Is It Possible to Update Particle Count in Realtime?

I'm trying to create an effect where the grid count can increase or decrease. I want this number to be controlled by a public value, but it doesn't update until I reset the effect in some way. Most specifically, if I change something in the "General" setting in the VFX inspector.

I want to change the particle count in the Spawn system. But it doesn't change in in real-time as stated above.

 

Honestly, if it's possible to change the particle "capacity", then that'll be just as good for me.

 

It's not possible to change capacity, this value is needed to preallocate memory.

I assume each segment is one particle with texIndex, you spawn X particles in shape of grid and then you would like to change the number of particles. The problem is that single burst does not care as this value is used only to spawn particles. Solution depends on your use case (you would need to describe better how your effect works), but for example you can: spawn maximum number of particles with infinite lifetime at the beginning, and then hide particles in output context with

alive = false

based on some property

visibleParticleCount

.

 

Thank you for the response.

I have to mention that I'm using Unity differently, mainly for animation. So I'm not as familiar with coding.

The effect is done entirely with VFX graph. The effect is created using the sequential: Three Dimensional node placed in the 'Update' part of the VFX graph. You can look at the entire graph here:



I've seen this 'Reinit' function, but I don't have the slightest clue how to use it. If I could get it to work, could it create the effect that I'm talking about?

 

I am not sure what that means , but there are many effects requiring at least a bit of coding, so you might need to get some knowledge about this. In theory you could use reinit to make it work, but I think what I described above is still better and contained in single graph. Create new empty graph and do this:

1. In spawn context create only

   Single Burst

   with amount of particles equal to system maximum capacity.
2. In initialize context set Lifetime to any value larger than 0 and add

   Set Sequential Position

   to your liking
3. Click update context and in inspector disable "Reap Particles" and "Age Particles", this will make your particle immortal.
4. Create graph property "Count", this will be amount of particles to display, and then do this:

This will kill all particles with index greater than required display count, but we do it in output context, so they die only during this frame, not permanently - in result we "hide" them.
Now if you change Count property it should display number of particles equal to this property.

 

When we are already on this topic, question to @VladVNeykov or other vfx graph dev, are all particles always simulated? If there is system with capacity 10.000 and there are 100 "real" particles then only these 100 are simulated or all 10.000?