"Animated Particles" are broken in 5.3?

I'm modifying some particles through animations and with the recent update (I know that 5.3 updated the particle engine) everything I modified that is part of the "Particle System.Initial Module" is broken. I'm mostly changing the start size of a particle through the animation to modifiy its size in sync with the actual animation (its a very short lived loop particle - a thruster effect).

Is this just a bug? And if not, does that mean I've to look for another way to change the size overtime (without using the "change size over time" function of the particle itself)? "Max Size" is no option for me because it would be a very difficult task to sync the size changes of multiple particles, which changes their size at the same time.

I couldn't find a topic regarding this issue, so I'm sorry if this issue have been addressed somewhere else.

 

Hi, Crystan!

Have you find any solution? We have exact the same trouble with particle start size.

PS: Found this bug after converting one of our projects from 4.6.3 to 5.3.1p1 where this option was used.

Hope you can help, thanks!

 

Well, not really. I wrote a script to access the missing features and modified the script via the animation.
Here's my script but keep in mind that I'm more or less a novice programer - so it might be not the most perfect solution:

Code (CSharp):

1. using UnityEngine;
2. using System.Collections;
3.  
4. public class particleControl : MonoBehaviour {
5.  
6.     public bool changeStartSize;
7.     public float startSize;
8.     public bool changeStartColor;
9.     public Color startColor;
10.  
11.     // Use this for initialization
12.     void Start () {
13.         if (changeStartSize)
14.         {
15.             startSize = this.GetComponent<ParticleSystem>().startSize;
16.         }
17.  
18.         if (changeStartColor)
19.         {
20.             startColor = this.GetComponent<ParticleSystem>().startColor;
21.         }
22.  
23.     }
24.  
25.     // Update is called once per frame
26.     void Update () {
27.         if(changeStartSize)
28.         {
29.             this.GetComponent<ParticleSystem>().startSize = startSize;
30.         }
31.  
32.         if (changeStartColor)
33.         {
34.             this.GetComponent<ParticleSystem>().startColor = startColor;
35.         }
36.  
37.     }
38. }
39.  

They updated the particle engine in 5.3 - and they either removed the feature on purpose or accidentally, you can read it up here: http://blogs.unity3d.com/2015/12/08/unity-5-3-all-new-features-and-more-platforms/

 

I have just reported this issue to Unity, after failing to see any mention of it in the release notes. It has broken a few of our animations as well, also in a thruster effect. I linked this thread in the report.

- Daniel

 

Anyone has new info on this? You simply can't use keyframe animation on particle systems in Unity 5.3. Is this a bug?

 

They have replied to my bug report and confirmed that this is a bug. It seems that in 5.3 we can't animate values of the Particle System that live in the Initial Module, such as startSize. The other Particle System modules, however, are usable in animations, as far as I could tell.