Fading in an entire particle system

I have a sandstorm particle effect. I want my player to walk into an area, and when he hits the trigger, the sandstorm will start, and last for three minutes.

So if I set my duration to three minutes, the sandstorm fades out perfectly fine after three minutes.

But at the start, when he hits the trigger, the sandstorm starts immediately, which looks very fake. I want the entire particle system to fade in over say 30 seconds.

So I don't want to change the fade or transparency of the individual particles, but of the entire system. I have tried playing with the start lifetime, but that doesn't do the trick. I have found a few scripts where people have tried to do this but they date from 2012 and 2013 and they aren't working either.

Any ideas of how this can be done?

PS I am not a very good programmer....

 

It's probably best to address global effects like that (for now) in the shader. So the shader's tint colour or a multiplier would handle this easily. In this case, the standstorm effect would have no fade in or fade out, and the timing would be handled script side instead.

If you are using the standard particle shader, it should be possible to just animate the material settings.

Unity plans on adding global effects I think that would cover these use cases better @richardkettlewell

 

I think for now the easiest solution would be when the player hits the trigger, the sandstorm starts, but it is below the ground. Then it moves up to its proper height over say thirty seconds, and plays until it fades out after three minutes. This way it will look quite natural, the dust will start at ground level and rise, and fade out at the end of the storm. A little easier than written code at the moment.

 

OK, got it working perfectly, sandstorm sound fading in and out as well, so it looks and sounds quite natural.

But I am getting this warning:

Particle System is trying to spawn on a mesh with zero surface area

Google and forum search doesn't give any results, and I don't know what it means. Any idea?

 

Hi helgarddebarros,

I have got the same warning message "Particle System is trying to spawn on a mesh with zero surface area", but I don't know what it means.

Have you been able to figure out what it means and how to fix it ? If yes, please share the solution with us.

Thank you very much.

 

@GameJob2017 I turned off all my particle effects and turned each one on in turn until I found out which one was sending the message. Then I looked inside that and under the Render Mode it said mesh, but there was no mesh. I added a quad, and that fixed the problem.

 

Mmm, can't get the bug report to work. But here is a quick way to reproduce the error.

Download this product:
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/56959

Open the included sample scene.

Click on the "Watertop_Circle_Swell_A" part of the prefab.

And the warning messages will start.

 

It would also be nice if the error message would specify WHICH particle system is having this problem, and potentially highlight it when the error message is clicked. ;-)

 

I've seen this error when assigning a MeshRenderer from code and the MeshRenderer assigned was marked (accidentally) to static batch (Note that in my example the MeshRenderer was actually being statically batched, not just marked to). It makes sense that this doesn't work but the issue wasn't immediately obvious from the error message.

 

I did get a mesh. but still got this msg. how could i fix my mesh that with zero surface area?

 

Hello, I get the same console message, with the same asset store object "realistic Waterfall"... did someone solve the problem ?

Thanks..

 

Ok, If that help, I change the render mode in the particle inspector as Billboard, and no more console alert with the message : Particle System "is trying to spawn on a mesh with zero surface area" and it works fine... no difference beetween mesh rendering or billboard rendering..

But if I use Horizontal billboard, I have this alert message in the console again...

 

Ok, If that help, I changed shape type to vertex in particle system and this solved the problem

 

Hi, I'm vouching for that error message improvement even if it's 3 years later.

 

I had this same issue once I made a WebGL build and then error Particle System is trying to spawn on a mesh with zero surface area. There was another log that indicated I needed to set the meshes in question to Read and Write enabled in the import settings. Fixed it, maybe this is the new log?

 

In my situation, this solved my problem.