Animation speed of a VFX Prefab

Hi guys,

I've downloaded a VFX Prefab collection from the asset store.
Got it to work and like it quite much, I'd just like to slow it down.

Now there is a very handy "Play Controls" window that pops up whenever I select the prefab.
It has a "Rate" slider, which lets me select the speed. Let's say for example I put mine to 20 and like the effect.

However after selecting anything else in my Scene, it just resets to it's default speed again (100), how to I save my changes? There is no button on the Play Controls window that I can find that does that.

Thanks in advance for your help!

 

Hey,

Unfortunately, that window is just for previewing the particles. To my knowledge, to change the speed of a particle system without using code, you'll have to manually change the various velocity properties of each of the particle systems contained in your VFX prefab. This is a huge pain.

Luckily, this isn't very difficult to do with code. I made a simple script to change a particle system's speed:

Code (CSharp):

1. using UnityEngine;
2.  
3. [ExecuteAlways]
4. public class ParticleSystemSpeed : MonoBehaviour
5. {
6.     [SerializeField] float particleSpeed = 1f;
7.  
8.     ParticleSystem ps;
9.  
10.     void Start()
11.     {
12.         ps = GetComponent<ParticleSystem>();
13.  
14.         var main = ps.main;
15.         main.simulationSpeed = particleSpeed;
16.     }
17. }

Remove the [ExecuteAlways] line if you don't want this updating in the editor, and only at runtime.

You need to attach this to every object in the VFX prefab with a ParticleSystem component, and then set the speed for each one in the inspector. There's definitely a more efficient way of doing this, but I don't know what your prefabs look like.

To have the speed update in the editor, you'll need to reload the scene, or exit the prefab view, and re-enter it.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask. Also, I've tested this briefly, but I've never needed to do anything like this before.

 

Hi,

Thank you very much for taking the time to write all that down!

I'll be able to test it with the script soon, thank you!