Everything to know about the PARTICLE SYSTEM

one of my favorite things to do in unity is playing around with particles for some reason I just keep having fun with it so in this mega video we'll go over the entire particle system from beginning to end here are some time stamps if there's any particular feature you want to hear about this video is sponsored by udemy udemy is a great site for learning new skills and they have a lot of cool courses on making games today I want to mention this awesome course on building android games and apps using unity throughout the course you will learn how to build a Legend of Zelda game from scratch make 3d models using blender and how to tailor everything to the Android platform so if this course sounds interesting to you or if you're just looking for an awesome place to discover new knowledge on game development definitely check out udemy to get started simply click the link in the description and get a discount now the particle system consists of a bunch of different modules that each control different aspects of the system you have to enable a module in order to access its settings the first three modules and the very last module are almost always used these are the particle system the mission the shape and the renderer module which all enabled by default the rest of the modules contain more specific settings for different use cases so let's take it from the top the particle system module is by fine the module with the most important settings this module contains global properties that affect the entire system here you can control whether or not the system should loop the duration of the system and if you want to have it play automatically some of the properties in the particle system module applied to the particles themselves as they are emitted in other words these are the start settings for your particles this includes lifetime which is how long a particle will last speed size rotation and color now all values that you adjust in the particle system can use something we call modifiers this make it possible to randomize properties or control them over the duration of the system the modifiers are going to be different for each property but one that's really good to know is random between two constants as the name suggests this allows you to have unity randomize between two vibes another one is curves which gives you full control of a property over now this module is also where you can add gravity to your particles also before moving on make sure to choose a stimulation space here we decide if we want the particles to follow around the object or move independently the emission module handles the creation of particles here we have three different types of emission to choose from rate overtime Radio distance and curst s-- the first one rate over time simply affects how much time passes between each particle emission this is probably one of the most used properties of the entire particle system the second one can be used to define how far the object needs to move before another particle is emitted especially useful for moving vehicles emitting smoke finally you can set up bursts where you fire off a bunch of particles at once I use this all the time for explosion like effects in the shape module we choose the shape of the emitter there is a rarity of shapes you can choose from such as sphere hemisphere cone and donut or you can of course choose your own mesh this can allow for some pretty interesting results the rest of the properties for this module control how the particles are emitted from the shape do they only emit from the surface or from the for volume what direction should they shoot out and so on the renderer module is extremely important this is where you define the look of your particles using the render mode we can choose if we want to show the particles on a 2d surface which we call a billboard or if you want to render them as a 3d mesh after choosing a render mode we have to assign a material if you're creating 2d particles they're a bunch of shaders to choose from under the particles shader category many of these use custom blending modes to give the particles a certain look the main wants to know are additive which make the particles seem very bright Pilon including the right paths of the texture and multiply which does the opposite if you're making 3d particles you can simply use the standard shader also if you want the particles to cast or receive shadows make sure to enable it here next we have what I like to call the over lifetime module as the name implies we use these to change properties on the particles over time after they get emitted here we have some self-explanatory ones like size and color as you can see the color module gives us a gradient that we can use to smooth the transition from one color to another the bottom part of the gradient defines color and the top defines alpha values so you can easily use this to fade in and out particles we also have a module called velocity over lifetime that allows you to control the speed of the particles over time here you can control the amount of force to apply in each axis and the speed modifier is a multiplier that affects the speed in all directions limit velocity over lifetime is also interesting in that it does the exact opposite here we can limit the speed of the particles by adding drag I often use this for explosion like effects where the particles should gradually slow down and just like the over lifetime modules we have lit by speed modules these make changes to the particles based on their current speed for example in color by speed we create a color gradient and rather than have a change over time we match it to a certain speed range rotation and size by speed work in much the same way the noise module is a new addition to the unity particle system and it's absolutely amazing it basically allows you to add turbulence to your particles fully understanding the different noise properties can get rather math heavy but in general we can say that strength is how much you want the noise to influence the particles frequency is how smooth you want the turbulence to be the higher the value the faster and more often the particles will change direction scroll speed allows you to change the noise that applies to the particles over time which can make everything feel much more dynamic and finally the octaves define how many layers of noise we stack on top of each other by adding multiple noise layers we can create more interesting movement at the bottom of the module we choose what we want the noise to affect position rotation and size the collision module enables your particles to collide with all the game objects in your scene you do this by setting the type to world however this can be pretty taxing on the computer since that you can use the default option claims here you define custom planes that only the particles will collide with in most cases you probably also want to reduce the bounce factor to not make them jump around as well as increased dampen to make them slow down on impact I also recommend playing around with the collision quality to make everything as performant as possible the sub emitters module is where things begin to get more complicated imagine inception but for particles here you can set up submitters meaning you can spawn new particle emitters from other particles the new emitter can then be controlled as a separate particle system an example of when this is useful is when creating impact effects or fireworks if you want your particles to animate you can use the texture sheet animation module here you can specify either a texture sheet where each image in your animation is laid out on a grid or a number of sprites I use this all the time when creating 2d games and especially for crafting more detailed special effects the lights module is a fast way to make the particles cast light onto their surroundings this is great for effects like fire or lightning here you can simply create a light and drag it into the light slot you can then control how big a portion of the particles should emit lights using the ratio the other settings like use particle color and size effects range or determine whether or not you want the resulting light to be affected by the particle it's sitting on if you check out them the look of the light will be a combination of the particle and the light and if you don't check any of them the light will just keep its values now the trails module can create a trail either from or between particles the most important thing to remember here is that you need to create a trail material in order for it to render properly the trail material is assigned in the renderer module after this you can adjust width and color and even have a change over the length of the trail with the triggers module particles can actually trigger game logic when colliding with objects the callback can happen when the particle enters exits is inside or is outside of the collider by default you have the option to kill particles when triggering but you can also create your own custom script for more advanced behaviors if this is something you're interested in I reckon checking out the example in the documentation with the inherent velocity module the emitter can transfer its current velocity to the particles it emits this is useful if your particle system is moving around the scene and you want the particles to follow it to some extent you can use the multiplier to choose the portion of the emitter speed that gets transferred to the particles if you have a wind sown in your terrain enable the external forces module to make it influence your particles and finally we have the custom data module which is pretty much reserved for advanced users in short this allows you to define custom data to be attached to your particles you can then later use this data in a custom shader so that is pretty much all the features I wanted to cover in this video from here on it's up to you to have fun and experiment and if you still have questions I suggest you have a look at the documentation it holds all the answers also don't forget to check out udemy and the complete unity and Android development course simply click the link in the description to get started on that thanks for watching and I will see you in the next video thanks - of the awesome patreon supporters who donated in January and a special thanks to Sean Kerry Diego Kai kudamon time kind / Theo Infiniti PPR yo Rio mer Sybok mummy dark Eames Kirk Merck basil Merrifield Peter died John Ramirez double top 45 James P Superman the great John Beauregard chasing the tail Oh Alex Akatsuki Yan foo club SUNYAC obscene James Rogers rubber pond Rob Perrin and Erasmus

Channel: Brackeys

Views: 713,325

Keywords: brackeys, unity, unity3d, asset, assets, beginner, easy, how, to, learn, tutorial, tip, basic, basics, C#, particle, system, particle system, particles, effect, effects, shuriken, free, module, modules, color, animation, cool, explosion, fire, smoke, realistic, rain, dust, water, lightning, light, mega, video, game

Id: FEA1wTMJAR0

Length: 10min 8sec (608 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 18 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/justkevin]

Great video, quick comment:

You describe the additive particle shader as "making the particles seem very bright by only including the light parts of the texture and multiply which does the opposite."

The additive shader uses all of the texture, but it adds its RGB values to whatever else is behind it. The multiply shader multiplies its RGB values. Since they range from 0-1, this has the effect of making things look darker.

[u/Swenix]

Great video

[u/Nilmag]

You're the man

[u/[deleted]]

this is awesome, i've been putting off fully learning the particle system, so this is exactly what i needed!

[u/OliThompson]

Awesome video as always! Your videos are what made me start using Unity, thanks for that! :)

[u/DanielSas]

My man Asbjorn!

[u/Bejasc]

Great video Brackeys!

I would love to see a walkthrough on how you've created some of those effects you're displaying though (Explosion, Torch/Fire, Smoke Trail). Even with your walkthrough on the systems, I don't understand how particle systems of such quality are created, and I think it would make a great video to showcase your workflow for creating these types of effects.

[u/M374llic4]

Good video, though I don't know if I would call that a mega video.

[u/onceandwillagain]

Damn, the things I didn’t think were possible in unity...