Control Track and Particles

I've been using the control track to trigger on particles in my timeline. Its super cool that I can preview the particles in the timeline view and even scrub forwards and backwards with them. Unfortunately, I have a lot of problems as well. I'm curious if I'm using these wrong, if there are just a lot of bugs that will be fixed soon or if I should just attempt to implement my own sort of "Particle Track"

Problem 1 - Particles flicker wildly when simulation speed on the particle is not set to 1. I suppose we can change all our particles, but I'd like avoid this.

Problem 2 - When playing the actual game, I get the assertion failed: "Don't set random seed while system is playing!" I can't seem to figure this one out. My only work around is to mute the control track and switch to an activation once I'm done previewing the particle.

Problem 3 - I'd like to control how the particles disable. It would be great to select between stopping the particle outright or to just stop the emitters so the particle fades out more naturally when the clip ends.

 

any word on these? Would they cause problems in a build?

 

Same problem here... Random Seed and Flicker errors!

 

Hi, can you specify what version? we recently made a fix for those issues.

 

Hi! Unity 2017.3.1p4!

The problem only occurs if the Particle System is set as GameObject on a Control Track.

 

Any chance of these being fixed soon? I didn't see anything in the 2019 release notes. The main issue I have is with the particles disabling by disappearing instantly, which in my opinion makes the control track unusable for most particle effects.

I've had to resort to writing my own custom playable for it, which only works for my specific use cases, but an official implementation is a necessary feature.

 

problem 4: it lags after it reaches the "HOLD" thing...
https://forum.unity.com/threads/con...ive-fps-drop-when-the-clip-is-on-hold.627595/

 

a year on and still no fix for particles instantly disappearing instead of just stopping the system and letting them play out?

 

Yep still broken for me: sometimes the particle system doesn't even show up, it doesn't work at all in rate by distance either, unless particle system is selected.

How have you guys been doing vfx with timeline? No luck on my end, I even resorted to animating spheres by hand!

Shuriken is walking the plank, I really hope Timeline won't join....

 

Great! It’s like they just give up developing integrations once they’re barely acceptable for most users.

I’ve been doing it a few ways. If it’s just a simple play and not loop type effect, then a control track, with its end time as far in the future as possible, depending on how long the timeline is.

if it’s something that I need to start and stop I’ve been using Markers/Signal emitters to call start and stop events on the particle system. But that’s a whole different story, the signal emitter system is just as bad and broken. But at least I can actually control the systems slightly better than trying to use control tracks.

 

It looks like your tricks work at playtime but not during cinematic render, maybe I'm wrong, a video would help.