Holy crap, three years later and this is still amazing, thank you! Helped me with some of my VRChat woes - specifically a lightning effect for the Doom Eternal Crucible, and more indirectly showing how particle collisions and sub-emitters work. Might be able to tweak some of this for some slightly weird things - specifically, maknig a throwable axe. Still not convinced it'll work, but it's worth a shot...
Truly the best tutorial series on VFX in Unity. No doubt I'll buy the package at some point just to master new techniques. I haven't seen all the tutorials yet but here's an idea for one (in case and there isn't one). In the last Unite conference there was a live training on Unity 5.5 particle system and it was said there that the game Assault Android Cactus used only particles as projectiles and the hit detection was a callback from the particle collider. Maybe show a small demo how to set it up? While I'm confident I can do it myself, you seem more knowledgeable about optimizations thus maybe you can enlighten me and others. It could even be a follow-up to this tutorial to show how "random lighting attacks in an area could deal damage to targets within that area of effect" in a way that really only "true strikes" deal damage.
Amazing Tutorial, loved it! I've already watched some of your tutorials, not a lot, and always end up with the same question: How do you design the textures of your particles and how do you set the material? thanks a lot for your tutorials!
Hi there! Standard stuff for textures: mostly Photoshop and also After Effects. Materials just hold the values for the shader as a preset, so nothing special there either.
hey! thanks for the tutorial it really help me~ anyway i have a question about the lightning can you make it spin around an object? but just in circle? if so mind if you tell me how? thanks!
PLEASE, does anyone know why my particle trails are flickering? I've followed this tutorial several times, and it keeps ending up with flickering particle trails. I've even done this a couple years ago and it worked properly, but now I can't replicate this without flickering/stuttering particle trails. Does anyone have any suggestions?
Well..... I know how to code and make cool games. All i am lacking is making special effects! Thank you so much for these! Exactly what i need to start learning! Insta sub! I've been looking at the popcornfx plugin/software for unity. Anything you'd consider making tutorials with?
Yeah well... If anything, you're proving that true ^^ Just bought your pack over at the unity asset store! I'll make sure to credit you if I ever get something released :)
i had my doubts about particle effects when i switched from UE4 to unity, not anymore. actually, there is one problem, in UE4 you can give the particles sort of a bloom, even in daylight, so they always look like they glow, not only at nighttime.
Thanks for making this video. I use unity for mobile games so I'm wondering how processor heavy these effects are and if they will have a massive performance hit on phones? Esp the dynamic lighting effects. If the stuff you showed in this vid is in fact too heavy for mobile, It would be super helpful if you did a video on how to achieve similar results on mobile, while still maintaining 60FPS.
I'd check the profiler and do some tests with whatever hardware you're targeting for mobile platforms. There's a generic set of rules to follow for optimizing particles involving switching shaders, reducing overdraw, and of course... the particle count. For the noise module, take a look at reducing the complexity by using 2D or 1D noise. And you can also setup your particle systems to be deterministic. Unity has a whole blog post on that.
Is it possible to combine the trailrenderer with something like the clothsimlutlation? I have a huge moving ball. My target is that 4 Trailrender, attached to the ball, draw a trail along the movement BUT I want that the produced trails get dragged within the wind-shadow of the ball. --,,,,,,,,, O -------- --`````` Or simply: trails get pushed to the ground. (Sry about the broken english)
If I'm understanding you correctly, then I think for your case you'd be better off using the actual trail renderer, not the one built into Shuriken since you'd need to specifically assign the positions to the trail origins. With particles, you'd need to get and set the positions by getting the particles from the system and then putting them back. You'd be better off just using four trail renderer components. Or, you can use four particle systems with trails enabled. Either way, you're using four game objects.
Hi Mirza, great tutorials. I wonder if this effect can be create from point A to point B, Is there exists some configuration in unity 5 or 2017 to make this effect? thanks in advance
Hey , I am intrested in your ultimate vfx on asset store. But could you tell that whether the lightning in this video included in the ultimate vfx or not? Beacause in this video, you used unity 5.5. But the version on asset store is 5.4..Thanks. Forgive my english.
Hi there! The version on the Asset Store already includes this effect, and is live with the Unity 5.5 update. The description says that the minimum requirement is Unity 5.4.1, but if you look below at the details, you'll see that it was submitted with multiple versions of Unity, including 5.5.
Awesome effect.And the most suprising thing is the tutorial is just 9mins. But when I do the same in my unity, it just looks not so beatiful.I think it may caused by the surrounding enviroment. Could you tell us how to build such a beautiful enviroment?
I'd assume that's how they do it in many games. If you really need more precision, you can always save the position of the particles over time and then raycast between the saved points to get collision as if it was actually with the trails.
how do i make the lightning go between two points? I was wondering whether to use line renderer or to try to create a particle attractor of some kind. do any of the other tutorials cover something like this? i've only listened to the first 3 so far
oh awesome. i just bought your pack. there look to be a lot of nice examples. however, i'm not sure if i really ought to use particle effects for what i want or not.. may i ask your opinion on it? I basically want to have the user be able to select words in a sentence and then have some sort of line created that connects the words on screen as the user drags the mouse to the next word. however, particle physics effects look a lot cooler than just drawing a line. i guess i could also use linerenderer, but it would be so much cooler to have some sort of glowing energy line/lightning instead. is it possible to just edit a particle effect's particle's motions from a script? i'm just wondering whether i should just use a particle attractor or need to code up something manually. Since I know the actual target (the next word moused over), i think maybe angle the particle physics effect based on the next word, then have an attractor that only attracts in a small range would work. Can attractor's be set up to not attract all particle's? or s should i be using some other method. Sorry for being a noob. i've only coded windows/wpf/work related stuff before, and don't really have much experience with unity. i just don't want to spend time redoing stuff that has already been done if there is an easier way. saving time is always good
I think i figured most of it out or will be able to. it looks like your attractor can be set for a particular particle system, so i could set that up to work. Or what might be easier is to just use a script of this form. forum.unity3d.com/threads/particles-system-end-point.174836/ to just make a particle system move in the direction i want. Anyway I will play with it a bit oh it looks like the tutorial you linked does something similar. I will try finishing it first then. anyway hopefully i can figure it out from here. i was just worried that maybe i should be using some other method. like maybe i just used some line-renderer option that
Hey again! Yeah, you can use the particle attractor component in UVFX to do that if you want actual particle physics. You can use a line with an animated UV if you just want a cool effect, and if you want particles, but not the physics and other components, you can use something along the lines of the script you link, which interpolates the position directly rather than working with the velocity. It's context sensitive, and will work globally if put on a non-particle system object (not recommended due to being very unefficient). If you attach it to a particle system, then it will work on that particle system only. If you define specific particle systems it should work on, then that will override any other settings. You can use the API with AddParticleSystem and RemoveParticleSystem for affectors to dynamically change these at runtime. You don't need to angle or rotate the system itself in anyway, because it works on per-particle level for the affected systems. Just setup which particle system it should work with (which would ideally have a position at the first word), then set the attractor to be the target position and the particles will flow from the first word to the second. Just a side note: RUclips comments is a weird place for support, I think. E-mail is better for this so I can format and read over comments/replies. You can find my contact information in the README :) Let me know if you need clarification!
Quick question. I'm trying to make the sub emitter branch out just like the original particles to make it look more like lightning but I'm running into a problem. The trails (for both the original and sub particles) start a little bit after the particle has started moving as opposed to right at the particle system location, so the sub particles don't "connect" to the original trail. Do you know how I could fix this?
Is it the texture? It might be because there's space at the two ends, so when the trail gets stretched out it looks like it starts off a bit later since there's fully transparency at the start and end.
Also just noticed at around 1:35 when you turn on the trails module you can see that the trail doesn't start right at the start of the particle system. I guess it might be part of how trails work
I just tested on Unity 5.6, and you're right. Seems like it's a bug, actually - because with high velocities the particles spawn slightly off from the position of the emitter where they're supposed to start off at. You'll probably notice that the issue is less obvious with slower velocities. What's strange is that the trail is consistently at the same start position, which is some distance based on the velocity for the first frame, but the particles themselves are off. I think the expected behaviour should be that both spawn at the origin for the first frame, then simulate forward however much the next rather than having simulated forward already.
just any object, similar to winstons lightning gun from overwatch for example, it tries to find a surface or object if you will for the lightning to arch to.
You should start with the intro: ruclips.net/video/KsT_ZyTv1ms/видео.html. Then move on to the other videos that cover more advanced concepts like optimization.
+Mirza Hello about the guys question, can I just add the effect to the character and it will follow him. Please answer i'm trying to get the lightning to follow my character like flash
6 years after upload and this is the best tutorial on this trail system i have found so far
Holy crap, three years later and this is still amazing, thank you!
Helped me with some of my VRChat woes - specifically a lightning effect for the Doom Eternal Crucible, and more indirectly showing how particle collisions and sub-emitters work.
Might be able to tweak some of this for some slightly weird things - specifically, maknig a throwable axe. Still not convinced it'll work, but it's worth a shot...
By following your advice step by step I got a vastly different lightning.
But it's cool, so that's ok
Truly the best tutorial series on VFX in Unity. No doubt I'll buy the package at some point just to master new techniques.
I haven't seen all the tutorials yet but here's an idea for one (in case and there isn't one). In the last Unite conference there was a live training on Unity 5.5 particle system and it was said there that the game Assault Android Cactus used only particles as projectiles and the hit detection was a callback from the particle collider. Maybe show a small demo how to set it up? While I'm confident I can do it myself, you seem more knowledgeable about optimizations thus maybe you can enlighten me and others. It could even be a follow-up to this tutorial to show how "random lighting attacks in an area could deal damage to targets within that area of effect" in a way that really only "true strikes" deal damage.
Sounds like a great idea! Although it could be a while to get through my queue of tutorials I have planned.
I love it when I come across channels like this.😁 keep up the great work.
Great tutorial and subbing for sure
Thanks!
Love you tutorials! Good on you, man!
Nice Tutorial Learned A Lot
Thanks for watching and commenting. Glad you learned a bunch!
Your channel is a blessing
Underrated Video! :( I'm trying to master Electricity and Lightning this is way to easy to understand
Hey, big thanks for the runthrough, man! This is gonna add some serious panache to this puzzler project I'm working on. Cheers!
Great video dude
Thank you best part no coding required, appreciate it
Thanks man, good tutorial.
Very, very easy to follow.
Cheers.
Thanks! It helps me a lot! It's really cool and easy to make.
This is awesome! Thank you very much.
Nice tutorial
This channel is awesome!
Thanks! That was a lot of help to me!
Thanks for watching!
Great Tutorial!
wow it was very useful thanks
Amazing Tutorial, loved it! I've already watched some of your tutorials, not a lot, and always end up with the same question: How do you design the textures of your particles and how do you set the material?
thanks a lot for your tutorials!
Hi there! Standard stuff for textures: mostly Photoshop and also After Effects. Materials just hold the values for the shader as a preset, so nothing special there either.
hey! thanks for the tutorial it really help me~ anyway i have a question about the lightning can you make it spin around an object? but just in circle? if so mind if you tell me how? thanks!
Yes, you can map the velocity over lifetime or use the new orbital velocity in Unity 2018.1.
Awesom man! Thank you! :D
PLEASE, does anyone know why my particle trails are flickering? I've followed this tutorial several times, and it keeps ending up with flickering particle trails. I've even done this a couple years ago and it worked properly, but now I can't replicate this without flickering/stuttering particle trails. Does anyone have any suggestions?
Amazing
nice tutorial
dosent need other software or plug-in
Real Origin Unity
Well..... I know how to code and make cool games. All i am lacking is making special effects! Thank you so much for these! Exactly what i need to start learning! Insta sub!
I've been looking at the popcornfx plugin/software for unity. Anything you'd consider making tutorials with?
I've never used PopcornFX. As far as I know, Shuriken holds up just fine.
Yeah well... If anything, you're proving that true ^^
Just bought your pack over at the unity asset store! I'll make sure to credit you if I ever get something released :)
Good timing :)
You can check the forums for progress. Another update is in the works.
Okay cool! Will check it out!
you absolute legend!!!
i had my doubts about particle effects when i switched from UE4 to unity, not anymore.
actually, there is one problem, in UE4 you can give the particles sort of a bloom, even in daylight, so they always look like they glow, not only at nighttime.
That was amazing, does you pack also include a prefab of that?
Yes, it includes all the effects shown in the video (including the one made in the tutorial itself).
Thanks for this...!
Thanks for making this video. I use unity for mobile games so I'm wondering how processor heavy these effects are and if they will have a massive performance hit on phones? Esp the dynamic lighting effects. If the stuff you showed in this vid is in fact too heavy for mobile, It would be super helpful if you did a video on how to achieve similar results on mobile, while still maintaining 60FPS.
I'd check the profiler and do some tests with whatever hardware you're targeting for mobile platforms. There's a generic set of rules to follow for optimizing particles involving switching shaders, reducing overdraw, and of course... the particle count. For the noise module, take a look at reducing the complexity by using 2D or 1D noise. And you can also setup your particle systems to be deterministic. Unity has a whole blog post on that.
Best one!!!
Is it possible to combine the trailrenderer with something like the clothsimlutlation?
I have a huge moving ball.
My target is that 4 Trailrender, attached to the ball, draw a trail along the movement BUT I want that the produced trails get dragged within the wind-shadow of the ball.
--,,,,,,,,,
O --------
--``````
Or simply: trails get pushed to the ground.
(Sry about the broken english)
If I'm understanding you correctly, then I think for your case you'd be better off using the actual trail renderer, not the one built into Shuriken since you'd need to specifically assign the positions to the trail origins. With particles, you'd need to get and set the positions by getting the particles from the system and then putting them back. You'd be better off just using four trail renderer components. Or, you can use four particle systems with trails enabled. Either way, you're using four game objects.
hmm ok.
Gonna try something.
Hi Mirza, great tutorials. I wonder if this effect can be create from point A to point B, Is there exists some configuration in unity 5 or 2017 to make this effect? thanks in advance
You can either set the velocity over lifetime for the particle in the editor, or use scripting to do that. I have a tutorial already for it :)
well done, but you have a lot of tutorials :) . Which is the one with this explanation? thanks in advance
ole Custom particle programming.
Hey , I am intrested in your ultimate vfx on asset store. But could you tell that whether the lightning in this video included in the ultimate vfx or not? Beacause in this video, you used unity 5.5. But the version on asset store is 5.4..Thanks. Forgive my english.
Hi there! The version on the Asset Store already includes this effect, and is live with the Unity 5.5 update. The description says that the minimum requirement is Unity 5.4.1, but if you look below at the details, you'll see that it was submitted with multiple versions of Unity, including 5.5.
Awesome effect.And the most suprising thing is the tutorial is just 9mins.
But when I do the same in my unity, it just looks not so beatiful.I think it may caused by the surrounding enviroment.
Could you tell us how to build such a beautiful enviroment?
I use some image effects. Check out the Post-Processing Stack by Unity for a great free plugin for that.
Yeah,thanks a lot.
How are you able to see the lights in the scene? Mine is just the default scene so I can't see any actual glow effects
You can use Unity's post-processing stack for bloom.
Is there a way to send damage to something that's colliding with the particle trail?
With the trail, no. With the particle itself you can send messages.
Guess I can fake it by having a trigger box around the lightning and anything inside of it takes damage.
I'd assume that's how they do it in many games. If you really need more precision, you can always save the position of the particles over time and then raycast between the saved points to get collision as if it was actually with the trails.
hey nice tutorial, one question i dont have the Noise option on my particle system any idea why?
It's a new module that was added in Unity 5.5.
How can I reduce the size of lightning except for "scale" ??
Decrease the lifetime and the size of the particles.
how do i make the lightning go between two points? I was wondering whether to use line renderer or to try to create a particle attractor of some kind. do any of the other tutorials cover something like this? i've only listened to the first 3 so far
The custom particle programming tutorial video I have covers how to make an attractor :)
oh awesome. i just bought your pack. there look to be a lot of nice examples. however, i'm not sure if i really ought to use particle effects for what i want or not.. may i ask your opinion on it?
I basically want to have the user be able to select words in a sentence and then have some sort of line created that connects the words on screen as the user drags the mouse to the next word. however, particle physics effects look a lot cooler than just drawing a line.
i guess i could also use linerenderer, but it would be so much cooler to have some sort of glowing energy line/lightning instead.
is it possible to just edit a particle effect's particle's motions from a script? i'm just wondering whether i should just use a particle attractor or need to code up something manually. Since I know the actual target (the next word moused over), i think maybe angle the particle physics effect based on the next word, then have an attractor that only attracts in a small range would work.
Can attractor's be set up to not attract all particle's? or s
should i be using some other method.
Sorry for being a noob. i've only coded windows/wpf/work related stuff before, and don't really have much experience with unity.
i just don't want to spend time redoing stuff that has already been done if there is an easier way. saving time is always good
I think i figured most of it out or will be able to. it looks like your attractor can be set for a particular particle system, so i could set that up to work. Or what might be easier is to just use a script of this form.
forum.unity3d.com/threads/particles-system-end-point.174836/
to just make a particle system move in the direction i want. Anyway I will play with it a bit
oh it looks like the tutorial you linked does something similar. I will try finishing it first then. anyway hopefully i can figure it out from here. i was just worried that maybe i should be using some other method. like maybe i just used some line-renderer option that
Hey again! Yeah, you can use the particle attractor component in UVFX to do that if you want actual particle physics. You can use a line with an animated UV if you just want a cool effect, and if you want particles, but not the physics and other components, you can use something along the lines of the script you link, which interpolates the position directly rather than working with the velocity. It's context sensitive, and will work globally if put on a non-particle system object (not recommended due to being very unefficient). If you attach it to a particle system, then it will work on that particle system only. If you define specific particle systems it should work on, then that will override any other settings.
You can use the API with AddParticleSystem and RemoveParticleSystem for affectors to dynamically change these at runtime. You don't need to angle or rotate the system itself in anyway, because it works on per-particle level for the affected systems. Just setup which particle system it should work with (which would ideally have a position at the first word), then set the attractor to be the target position and the particles will flow from the first word to the second.
Just a side note: RUclips comments is a weird place for support, I think. E-mail is better for this so I can format and read over comments/replies. You can find my contact information in the README :)
Let me know if you need clarification!
thanks. just went through the tutorial and it was a lot of help.
Why does your line look so much cooler than mine?
Is there an option to aim every arc? To hit a specific position for example...
With scripting only. You can probably modify the curves to do that, too.
I know it's a bit late, but one way of doing it is by adding a windzone which pulls the particles in.
bro i need the sky box and the platform you used in all of ur videos. i request
Quick question. I'm trying to make the sub emitter branch out just like the original particles to make it look more like lightning but I'm running into a problem. The trails (for both the original and sub particles) start a little bit after the particle has started moving as opposed to right at the particle system location, so the sub particles don't "connect" to the original trail. Do you know how I could fix this?
Is it the texture? It might be because there's space at the two ends, so when the trail gets stretched out it looks like it starts off a bit later since there's fully transparency at the start and end.
That's what I thought, but I get the same thing using a square as the texture. i.imgur.com/vlQQGzT.png
Also just noticed at around 1:35 when you turn on the trails module you can see that the trail doesn't start right at the start of the particle system. I guess it might be part of how trails work
I just tested on Unity 5.6, and you're right. Seems like it's a bug, actually - because with high velocities the particles spawn slightly off from the position of the emitter where they're supposed to start off at. You'll probably notice that the issue is less obvious with slower velocities. What's strange is that the trail is consistently at the same start position, which is some distance based on the velocity for the first frame, but the particles themselves are off. I think the expected behaviour should be that both spawn at the origin for the first frame, then simulate forward however much the next rather than having simulated forward already.
Whelp, there goes my lightning dream for now. I Thanks for the help and all of your videos, btw! I gotta say that plexus effect is extremely sexy
Just one question, why I can't find tail render in partical system? Is it new in 5.5?
Yes, it's a new module added in 5.5.
Thanks!
👍
do you know how to make the lightning gravitate toward the nearest surface?
What defines, "nearest surface"?
just any object, similar to winstons lightning gun from overwatch for example, it tries to find a surface or object if you will for the lightning to arch to.
I don't play Overwatch, but what you're describing requires scripting and I have a tutorial for that, too :)
How do you do the Attract part? (at the start of the video 0:18 ) Script or in Unity?
Aha. BOTH! A script IN Unity... (see my tutorials on custom particle programming).
Oooh yeah. Thanks a lot. I'm more of a animator, but due to a project we do I have to go and learn about vfx x)
Which one exactly?
You should start with the intro: ruclips.net/video/KsT_ZyTv1ms/видео.html.
Then move on to the other videos that cover more advanced concepts like optimization.
Is there a way to export these effects to a sprite sheet? or even a png sequence?
Yes! - u3d.as/nG8
You are the best!
Fanboy from now on
Can you do this for 2d aswell?
Yes.
what can we do so that they end at a single point?
Change the velocity curve so they end up in the same place. Or you can programmatically have them seek towards a target.
Okayy thank you so much! Btw keep up the great work!
Could I make the flash's trail with this?
If it looks like the effect, then the answer is yes.
Thanks!
+Mirza Hello about the guys question, can I just add the effect to the character and it will follow him. Please answer i'm trying to get the lightning to follow my character like flash
Yes, but you'll have to tweak some things.
wow...
신문영 srllanka
Mirza
i think it outdated :(
No, it isn't. It works the same exactly as in this video even with 5.6.
it is not outdated, you are! This is running on a beta version of unity that you have to download from the website.
Wacko Sir, chill please xD
This doesn't look like lightning lol. This looks like colored streamers.
how to do y\this uni Unity 5.6? This will not work!
What won't work? I don't see any reason why it wouldn't work with 5.6.
Just tested. This works perfectly fine with 5.6.
And also Unity 2017.1! Thanks for a great tutorial!
cracked version please?
how did u make the lightning go slow mo?
Time scale.