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Materials and shaders for GPU instancing particles?

Discussion in 'General Graphics' started by noise256, Jun 28, 2018.

  1. noise256

    noise256

    Joined:
    Apr 7, 2013
    Posts:
    22
    Hi,

    I just updated Unity to 2018.1.6f1 to start using GPU instancing to handle a large number of projectiles. The GPU instancing itself is working fine and the performance increase was enormous so that's great but I've never used meshes for particles before and I'm a bit confused about how to get additively blended particles with GPU instancing.

    I currently just have the 'Standard' shader on for the particle material as this is the only I can see that has the checkbox for GPU instancing. If I'm not mistaken, the 'Particles/Standard Surface' shader should have checkbox but I don't see it and instead I just get https://gyazo.com/43512e317b0e0f9a1e83d1573f59ee82. Is there something wrong with my shader or my configuration? Should I just write a custom shader?


    Anyway, hope this post doesn't sound too confused.
     
    noise256, Jun 28, 2018
    #1

  2. richardkettlewell

    richardkettlewell

    Unity Technologies

    Joined:
    Sep 9, 2015
    Posts:
    2,285
    Hey, take a look at:
    https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/PartSysInstancing.html

    TL;DR: with the standard particle shader, it should just work without any extra config needed.
    You can disable it in the Renderer module of the particle system (see docs page) in order to compare performance and prove how much faster it is for you.
     
    richardkettlewell, Jun 28, 2018
    #2