set size over life. Both are set. So you probably want to set size over life and then do Multiply Size

[bold kelp]

Oh right all i had to do is switch em up >.>. Tysm!

But I see there's no multiply size over lifetime in 2020.3.17 right

[slate sable]

You can achieve that by having Multiply Size node and input a Sample Curve with Age Over Life as time
Or you can select the Set Size over Life and in the inspector change overwrite to multiply

[bold kelp]

Linking this message to myself, ty ty ty

[arctic bison]

Can literally anyone try and run the 'Head and Trails System' default on their integrated graphics? I can't get it to work on my laptop and am curious if this is an IGPU issue.

Please @me if you do.

[rustic ore]

Hi, does anyone know of any solid rain fx with lit shaders for HDRP?

[gaunt ivy]

Hello, I want my character to be made of fire. how can I do that ?

[slate sable]

Use skinned mesh sampling and emit fire particles from the points you get.

[gaunt ivy]

how ?

[bold kelp]

Is selecting all parented effects like this to play the entire section not possible in the vfx graph? https://i.gyazo.com/40dc3b77873b9b568b76fca664ff5126.gif

[slate sable]

Search for some tutorials. Don't ask for a complete solution.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePbeaYuMNK4
If you are using builtin in pipeline you'll need to look for something different using legacy particle system and some different kind of skinned mesh sampling.

[gaunt ivy]

Okey thanks.

[steady zephyr]

2020.1.1f1 to 2021.1.16f1 made my VFX graph stuff run at 1/3 speed... anyone know why this could be?

[steady zephyr]

https://forum.unity.com/threads/2020-2-0b1-performance-reduction.965363/page-2 is it something to do with this thread?

[bold kelp]

https://i.gyazo.com/a8faa4f49b8aa9398052ebce645d219a.gif

How do I make the particles follow the sphare they are drawn into

Current attempt was trying to copy the orbs position over lifetime under the conform to sphare in the update particle

[slate sable]

I would use GPU event to spawn the sparks through the orb particle so you can easily get its position and use it as the position of your conform to sphere node.

Or you could just use the same curves I guess.

[prime ginkgo]

how can i make particle stay one size i made a aura particle system but when i go closer it looks like it gets smaller

i dont want it to scale by distance

[warm torrent]

There's a maximum size setting under Renderer

It's set on by default because transparent particles that cover a lot of the screen are extremely expensive

[lilac locust]

Hi guys im not sure if its the right channel. im looking for a tutorial for a particle/grounf marker that align on ground/slopes

So that marker/effect "bend" anf correct align on slopes. Any ideas?

[quiet smelt]

How can I plug a VFX shadergraph into this Output Particle Mesh node?

This tutorial I am following shows a shadergraph slot for the VFX shadergraph, but I don't have it in the version of the VXF stuff I am using

[slate sable]

Maybe you need experimental stuff enabled. Go to Edit > Preferences > Visual Effects and enable experimental operators/blocks

[twilit lagoon]

Hi everyone, would this be a good channel for VFXGraph Request For Enhancements (RFEs)/suggestions? There are a few small quality of life improvements that I can think of that would help our workflow tremendously

For example:

• Hold Alt + Click and Drag to clone/duplicate a node

[cobalt scarab]

All suggestion should go to official forums.

[tough mortar]

Hello, I'm using VFX graph at the moment and I'm looking for a way to set VFX property binder settings during runtime

For example, how could I change the target gameobject here via script

[fluid lagoon]

Check example code here https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.visualeffectgraph@7.1/manual/PropertyBinders.html#writing-property-binders

[tough mortar]

for changing the settings inside a VFX property binder?

[slate sable]

You might find something useful in the UnityEngine.VFX.Utility namespace, that's where the binder stuff is, but I'm not sure if you can actually do what you want. You could create your own binder and then have complete freedom of what you want to assign.

[gleaming meteor]

Hi everyone! 😄

In an Oculus Quest 2 project we're working on, I need a short 13sec video to repeat on a plane. What would be the most optimized way to achieve this?

[unique condor]

how does unity use this graph?
more exactly how does it draw the particles

?

[slate sable]

It generates shaders from your graph and lets GPU draw it.

[unique condor]

is there a more in depth resources or information?

[slate sable]

You can see the shaders it generates or at least their temp files. Not sure where exactly rn but it's there.

[granite fog]

hi, how can i achieve this shape glow effects around the sword model, its only in the blade, its like the same model but extruded

[rustic ore]

Hi, I'm having trouble with vfx particles appearing green when the particles are between a light and myself. I've created a diffusion profile, I've added it to the HDRP Default Settings Diffusion List, and assigned that Diffusion Profile to the Output Particle Lit Quad component of the VFX I'm working on. I've followed old posts here about the issue, gone through a bunch of forum posts about it, but it still doesn't work. Any ideas?

[rustic ore]

The material type is set to 'Translucent'.

[granite fog]

im trying to make the vfx apear only in the blade of sword, but its spliting in tow

[jolly dove]

is VFX and particles essentially like 3D modelling and blender?

[granite fog]

Particles is part of vfx process, blender is a software to process 3d models, i think it's different stuffs

[steady zephyr]

if i'm doing set position from map, how can I get an ID for each particle?

getparticleid doesn't seem to work since the values are changing

I want the ID to be the index from the texture that I use to set position

[slate sable]

You can use normal set position node and load/sample a texture yourself so you have more control over it.

[steady zephyr]

thx

[bold kelp]

Hello, does anybody know what would be the process of importing the textures and distorting them like it's done in this video in niagara?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGB-zxRPfwA&list=PLRpiOeaDPL_6t0WEUgaxrekJG5ocxW-lX&index=4

[steady zephyr]

seems like support for enabling a block with a bool has not been added yet

i want to disable my graph from having a lifetime

setting lifetime to 0 is not the same thing as having no lifetime apparently

also means there's no way to switch between spawn modes?

[iron folio]

I'm having issues with VFX graph. None of the effects are working. Not even the sample ones. They won't spawn any particles

It only happens on this project that I've upgraded from 2018 to 2021

[opaque knoll]

Hi all. For Shuriken, it seems OnParticleUpdateJobScheduled stops being called when ps.Stop() is called
What if there are still particles i wanna jobify?

[rustic ore]

Solved. Used a Diffusion Profile of the environment asset that was already in the scene.

[next flicker]

Anyone able to shed some light (oops pun) on the problem I'm having as described in this forum post: https://forum.unity.com/threads/how-do-i-fix-these-particles-using-the-urp-lit-shader-so-the-particles-receive-light-correctly.1174310/

Basically, trying to get dust trails with particles that are affected by light. I either get dust trails that glow in the dark, or trails that don't glow in the dark but change brightness as you rotate the camera.

[bold kelp]

Since I have never used a GPU event before, I'd love to use the curves, but it seems like that conform to sphare is 10 times as sensitive to the curve o.o https://i.gyazo.com/fb6cb417abbaf610f3f474f129106e0d.gif

[plush pond]

is it possible to change circle's center position? i've tried using position source attribute and custom vector3 attribute but it always stays at (0,0,0)

[dull obsidian]

for what purpose? you want particles to live forever / infinite lifetime?

[steady zephyr]

I'm updating position every frame from an external source

Sometimes I want to not update every frame and trigger some lifetime effects

In which case I would turn lifetime on.

The only way it updates "correctly" otherwise if lifetime is never set, even to 0

Particles should live "forever" but get replaced every frame

Not every frame actually it's like 30fps

[glass jolt]

hey, got a small play/stop script for vfx graph, but im confused why its not working. any ideas?

[shrewd pond]

So I am rendering some cutscenes for a small mobile game. What would be the advice for having videos without bloating the size? It can't be done in-engine.

[young swan]

are you sure your setup is correct? That code should work

[glass jolt]

pretty certain of it, not sure why it wouldn't

[slate sable]

Do your events work with the event tester in scene?

[sharp otter]

Is there a way to make the particle system (shuriken) follow the shape in which it was formed? E.g. if I have a donut shape, can I have the particles move along the donut shape?

I cant seem to find an option for this in the particle system

[scarlet narwhal]

Anyone know why the "generate motion vector" option isn't available in my LWRP vfx graph output quad block?

[quick quiver]

@scarlet narwhal URP doesn't support that yet afaik, they are only now adding movecs to it

like, URP 12 just got motion vector buffer now but it's not really utilized anywhere yet

[scarlet narwhal]

Ah ok. Don’t know why I didn’t just use hdrp anyway.

[young swan]

The latest versions of the VFX Graph are finally adding more URP support, for example lit output contexts

but I think it's still on the beta versions of 2021.x

(VFX Graph version 12.0.0 and onwards)

but last time I checked, the URP support on the VFX Graph is still "In Preview"

@scarlet narwhal also, do you have Experimental Blocks enabled?

[rigid dagger]

I'm working on a particle effect training module, and in it, the final step for this particular lesson is to add a Texture Sheet Animation. After setting mine up (right), I get these black boxes. Is there a way to ignore the texture sheet's background?

[warm torrent]

Does your texture have an alpha channel and is the material set to transparent?

[glass jolt]

@slate sable @young swan
today i got it to work first thing in the morning lol. im not sure what i did, cus the VFX setup & code is unchanged 😅

[jade cypress]

What so you want the particles to move around the donut? If so you can use velocity over life time and increase the Orbital X value on Z axis. try a low amount first, someting like 10 so you can see what it happening.

[sharp otter]

Okey I will try this out thank you

[upbeat abyss]

Hello there. We have a problem with a simple VFX (make with the particle system). Depending on the camera angle part of the yellow circle are cut ... Could you help us?
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/489353512908488719/892769331971256390/unknown.png

We use a billboard to display this yellow circle

[jade cypress]

Do you mean the yellow line that goes 'dotted' the further in the distance? If so look at your mipmap settings and into Anisotropic filtering.

[upbeat abyss]

Yes. Mipmap is disabled :/

[jade cypress]

Are you using a texture to produce that line? If so try increasing the Aniso Level in the texture import settings

[upbeat abyss]

Thanks !!! 🙂 It works 🙂 \o/

[prime ginkgo]

how do i make a particle stay still and not move at all and keep playing forever without disappearing

[jade cypress]

This should get you started - Try setting duration to 0.5, Looping check, Prewarm Check, Start lifetime 0.5, Start speed 0, In Emission set Rate over Time to 2.

[prime ginkgo]

okay i fixed that but now i need this

i want it to stay still here too like on the mesh shape

i put in the shape thing as mesh and renderer

it just keeps floating around ( i want it to be an aura kinda )

it just floats to random places in the mesh shape lol

[jade cypress]

Why don't you just create a shader instead of using a particle system? You could use a simple Fresnel multiplied by your colour texture to get the same effect?

[prime ginkgo]

idrk how to make a shader or find one like that

[jade cypress]

If youre using a render pipeline that supports shader graph such as URP or HDRP then I would highly recommend you use a shader instead of a particle to create the effect you desire. This is a good start. https://youtu.be/Ar9eIn4z6XE

[marsh drift]

I have this game object which is sort of like those spherical cameras, where the "eye" follows the player and occasionally shoots a beam at him.

Looking for a way to create a "breaking down" effect; something with a bit of lightning(mimicing power), to show it's being shutdown/breakdown.

Any tips/tutorials/videos/anything you know that could help

[prime ginkgo]

thanks ill try my best

[maiden saffron]

hey folks how can I make it go all the way down

[terse storm]

wdym all the way down

what even is that

try y-axis?

[steady zephyr]

is "orientation" the same thing as "direction"

[fluid lagoon]

not sure what this is relevant to exactly but no

orientation implies more than just a direction

because you can have an object that is pointing in a direction but that still leaves 360 degrees of freedom where it can freely twist around and still be pointing that direction

[steady zephyr]

there is "set direction from map" but no "set orientation from map"

[fluid lagoon]

huh

in what context

what are we talking about?

[steady zephyr]

VFX graph

[slate sable]

I am guessing the direction means the direction of velocity where the particle is moving.
So you can use that to direct particles in different ways from a map I guess.
I found this in documentation for Get Direction. (so maybe there is no use of setting it? idk)
https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.visualeffectgraph@10.2/manual/Operator-GetAttributeDirection.html

I don't think there is such thing as orientation in VFX graph. There are Orient nodes that change the axis of the particle as you can see in the computed source code.
https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.visualeffectgraph@10.2/manual/Block-Orient.html

[warm torrent]

Where the particle sprite is facing, where the particle point is facing and where the particle is moving are all different things in some contexts from what I understand

[onyx marsh]

Hey; I am looking for someone to make me a simple smoke particle system, I have a few dollars to spare, hit me up if you are up for it.

[steady zephyr]

I don't think there is such thing as orientation in VFX graph.

there is

[slate sable]

That's not "orientation". That's a node that orients the particle on 3 different axis. It's basically a verb. Not an actual attribute.

Same with force. There is no force attribute but there is a node that adds force -> adds velocity over time

[slate sable]

I don't think you should be asking here. Read the #📖┃code-of-conduct (blue part about job posting) if you don't want to have an encounter with an admin. 🙂

[keen hamlet]

hello i have an issue with my particle system in unity

the particle system is different when the game is played

compared to when in the scene view

i have a script for sprinting which turns the particle system on

but it is completely different to what i want

the particle system is under the camera object because its a fps

[steady zephyr]

not giving enough info

[keen hamlet]

Ok sorry I’ll send a video when I get home

[worn coral]

is there a way to make it so the particles don't follow the rocket. I want them to just spawn from the rocket but them be independent.

[worn coral]

?

[slate sable]

Set the simulation space to world

[worn coral]

thanks that fixed it!

[stray badge]

how do i emit particles from vfx graph at a location?

do i have to move the emitter

or can i pass params kinda like particle system

[steady zephyr]

Either

You can just do an add position block

[covert thicket]

We've created a thorough introduction to the principles of #✨┃vfx-and-particles with VFXGraph ✨ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXjNC8pNOTE

[wicked yew]

Hi i try to understand how culling space is working for vfx graph. In my Scene view when i stopped seeing the origin point of the particle effect, the vfx is no longer rendered, i try to change culling flags to always simulate but it didn't affect anything do someone have a solution for this ?

[warm torrent]

Increase the size of the bounding box

[wicked yew]

Oh yes yes, it works ! thanks a lot ! but do you know why always recompute didn't worked ??

@warm torrent

[warm torrent]

I do not

[wicked yew]

ok ok !

[honest pewter]

Is there a way to display/view all particle systems in scene view without entering play mode?

[fluid lagoon]

Type t: ParticleSystem in the hierarchy window search bar

[honest pewter]

Right, that lets me start the particle systems but once I deselect them they pause (in editor mode).

Is there a setting to enable particle simulation in editor view without needing to select the particle system?

[fluid lagoon]

I don't think so

[jade cypress]

select them all in the hierarchy and they will all play, but when you edit you can only edit one at a time.

[twilit lagoon]

Hi all, I tried using a certain code to restrict the FPS on my Game view in Play mode:

Screen.SetResolution (1920, 1080, false); QualitySettings.vSyncCount = 0; Application.targetFrameRate = 30;

It does work, but I want something else actually. I want my VFX graph to still be running at an uncapped FPS in the background (or lets say, 60), but have the display only show a few frames a second.. Is that possible?

[warm torrent]

This seems like a very strange feature to want, may I ask why

If I had to do it I'd try to set FixedUpdate to 30 and tie absolutely everything to it besides the VFX

[granite cairn]

Does anyone know how LOD groups store references to materials? I'm trying to change a property of the materials for all objects on a list, and it works fine with regular objects, but fails to find the renderer component for LOD groups (I assume because LOD groups store meshes as children)?

Is it as simple as getting the child of the game object rather than the game object itself?

[twilit lagoon]

I only have the visual effect on my scene.. The particles behavior is dependent on a high frame rate, apparently.. Perhaps it's just easier if I record in a lower framerate then

[gleaming granite]

Hello I have created a vfx graph that has a grid of lit particle meshes. that i would like to do now is offset the individual particles by some noise. I am essentially trying to create an ocean minecraft style

[honest pewter]

It seems like changing the simulate layers for particles to 'everything' made them simulate in editor like I wanted

[gleaming granite]

Hello

is anyone able to help with my above comment

[fluid lagoon]

just make a noise node and add it to the particle position and set the particle position to the result

[gleaming granite]

the add it to the particle position is that in the updated Particle or output particle lit mesh

Something like this?

[gleaming granite]

issue is that is moving all the particles equally

[primal lotus]

Hi, is there anyway to disable selected object outline in the editor?

(it's distracting when working with particle systems)

nvm! Found it! (Gizmos > Selection Outline)

[slate sable]

Try using particleID + Time in coordinate of the perlin noise

[fluid lagoon]

Yeah what Draxi said - you need to convert the particle ID into a coordinate for the noise function

[gleaming granite]

thanks all i was able to get it

[gleaming granite]

it is my understanding and i have not used VFX in a long time that i cant determine. when /where a gameobject interacts with them right since they are still all gpu?

[gleaming granite]

trying to figure out if i get get an object collision detection. since it is a plane i thought about using shader graph for vertex displacement but i dont thinking that will work since the collider does not change with that

[trim pilot]

Anyone experience with Obi Fluid?

I'm a little stuck

[gleaming granite]

secondly is there a way to pass the specific particle position back to script. I can get the particle i want through the ID

[stray badge]

anyone have tips on making global, organized particle systems?

im using vfx graph in urp, and im having trouble trying to set everything up using one emitter on a singleton

how do you guys do large-scale particle system setups?

[worn coral]

How should I go about simulating fluids in unity?

[worn coral]

Mainly 3d water

[grizzled kiln]

I want to get a count of particles that are true for these two separate statements, can anyone help me?

[gleaming granite]

dont think anything like that is built in. you would have to use a plugin i believe

[dull obsidian]

this is not currently supported. reading back particle data from the GPU to the CPU can be costly and tricky, but it's definitely possible. this feature is on the VFX graph roadmap: https://portal.productboard.com/unity/1-unity-platform-rendering-visual-effects/c/125-particle-attribute-buffer-read-access-from-outside-graph

[gleaming granite]

@dull obsidian i figured as much. I am thinking to build a shader that creates the movement then passing that to a mesh to get the vertex offset and passing it to the vfx for the spawning and movement you think that would work?

[shadow thistle]

Hi, any idea what is this kind of roar effect called or how to make it? From the origin(mouth), the screen tears as it spreads.

[hearty flare]

I imagine it's just a form of radial blur

[shadow thistle]

oo make sense. Can I do this using URP?

[hearty flare]

Presumably there's an effect out there, sure

[lilac trout]

I am looking for a guide or tutorial on creating a speed particle. like space dust flying past a ship as it moves so you can get an idea of the direction of movement in space. closest I can find are warp effect tutorials and those dont work as they cant account for changes in direction really. been searching for hours with no luck

unless I have it wrong and the fixed direction particle like the warp effects is the right way to go and I need to point the emitter in the direction of movement?

[thorny silo]

hi, don't know if it is the right channel but, do you know what the fov of the editor camera is?

[wicked yew]

it's the field of view

[thorny silo]

yes, sorry i mean, how much 🙂

[wicked yew]

by default you mean ?

i think it's 40

[thorny silo]

how much fov does the camera in the editor have 🙂

cool, thanks!

[thorny silo]

no i mean the camera that renders the editor viewport

[wicked yew]

wait i will show you in the engine

🙂

[wicked yew]

yep !

so by default it's 60

[lilac trout]

in a tutorial video I was watching on vfx graph particles, it was mentioned that large particles (the sprites them selves being scaled very large) causes problems with ram use. sounds odd to me, any one know if this is true?

[silver brook]

Can somebody help me with render texture? I iam trying to do the retro look render texture and now it's rendering only black/No camera thing!

(Not sure where to post this)

[silver brook]

Idk anyone else on this server who might know this stuff... Do you?

There

What can I do to that?

[wicked yew]

How your scene look like ?

[silver brook]

And i have turned warn if no cameras rendering off

and if i take the render texture off.... it works like normal

[wicked yew]

Well that's strange Because we can see that your main camera is display

[silver brook]

hmmmm

I've been fighting with this problem for about 2 hours now....

I used an raw image to display it for camera

[silver brook]

U have any ideas?

[wicked yew]

Not really... did you check this out ? https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/class-RenderTexture.html#:~:text=The Render Texture inspector A Unity window that,Inspector is almost identical to the Texture Inspector

[silver brook]

Yeah.... I did check it out

[silver brook]

I GOT IT WORKING

[gleaming granite]

i have my texture map working in shadergraph and this is helping with where i need intersections with game objects. now i have to get the vfx to roll the texture the same as the shader graph. is there a way i can have the 2D texture in world space in vfx?

[prime dome]

please can someone help

2021-10-11 20:51:12.536586-0600 INTERFACE[8424:8402538] MemoryManager: Using 'Default' Allocator.
-> applicationDidFinishLaunching()
Loading player data from /private/var/containers/Bundle/Application/85463E68-DB2A-417D-8A27-145E1A5D845D/INTERFACE.app/Data/data.unity3d
2021-10-11 20:51:12.641355-0600 INTERFACE[8424:8402538] fopen failed for data file: errno = 2 (No such file or directory)
2021-10-11 20:51:12.641403-0600 INTERFACE[8424:8402538] Errors found! Invalidating cache...
2021-10-11 20:51:12.834958-0600 INTERFACE[8424:8402538] Writing analzed variants.
-> applicationDidBecomeActive()
2021-10-11 20:51:12.844742-0600 INTERFACE[8424:8402538] Writing analzed variants.
[Subsystems] Discovering subsystems at path /private/var/containers/Bundle/Application/85463E68-DB2A-417D-8A27-145E1A5D845D/INTERFACE.app/Data/UnitySubsystems
GfxDevice: creating device client; threaded=1
Initializing Metal device caps: Apple A14 GPU
Initialize engine version: 2020.3.16f1 (049d6eca3c44)
New input system (experimental) initialized
2021-10-11 20:51:13.274859-0600 INTERFACE[8424:8402799] fopen failed for data file: errno = 2 (No such file or directory)
2021-10-11 20:51:13.274903-0600 INTERFACE[8424:8402799] Errors found! Invalidating cache...
2021-10-11 20:51:13.431134-0600 INTERFACE[8424:8402538] Unbalanced calls to begin/end appearance transitions for <UnityViewControllerStoryboard: 0x105516b10>.
2021-10-11 20:51:13.431339-0600 INTERFACE[8424:8402538] Unbalanced calls to begin/end appearance transitions for <UnityDefaultViewController: 0x105437810>.
UnloadTime: 2.565208 ms```

[frank crown]

quick question, if I displace vertices in urp using a shader, will the vertex normals get recalculated properly or do I need to recalculate those myself?

[lilac locust]

anyone an idea. i only see particles in scene view when in 2d mode in 3d its invisible.... https://gyazo.com/0fd1179d3706a6d47be2a5b6a1331c97 i use unity 2021

https://gyazo.com/8ed03c593f1b64ad35f9bb98573fddd2

[snow vale]

not sure if this is the right channel for particle stuff, but I was wondering if anyone knew of a faster way to add the frames of animation to the texture sheet animation tab in the particle system editor?

Right now I have like multiple 70+ frame animations and dragging/dropping is feeling pretty slow

[opaque knoll]

Hi for shuriken, can the emission shape be controlled to expand outwards? Instead of random
Loop/pingpong only controls the arc angle/along the line, but there's nothing where in the "radius thickness" it spawns from

[rigid chasm]

Damn, I missed the Horror VFX thing last night. Did any of you attend? https://lasiggraph.org/event/vfx-horror-achieving-eerie-aesthetics-film-tv-and-games

[gleaming granite]

did anyone have any thoughts on if a 2D texture in vfx graph can be in world space

[thorny silo]

Hi, does anyone know what the best solution to recreate a multipass shader in URP is? Or a good way to have a shader render before another? the order is important

this is the effect i want to achieve

the white is renderer after the red but renders in front of everything else

thanks

i managed to recreate the same effect by having 2 materials on the same object and having them on different render queues, but i was wondering if there was a way with one material

[slate sable]

Take a look at this.
https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.render-pipelines.universal@10.3/manual/renderer-features/how-to-custom-effect-render-objects.html

[thorny silo]

ahhh sweet, thanks a lot!

[prime dome]

^^ VFX

🙂

[jolly dove]

that's a shader thing

Anyone know how I can make ripples of a pond vfx and it ignores z-level, i.e. see through walls?

[slate glen]

Hi! Does anyone know how to kill all particles of a Visual Effect Graph via script and then spawn more? I set age past lifetime which killed the particles, and then I set age to be 0 to allow for new ones, but when I sent an OnPlay event (and .Play()), no particles spawned

Gonna try killing the particles with a world-sized kill box and then removing the kill box before sending another OnPlay event

[slate glen]

Turns out I needed to kill the strips, too

[forest nimbus]

Hey i hope im at the right place here..
I want a single Particle to rotate clockwise.. like the Simple Ribbon system but just a single particle 😅
In VFX Graph

[slate sable]

You can
-set angular velocity on Initialize
-set angle in Update/Output with Time as the input for one axis
-add angle in Update by a very small amount (<- speed of this might depend on fps, not sure)

Just few quick ideas

[forest nimbus]

okay thank you.. which time would i use for the 2nd point?

[slate sable]

Total Time

So it always increases

[spiral moth]

is there any way to get some debug info out of a vfx graph at all

i know i can query GetParticleSystemInfo("System").aliveCount for example

basically i have an issue where i know the particles exist but i can't see them, so i'd like to somehow get position info out of the system if possible

i thought OutputEvent might be a way to maybe capture position data but the Samples package doesn't have an actual working example of that although the scripts are there..

for example adding the VFXOutputEventPrefabSpawn script to a VisualEffect gameobject does spawn the supplied prefab, but only seems to spawn the prefab at one specific offset where i expected it to spawn at particle positions.. it also seems to work sporadically as if it's buggy in some way.

[molten grotto]

anyone seen this before ?

[arctic bison]

any particular reasons the shder editor would show metallic red, but the editor window would show flat grey?

The inspector even shows it metallic

[spiral moth]

you might need reflection probes setup to give it something to reflect..

[arctic bison]

Huh maybe. Thanks for advice

[lofty orbit]

Is there any major reason to not have VFX objects be persistent through loading screens?

I'm thinking of making some dynamically callable VFX generators persistent through scenes so that i dont have to reload them (they will be individually heavy), with static functions that expose parameterizeable effect calls, so I'm wondering if this would create non-obvious problems

[limpid jacinth]

i've been thinking of a particle sea vfx graph system, could as much only find this topic https://rafalwilinski.medium.com/tutorial-particle-sea-in-unity3d-70ff1350fa9e
an adaptation for vfx graph would be great
do you know of any tutorial? please @ me or write me in DM, thanks

[spiral moth]

Not sure of any specific tutorial but there have been a few ports of the well known Houdini Ocean Toolkit (HOT) for various 3D apps.. i think it uses an algorithm known as Tessendorf to simulate waves and crests etc so might be possible to pull something useful out of that.. source code is available if you google it

[subtle pawn]

Does anyone know how to get good shapes for UPS (Unity's Particle System)? I really cant find out how to get good shapes and Im not too sure how to get them into UPS

[grizzled orbit]

hey should i be worried about vfx graph not supporting devices>?

so far been using shader graph and shuriken

[quick quiver]

if you target mobile, then yes

[dull obsidian]

only initial spawn positions can be read via c# script events. it's not currently supported to "read back" particle position data to cpu memory once a given particle has been spawned and is now in gpu memory. but this feature is on the roadmap.

[spiral moth]

that makes sense yep.. any idea how the OutputEvent is used and what data can be monitored?

Basically i've rebuilt Phil's system here:
https://forum.unity.com/threads/vfxgraph-strategies-for-making-one-graph-handle-multiple-particle-systems.659980/#post-7542508

I'm getting the aliveCount to say the spawns are working as expected but i can't 'see' the particles

[slate glen]

Has anyone figured out how to use Event Attributes? I'm trying to queue a set of events, each with different values for custom exposed properties (e.g. spawn position). When I bind Event Attribute payloads to an event and send the event to the graph, the graph uses the default value for the exposed property instead of the value I set in the Event Attribute payload

[slate glen]

Despite sending a payload via this code, the graph uses the default value for SpawnPosition:

var eventAttribute = vfx.CreateVFXEventAttribute();
eventAttribute.SetVector3("SpawnPosition", vfxRequest.SpawnPosition);
vfx.SendEvent("OnSpawn", eventAttribute);

[slate glen]

You can extract the payload data in an Initialize context via Get Attribute: [attribute] (Source) , however, only one event attribute payload can be processed per frame and it seems the others are discarded, in 2020. I'm currently stuck with 2020 so I will try to emulate multiple-events-per-frame by packing the payloads into a texture and running one event that traverses that texture

Related threads:

Issue:
https://forum.unity.com/threads/using-vfxeventattribute-and-calling-sendevent-multiple-times-per-frame.825018/

Official solution in 2021:
https://forum.unity.com/threads/new-feature-direct-link.1137253/

[spiral moth]

Ah so this approach is 2021 only.. Yeah the texture method is what i'm currently attempting to do also.

[slate glen]

Let me know if you get stuck or have questions. I'm working on it, too, and will do the same here. This doc was helpful for speed: https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/Texture2D.GetRawTextureData.html

[slate glen]

Use LoadTexture instead of SampleTexture to avoid unintended changes to your data (e.g. via blurs or other filters)

[spiral moth]

Ah perhaps that's my problem, i'm using Sample Texture2D with some modulo stuff to convert from index to x/y rows.. in Phils example ( i linked to above ) i think he's using a custom Sample Texture Pixel node which i'd guess does this internally..

Tbh i think my version should be working and i am getting aliveCount to confirm particles are being spawned, the problem is they're not showing up even though my bounding box is enormous.

[slate glen]

Good find. LoadTexture will also treat your texture like a 2D array of cells instead of a continuous space so you can just specify the x and y indices to traverse, instead of messing with UVs

[spiral moth]

Yeah i noticed you're just using x so i'd guess you'll have to convert your index to x/y right? ie when your index is greater than your texture width you'll have to increment y and loop x back to zero right..

[slate glen]

Yeah for now I'm doing one attribute type per row, so y = 0 is position, y = 1 is rotation, and so on. The x indices are to select that particular position instance (or rotation instance if y = 1)

[spiral moth]

Ah right ok

[slate glen]

For clarity

Generalized from "PositionTexture" to "PayloadTexture"

[spiral moth]

Ah interesting.. only issue i would suggest might be - having a non-square texture might be less efficient but i guess it's not a huge problem

[slate glen]

There might be an optimal texture layout, maybe a square-like texture would be better. Would have to think about how the compute shader works (or whatever they are using). Could also profile

same thought lol

[spiral moth]

hehe yeah

basically Phils method does alternating, so first pixel is pos second is rot so it increments in 2's

and uses the w channel for whatever single float values you might need

[slate glen]

I like the use of the w channel, will look out for opportunities. Padding always feels bad to me

[spiral moth]

yeahh

i think you can set the data format of the texture to only use 3 channel rgb possibly

if you're not using w and want that extra efficiency

[slate glen]

Couldn't find a format for that

[spiral moth]

ah really

[slate glen]

goes from RFloat to RGFloat to RGBAFloat

1, 2, 4

sad face

[warm torrent]

This is a shuriken lit quad particle using solid color with spherical normal map, and the problem is the reflection "bends" at sharp angles causing that crescent shaped sideways horizon
I don't intend to dwell on this problem but if anyone recognizes it that'd be helpful for sure

[slate glen]

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