How could these effects be created in Unity3D?

I've known about Unity3D Particle System. It creates many great effects but for some effects I don't really know if Particle System could help. Also in some case we simply can't use particle system because of performance issue. You can see the effects here:



I can imagine that particle system could help here but not sure if the performance is accepted. At least I can see that the effect here is fairly good and they perform fairly well (in that game).

And here this effect is even harder for me and I don't think particle system can create this (or we have to use many smoothly fined tiny particles - which will cause performance issue):



These effects I show here are very similar, they look like trailing effect but very smooth and I know for sure that the perform very well. I don't ask you to provide any exact step to create this. I just would like to know if you created these kinds of effect before could give me some suggestion on how this could be done. I'll research on that later. Also if you have some samples about this it would be very highly appreciated.

Thank you all.

 

All these fx could be done in Unity. It just takes some time dedication to get them looking right.
I think the first example is using particles, and sprites. Those definitely aren't just a simple one shot particle system. And I'm certain there was a fx artist or at the very least an artist who had some time to dedicate strictly towards the fx of the game. Stuff don't get to look that good by just - oh yeah we need particles to make that effect look more dynamic.
The trail effect I have no clue about how to incorporate but I'm sure the particle system can pull it off. I've seen very clean examples of this type of effect in several different Unity games, here in the wip and showcase threads.

There are also great examples of particle assets and fx sprites on the asset store. It's a great resource for learning how these awesome fx can be setup. Check them out.

 

First one:
open the gif in a program that allows you to watch the frames one by one. It could be as simple as a "disc" that has a bunch of swooshy blades painted on it and that rotates with the character to create the effect. No particles needed in my opinion except for the few flying sparks etc..

Second one:
should be very straight forward without particle system. In your 3D modelling application create a circle, extrude inwards to get a circular strip of quads. UV-unwrap it to a long rectangular strip of quads, paint the swoosh texture on there and have it rotate in unity. I'm pretty sure that will perform a lot better than a particle system with hundreds of soft particles to create such a trail effect.

 

Thank you all for your replies. I've finally realized that almost everything in a scene are meshes. Each small particle (generated by Particle System) is also like a Quad. If we generate the meshes correctly, we can create the effect we want (although it may require other things such as material, texture, shader, ...).

 

Hi,
For the 2nd one, you can also use the trail renderer (as shown here : http://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/class-TrailRenderer.html and here :

). so no matter if you use a sphere, a cube or some intricate mesh, the trail will still work.

I hope it helps.