Particles - Unity Engine

[RyanB]

I had some time off from work over the past few months (school + slow out there) so I decided to get back into doing some game art after taking a 2 year break.

I made some particle effects in the Unity engine as a starting point. I made three sets: magic, smoke, and arcadey/stylized.

Anyhoo, here they are

Magic Unity Engine Spell Particle Effects Preview - YouTube

Smoke Smoke Particle Effects for Unity Engine - YouTube

Arcade Arcade Particle Effects for Unity Engine - YouTube

My current Unity project is creating an environment package with tiles/interlocking pieces plus some props. I've been using Blender as an experiment and I'm very happy with how it has performed so far. I'm using the sculpt mode extensively and exporting to XNormal for baking and it works perfectly. I'm at least a month away from finishing the package and will post screenshots/videos when done.

[Maph]

Ok, those are awesome! I'm really digging the arcade fx!
Just imagine what you can do with the new Shuriken particle engine for Unity 3.5!

[imbueFX]

Great stuff! Do you have any experience with Cascade in Unreal? If so, I'd love to hear the good and bad between the two.

[blood_falcon]

Hey RyanB these are pretty sweet! You're very good with the Particle Animator in Unity, the colors blend really well on all your fx. Good job on those fx textures too, keep it up.

[VPrime]

Love the arcade style ones :)

[Brendan]

Great stuff! Do you have any experience with Cascade in Unreal? If so, I'd love to hear the good and bad between the two.

personally I've found you end up doing more work in Unreal's shader editor for things like fire and what not, because you can easily overlay multiply and additive layers on a mask to get good fire, so you're paying for the shader.

With Unity, it's just about better to release a bunch of particles with the simplest shaders all set to additive, and you pay for the particles.

The advantage then is that Unity is probably better at '3d' fire; like a ball of fire coming toward the player, or something the player can be on top of. Of course, it's fairly inoperable if you want a big trail of fire to do it that way though, and UDK is probably better for that.


Ryan, would you mind posting how fast those systems are? That smoke could be pretty expensive with the alpha blending and sorting, and how does that work out at low or high viewing angles?
And honestly, I thought of this when I saw Big Smoke Effects
http://www.gedixprod.com/sanandreas/big_smoke.jpg

[RyanB]

First off, sorry I didn't respond to anyone's questions earlier. I should probably subscribe to threads in the future.

Great stuff! Do you have any experience with Cascade in Unreal? If so, I'd love to hear the good and bad between the two.

I am using Cascade currently for a one week contract at a local game company.

Cascade is a fantastic particle system and I'm enjoying using it. I have used it a bit in the past so I was not completely unfamiliar with it.

Cascade and the Unity particle system have different philosophies. Cascade is similar to Maya in that you are given modules and you create links between the modules. If you want to change colour over lifetime, you just add another module.

Unity has more of a 3D Studio Max philosophy where you are given a big, complete plugin that is designed to solve a particular problem. The particle system is ready to go with all of the standard features. To change colour over lifetime you open the rollout and change the values.

Cascade's curve editor gives you an additional way to edit values instead of typing them in. This can be useful in visualizing how sharp/smooth a transition is from one value to another. Unity by default only allows you to type values in. I have worked mostly with custom particle editors on games that only allowed you to type values, so Unity's typing by default is no problem for me.

The material editor in Unreal allows you to do some pretty cool stuff with particles. I've just started using more advanced materials but the guy I'm currently working with on this project is very good and has shown me some neat tricks. It is very easy to create connections between the materials and particles in Unreal, and to have those connections affect parameters between the two. This allows you to create more dynamic relationships between lighting, materials, and particles fairly easily.

You can create similar relationships in Unity, but it would require you to use scripting. For someone who isn't a programmer, this would limit their ability to create fancier particle systems.

One thing I notice about people that use the Unreal engine is they sometimes lean too heavily on technical solutions because the guts of the system are so exposed to them. A simple particle system with good textures and colour choices will often do the job.

Cascade and the Unity particle systems are both great and I can be happy using either one.

Watch for the Shuriken particle system in Unity 3.5!

[RyanB]

Ok, those are awesome! I'm really digging the arcade fx!
Just imagine what you can do with the new Shuriken particle engine for Unity 3.5!
Thanks Maph! Shuriken will kick ass.
Hey RyanB these are pretty sweet! You're very good with the Particle Animator in Unity, the colors blend really well on all your fx. Good job on those fx textures too, keep it up.
Thank you falcon!
Love the arcade style ones
Thanks VPrime! I took a chance on the arcade style ones and they have sold very well. I'll be doing more stylized particles in the future.

[RyanB]

personally I've found you end up doing more work in Unreal's shader editor for things like fire and what not, because you can easily overlay multiply and additive layers on a mask to get good fire, so you're paying for the shader.

With Unity, it's just about better to release a bunch of particles with the simplest shaders all set to additive, and you pay for the particles.

The advantage then is that Unity is probably better at '3d' fire; like a ball of fire coming toward the player, or something the player can be on top of. Of course, it's fairly inoperable if you want a big trail of fire to do it that way though, and UDK is probably better for that.

I agree. Both systems are equally capable, but they start you off in a different way. I prefer to start off with the simplest particle system and build from there if necessary. There's definitely a time and place for advanced materials, but you don't send an F-16 to kill your neighbour's dog.

Ryan, would you mind posting how fast those systems are? That smoke could be pretty expensive with the alpha blending and sorting, and how does that work out at low or high viewing angles?

I use the free version of Unity so I don't have a built-in profiler. I would not be suprised if the smoke effects are expensive due to some overdraw. If I was making them for a specific game, I would definitely tune them. But, for some basic smoke effects that could be dropped in to any game, I left them as is. So far, nobody has complained after buying them so that is a good sign.

And honestly, I thought of this when I saw Big Smoke Effects
http://www.gedixprod.com/sanandreas/big_smoke.jpg

Love that game! The smoke effects were the first particle effects I made in Unity and I posted them in the store quickly. I could definitely be more creative naming my packages. :)

[Brendan]

Just toss the smoke into an empty scene, play, hit 'stats' (top right, next to maximize on play, etc). Tell us the time per frame, the draw calls, etc, and what system you're on (cpu, gpu, ram).

That's usually enough to get an idea of what they're like.

If you don't mind me asking, what's the reception been like with the particle systems in the Asset Store? Is it worth getting stuff out and on there?

[RyanB]

Just toss the smoke into an empty scene, play, hit 'stats' (top right, next to maximize on play, etc). Tell us the time per frame, the draw calls, etc, and what system you're on (cpu, gpu, ram).

That's usually enough to get an idea of what they're like.

If you don't mind me asking, what's the reception been like with the particle systems in the Asset Store? Is it worth getting stuff out and on there?

http://img51.imageshack.us/img51/3223/smokestats.jpg (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/51/smokestats.jpg/)

System:
Windows 7 64-bit
i7 960 @ 3.2GHz
8 GB Ram
Nvidia Quadro 600

The reception for the particle systems has been very good from my point of view. I've been in the top ten grossing particle systems since I've started and I haven't been working too hard at it. The best way to see if it is worth it is to make something and put it on the asset store.

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/51/smokestats.jpg/

[RyanB]

I finished another package of particles on the weekend. I went for a retro/vector look for this package.

Vectormania! - Particles for Unity Engine - YouTube

[imbueFX]

:poly124: I love this!

[blood_falcon]

Very nice. Do you just have these placed in an empty scene in Unity?

[RyanB]

:poly124: I love this!

Thank you!

Very nice. Do you just have these placed in an empty scene in Unity?

Yes, except for a transparent cube. Half of the effects are "one-shot" effects that are triggered using a script which needs an object to hit.

[RyanB]

I've made my first web player of one of my particle packages. I used to just make a video and post it on Youtube but I got a lot of requests for a demo.

The particles in the web player have a theme of evil/weird.

Click here to see the particles in a web player (http://ryanjamesblanchard.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/WebPlayer.html)

Any feedback is appreciated.

Thanks,
Ryan