How to control the length of a fade-in fade-out particle system?

Hi all,

I am wondering how do one control the length of a particle system without making the rest of animation slower/faster.

So imagine you have a particle effect with "Size over lifetime" module, where "Size" field is a bell-shape curve.

Now if you increase the lifetime of the particle, you also make the fade-in fade-out longer due to the lifetime being longer.

Is there a way to say: we want 1s fade-in, X seconds lifetime, then finally 1s fade-out?

There must be a better way, please help!

(Hopefully this is the right sub forum for particle system / VFX?)

 

It does look like the best solution is to have a static-size vfx and scale it using transform, what about "Color over lifetime"? What's a decent way to do fade-in fade-out (of specific time length)?