Particle Dynamic Magic 2.1 - Ultimate Decal, Spline & Shuriken advanced effects framework

Particle Dynamic Magic v2.1

PDM 2.1 will offer many enchancements and gameplay related updates, like the handling of destruction of AI and painted gameobject agents, new projection controls for spreading grass around rocks and items and many new features.


Particle Dynamic Magic v1.7 (Released)
Many more options are coming to the dynamic batching and transition manager.


Particle Dynamic Magic v1.6 released !!!!

Effect showcase Webplayer:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/79230236/PDMv12DEMO/PDMv12WebDemoFINAL.html

MUSICles DEMO:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/79230236/MUSIC_DEMO_PDMv1/PDM_MUSIC_Demo_v1.html
AMOEBA Demo:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/79230236/AMOEBA/PDM_AMOEBA_Demo.html
Turbulence demo:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/79230236/TURBULENCE/PDM_TURBULENCE_Demo.html
Phoenix demo (v1.0):
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/79230236/PHOENIX/PHOENIX.html
Break and Reform (with gameobjects and particles) (v1.0)
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/79230236/PDM_BREAK_REFORM/PDM_BREAK_and_REFORM.html
Mage Duel Demo (v1.0):
https://googledrive.com/host/0B-QCdE1dswQBbnRkZndSZUhCbkk/PDM_MAGEDUEL.html

Here is the new video from the music module that uses splines, meshes and forces to make particles move around with the music, using the new transition manager module.

MUSICles video, showcasing the music and transition modules.

Updated feature list for v1.6


New Prefab Manager with over 200 ready to use effects, covering all systems in the pack.



The new features in v1.3

Particle transition and behavior manager
- Mode to smoothly move particles between projection, skinned/procedural meshes and splines
- GUI to control the transitions and be used as base for any effect
- Distance and tag based cut off management for particles and splines, to increase performance
- Mode to smoothly increase particle size and spread on surfaces.

Particle music module
- A new way to manipulate particles through music, that uses all the Particle Dynamic Magic effects for unlimited effects.
- Control scale, coloration, size, turbulence etc with music
- Example scene included

Particle gameobject painter
- Paint custom gameobjects on any collider surface
- Glue effect to follow surface motion after painting, paint on moving objects
- Mask based brushes
- Follow mask texture color (play mode only)
- Wind effects
- Surface normal conformation or customize angle

Mask based mesh emission
- Control mesh emission with texture mask, fully optimized to emit only from non masked mesh areas.
- Normal conformation, allows mesh particles to follow the surface normals, to emulate effects like spikes coming out of a creature body.




The new features in v1.2

Spline particles
- particles can follow splines, splines can be changed during game mode !!!!

Spline editor
- works both in game and editor modes.

Skinned mesh emission
- animated characters can emit particles from their body (also supports non skinned meshes)

Global Turbulance
- Turbulance effects with various options for control (turbulant wind etc)

Terrain conform
- Put particles against terrain, various modes for upwards motion and circle formation

Particle emission painting
- Paint positions for emission directly on scene objects, works in both editor and play modes !!!!!

Particle propagation
- Particles may be transfered from one object to another (for effects like fire propagation)

The new samples include
Weapon trails
Magic gates
New sword effects
Vines spells
Magic shield spells
Giant self particle spell
Cartoon particle self
Catch fire
Magic tree (with interactive falling trees turbulance)
Target and marker effects (on ground, above hero etc)
Butterflies swarms
Volcano flow
River flow
Magic auras
Dynamic letters (forming from splines)
Minigame with 100+ ready effects implemented and ready to use

and many more, currently adding as much as i can before release

v1.01 features
Global attractors/repel forces (added particle coloration)
Image based emission
Real time particle painting
Swords
Shields
Space effects
Dynamic fire - water
Growing dynamic grass/flower fields
Orbital effects
Dynamic fog

Plus i have finished on a mini game, with a mage casting ready made samples of all the above effects, with multiple samples for each feature and this will be included in the pack.

Since the effects have surpassed anything i had initially planned by far, i may have to change the price after v1.2 release, so
it is a good opportunity to grab it at the current price.

Also would like some opinion on the art i have in the image for the store, any comments are wellcome

 

Hi a couple of questions. Firstly can you control and use particle manipulators on your splines ? For example I want a plasma spline where I can start a plasma fire at one end of the spline and have the fire spread along the spline changing the color of the plasma as it does so. I'm guessing the way I could do that would be to move a particle coloration manipulator along the spline at run time , is that correct. Also can this system control and emit game object transforms or meshes as well as particles ? If not is it using the shuriken particle renderer in unity meaning I could use hayate to enable that or is it a completely separate particle system ?

It might also be an idea to create a web player so that people can test out the performance of your particle system or at least give some idea of it's performance. For example is it suitable for mobile use ?

Also in terms of your images it might be an idea to make your logo have more contrasting colors at the moment I think it is all a bit too orange. Also it's not obvious what the top left image is demonstrating and doesn't look very visually impressive. It would be better if you changed it to for example demonstrate dynamic splines and again don't make it all orange. I think you like orange too much.

Also when you say global forces do you mean they effect all particle systems at the same time or can you set the forces to only effect particular particle systems ? I want to create some dynamic particle explosions for example but don't want the particle splines effected ?

 

I would love to see a webplayer demo too.

 

Thanks for all the suggestions

A web player is coming with a full demo for the pack, the effects are as fast as you like them to be

The effects come with cut off distances for both particle source and individual particles, so everything can customized to run from smaller devices to more powerfull systems. I test on my 4 years old non gaming laptop for most effects, so you will get a good result at that hardware level. For phones the global effects need to be tuned in affect distances to allow better performance of course, since affecting all near particles is tricky and needs planning on any system.

About the splines, i expose the complete curve at each frame, so any effect can be based on that, also the spline can be fully controlled in game, i will include a sample that you can control it via spheres attached to its nodes during gameplay

I can try to add what you ask as an extra example in the update

The system i use for spline follow is a simple particle attached to a follower gameobject, so essentially any kind of particle will work fine with it

I do not have emission from the line itself (though would be trivial to add, since i have the particle conform code and full definition of the line).

If i have the time, i will include that too (emission from the whole line, than a point which moves along the line)

The colors on the left are faded because this is the image i will use in the asset store (must be faint to have letters show clearly)

The global effectors affect all particles in a certain distance. In the update you can limit the interaction by tag too (but that is not in v1.01 on the store)

It is also trivial to add, so if you have the pack and need it before the update comes, i could give you the code update for the select by tag (or by layer if you like)

v1.2 will have a full demo, with 100+ effects implemented and ready to use in one big mini game, so users dont have to look at manuals or guess how everything is done

I try to put as much as possible in, right now making the real time painting and fire propagation samples for the demo.

I am close, i have put almost everything in, i need to optimize a bit, clean the code and i could have the demo up even before the update comes.

BTW, would you be interested in a small (rough) tutorial with pics i have made, to get an idea of what to expect from that demo ? I describe the spline, terrain and paint/propagation systems


Here is a pic from the demo in its current state (shows the tree with mesh emission, and global repel effect with the shield around the hero, also leaves have turbulance. The red dots are one of the aura effects around the hero and conforms to the ground as you move)

 

i am interested but can you maybe show some of your current progress?

 

Sure, i can post some small tutorials

The coding is 99% ready, i need to add some options for the painted particles and some more versatility in what affects which system and i am done

Everything is 100% stable right now, with undo for everything implemented etc

Of course with such a complex system there is always something, so i plan to check again and again until everything is perfect and probably submit next week

I will polish a bit and post the small tutorials

First one is up



Samples of what effects can be achieved


Forming letters


Dripping letters
http://www.pictureshack.us/images/15755_Dynamic_Letters_Driping.gif







Note that all the above are from work in progress, the tutorials will be updated as i add more options to the scripts until release

 

UPDATE:

- Finished the tag based selection for objects affected by global forces. Now each global attractor can define (multiple) tags of objects to influence

- Added option to sequencially or evenly emit particles from painted or enflamed positions

- Finished the spline emission, as requested and i have to say, i am glad i did, looks great



Now i will add more option for loosen the conform etc

.

Any other requests or suggestions are wellcome

 

Now this is cool!

 

Thanks !!!

Gets cooler when i make the particles leave the spline based on rules (like i do with the terrain scripts, for the aura effects)

 

Hi looks great. I have another question can your image based emission work with procedurally changing textures and how many frames per second could it process changes ? Another option if it uses a lot of performance could be for it to have the option to tween between two images to produce particle texture animations if possible instead. I use a fluid sim plugin to handle dynamic plasma fluid dynamics for another mode in my game. The issue is that it's performance is heavily influenced by the resolution of its fluid grid. I was wondering if I could tell the fluid sim to run at a low resolution for high performance and then tell your image emmision system to use the texture it generates to emit particles based on it. Ideally I would like to stretch a 128 x 128 pixel image over a large area and tell your system to emit multiple particles per pixel cordinate and then perhaps give them some slight turbulence to in effect blur the image and make it look less pixelated and more dynamic. Would this be possible ? Also some of your examples mention that your particles can flow over a bumpy terrain. Can they also flow over bumpy meshes as well. The surface that I would like my fluid sim to operate on has a bump mapped shader under it. Would it be possible to have your image emmision system influenced by a normal map ?

 

Thanks

I have to look into the procedural texture, it is an interesting idea

How do you plan to feed the texture to the script ?

If you give me that detail, i can program around it and check performance

Currently i can flow over the standard unity terrain and there is also a script to use projection to cast particles on any collider surface. I do not support material induced conform though. Also i cant answer if i could actually make it influenced by the normal map, theoretically it should be possible, that would be something to consider for version 1.3 and beyond.

EDIT: I did a simple test and added the code from my start() method, where i get the pixels from the texture, directly to the update and the performance hit is not that big when particles are in a reasonable number always. The image i used is 32x32. I will check with higher number and get back

EDIT2: I checked with 128x128 image and the performance hit is around 20fps when i get the pixels and set the particles in the update function, so it is not low. I can enable the feature for the update and we can discuss optimizations i could do to get it running even faster. I test on a 4 years old laptop with core 2 duo, for reference.

 

Hi the performance sounds great that should be more than enough. Out of interest what is the main limiting factor on performance is it mainly the number of particles being rendered or the resolution of the texture being processed ? I take it that in most cases the cpu is the limiting factor not the fill rate of the pixels for the particles ? I've just thought of one issue with my fluid sim idea though. At present areas in the texture that are black are meant to be where there is no fluid. Would it be possible to put an option in your image emision to ignore and not emit particles from a part of a texture that is a specified color. Is it smart enough at present to ignore areas of a texture that are completely transparent already ? It might help the performance because then even fewer particles would be needed.

To answer your question about how I am using the texture. The fluid sim can either write to and update a standard texture of for faster performance use a render texture directly in unity pro. At present I am just including this texture in a shader to render it directly. I was assuming that your image emmision script would let you specify which texture to use as a reference and would receive the changes when the texture was updated. It would probably be best if you could specify its update interval so it could be reduced on lower performing computers.

Also with regards with how I would feed a procedural texture to a script I would probably use the number flow plugin to generate the texture at runtime and link to that.

When do you think you will be able to release the dynamic spline particle emitter ?

My suggestion would be release a web player demo of it with those spheres you mentioned that can move the spline at run time and perhaps some buttons to make the different particle colors flow down the spline and a control to change the number and size of the particles flowing down it. All the things to show off the fact it is dynamic basically. The main thing I would like to check is that it can handle garbage collection without large performance spikes for example or avoid it all together with the use of particle pooling. Particle systems need to have consistent performance or they aren't really suitable for games.

 

About the texture emission, i use a texture2D as input and i can update it every frame. If you change it on disk, my guess is that it will pick it up (not 1000% sure though). The framerate is mainly affected by the required particle number to get the picture represented, so 128x128 is already an issue for my old laptop (but would not bother a better PC)

I will have an option to update every xxx frame, that is a good idea. My initial implementation did not have the image grabbed in update, only on start for max performance, so i added the real time updating as an option now.

About the spline and particle pooling, i only use one particle system that goes over the spline, so i am not sure there is need for pooling in this case, unless you mean a particle per particle pooling, which i am not sure if or how it would be possible with Shuriken. Any ideas on that would be wellcome of course.

About the demo, i will release it together with the update, i am not sure if i should release it before, plus is not ready or optimized yet. The spline is fully dynamic in play mode and stable (even i was surprised it got so stable for both the line itself and the follow code ), and you can control it with dragable spheres in the demo itself. Performance seems good so far, i will check extensively and after i do all the final optimizations and get back with exact numbers, that will take a few days though because i still write code for features and will do the final optimizing this weekend (hopefully).

I post a pic with the emission from spline itself (particle conform to spline, in contrast to move along it) and frame rate

 

Yes I did mean a per particle pool or your system does at least need to be designed in such a way that unity will not start garbage collecting during gameplay. Depending how you have coded it shuruken might already be doing some pooling for you and perhaps unity has become more efficient and smarter about its used to be. What I mean by particle pooling is imagine you have a spline which is a line that is sending particles down it. It is constantly creating particles at the start of the line and destroying particles when they reach the end of it. Rather than deleting a particle at the end of the spline you should put it into a pool for latter use and then rather than getting unity to create a new particle at the start of the spline simply move the particle from the pool that isn't being used. I think you can create an array of particles for this in unity and only enable them when required.

Imagine during gameplay someone made the spline shorter so it was suddenly destroying more particles than it was creating as it removed all the particles from the length of spline that was deleted. You need to make sure that unity won't start garbage collecting them but instead put them all into a pool.Garbage collection is very expensive on mobile platforms for example so you are best making unity avoid it during gameplay if possible.

I would suggest that you release the web player demo when you submit the 1.2 update. I think it usually takes several days for unity to approve updates so in effect people would get a chance to play with it before it was released anyway. You could then increase the cost of the asset as you plan after the release of 1.2 to encourage people to purchase it before it is approved to get it cheaper before the price increase.

It would probably be best to also make a separate thread announcing that you have added dynamic particle splines to particle magic so that people who are mainly interested in dynamic splines are more aware of it.

 

What i do right now is either

1. have a single Shuriken particle follow the spline and emit with its own properties (that is used for the forming letters)

2. emission from a single particle pool (one shuriken system) from the whole spline, particles are split on each spline point evenly

So generally i do use a kind of pooling, all my scripts are attached to a single particle system that is never destroyed and splits particles to positions properly, how you split and how the system is reducing dynamically particles to match the spline is something to be considered, though this would be material for the next update, because there can be many implementations.

Right now i do the standard stuff of splitting the particles evenly, i do not reduce them dynamically etc, though this is very much possible to do and will defintly consider it if i have time to make it even more adaptive

As for the demo, i wish i could just release it right now, but with some many things i have added, it needs a lot of work. I may split a few samples from the 100+ and post a reduced set before the asset passes validation for the store. That is a mid ground solution i could follow, but i need to have the final fully optimized code in, so will take at least until i submit the pack to start working on this smaller demo, but i think i will be able to have it before the asset is live.

Generally everything runs smooth if you are carefull in the setup. In the demo i will provide the proper setups for dynamic and static splines.

In dynamic spline case, since i do an update (only when the relative position of handlers changes though), having a huge spline with detail to the max and lot of particles may bring things down a bit if you move the handlers frequntly (like playing an animation on them), but with some carefull planning and adjusting the options, the performance is great.

Everything is parametric, so you can define exactly if you like the spline to be dynamic in play mode, the segment detail etc and can be tailored to any system as such

Same logic goes for the particle propagation, for fire catching effects etc, one particle pool handles the effect and parameters dictate what is affected (i use tags for objects that may catch fire or you can paint on in real time for example)

Nice idea about the separate thread btw, i will make one when the pack is submitted showcasing the dynamic spline edit and particle paint and propagation systems in play mode

Now i am working on testing animations for the splines (play animation on handlers) and emission from the texture of skinned meshes, so exact color can be inherited.

A list of updates in the last few days

- added a tag based selection system for global forces, now you may affect only certain objects (multiple tags supported)

- added optimizations in spline play mode, so it gets updated only when the relative handlers positions change

- added another mode for fire emission in fire propagation and painting systems (now can emit both evenly and sequentially)

- added option to change texture on the fly in dynamic image emission

- added spline emission from whole spline (this is additional to the follow spline mode) and options to loosen the emission or have it fully conformed to the line

- added a projection system to project particle positions on any collider using surface (which then inherit the particle motion)

To do:

- Test animations on spline nodes
- Add an option to color particles that go near a global attractor or are repeled
- Particulize (or whatever is called) the texture of meshes/skinned meshes, so you can have the colors too
- add magic gates samples in demo and weather effects (tornado is already in)

 

UPDATE:

- Splines can now be fully animated in play mode (pics above, the red line is a trail and not the spline itself, only the particles follow the spline without delay in the above example)

I am now trying to get the texture colors from every possible mesh (skinned etc) to add as option to image emission (at least when mesh is not animated)

 

Turbulance (vortex creation on proximity)


Dynamic lightning (pick close targets)


Fire propagation (afte fireball cast)


Butterfly swarm and leaf emitting tree


Gravity


Planar gravity


Before tornado spell

After tornado spell


Lightning storm



Procedural mesh textured emission


Skinned mesh textured emission


Particle Spline manipulation in play mode



UPDATE:

I have finally finished with all the new features in v.1.2 and added all demos, now i am in the polishing and cleaning the code stage

Here is a summary of the new features, demos will come as soon as i submit the pack in the next few days.

New in v1.2

Spline particles and editor
Real time spline deformation, fully controllable by user
Spline emission, with follow line or whole body emission patterns (full conform and emission modes)

Particle projectors

Particle painting (both in play and editor modes)

Particle propagation (e.g. objects can catch fire)

Turbulance (parametric, multi vortex creation and parametrization)

Skinned, simple, procedural mesh emission (full conform to in game animation and emit modes)

Terrain conform and flow

Ready spell and other effects
- Sword of fire - ice - energy
- Magic wands
- Weapon trails
- Thunder storm
- Chain lightning
- Orbs
- Fireballs
- Blast ball (fireball that creates a persistent blast fire circle upon impact)
- Aura spells (full conform to ground, or emitting)
- Growing letters (spline effect, for introductions etc)
- Butterfly swarms
- Leaves on ground (affected by tornado etc spells and magic shields)
- Magic shield (repel fire etc)
- Magic gates
- Volcano erruption and lava flows
- River flow
- Propagating fireball (near objects catch fire)
- Magic rings
- Giant self particle spell
- Cartoon particle self
- Catch fire
- Magic tree (with interactive falling trees turbulance)
- Vines spell
- Despell (vortex motion to repel/scatter fire etc)
- Space effects and energy flows (various samples)
- Target and marker effects (on ground, above hero etc)

Extended in v.1.2

Attractor class:
- Particle coloration based on force
- Turbulance with vortex creation
- Gravitational pulling (with optional planar conform with defined plane)
- New attract functions
- By tag selection of objects to be affected

Image emission class:
- New depth texture function to determine pixels 3D position

The complete demo will be a full mini game where all effects can be tested and evaluated (includes 93 effects and spell samples so far and will be upgaded regularly). The demo will be included in the pack.

Any comments/suggestions for additions are welcome, and suggestions about the new pricing would be nice too

 

That skinned mesh texture emission looks good. How easy are your effects to chain together with scripts ? I'd love to be able to convert a mesh into particles at run time and then make them explode with all the particles being fired away from the mesh. I guess the way I would do that would be to first to add a textured mesh emmision to a particular object before hiding its normal mesh renderer and then applying an explosion force to all the particles, would that be possible ?

Also just a suggestion about your particle splines. You were saying that at present you couldn't change their lengths or have a very high update interval with long complicated splines.

My game needs very high performance splines for very accurate collisions that could update at 60 fps. To do this at present I am scripting with the curvy plugin. To get high performance what I do is connect 2 splines together. In my game the spline is often constantly growing and the user can change the direction the end of the spline that is growing. If the user isn't pressing any buttons in effect the spline will just be growing in a straight line. Every time the user presses a button to change direction I tell curvy to start a new spline that updates at 60 fps and merge all the other splines behind that point into one spline. This larger more complicated spline is only updated at 1 fps but by combining the two together I get the impression of a smoothly growing spline that I can query efficiently for collisions.

At present I can easily get curvy to provide me the start and end position of the total combined spline along with regular spaced control points positions along the whole spline. I am intending to feed those values into what ever spline system you need for you particle splines. My question is if they can't grow or change length is it possible to simply destroy one and then create a larger one at run time or perhaps make a system where you could easily link separate splines together and have particles flow across where they connect.

Perhaps I would move a particle trail smoothly along at 60 fps where the end of the spline was according to curvy and then make your particle system generate a spline of the correct length for the rest of the spline at 1 fps.

 

Skinned emission with texture color and relax factor (so it inherits Shuriken settings like gravity and forces)



Explosion force in skinned emission (enable relaxed mode, enable global repel force)



Spline editing in play mode

Hi,

thanks for the interest in the pack and the suggestions

I have a relax option in all effects. So in each one you can easilly access the variable controlling the relax factor at any point and enable all kind of effects and reforms.

For example the particles i conform to the ground can easilly inherit the shuriken properties when relax is turned on and then reform to the ground when turned off.

Also all effects have dynamic property, which means the skinned emission can follow a changing texture at run time and animations etc

The effect you describe is possible and easy to setup, i may include it in the demo mini game so you can have it ready.

The splines are generally fast and you can limit the resolution of the curves, so essentially you can have big splines with many nodes, it is just that depending on peformance required you may not use the full resolution. The thing is that this has a minimal impact on particles, even at lower resolutions a dynamic emission from the spline will look about same at mid range resolution, which is very fast.

I also have the option to not update the spline at runtime (static mode), if you dont require real time manipulation in play mode, so if you want a really complex one can be made with this option and be super fast.

Also the splines can change length between nodes at runtime. I will soon post a demo to demonstrate the effect. The spline is fully controllable at runtime, and can be any length or shape etc

An idea would be to just use my splines and move the points in real time (since my system supports moving the spline nodes in play mode), making the dynamic spline move where you need it at each time point. That way you would only need one spline.

I support both a follow the spline mode (particle moves along the spline) and full emission (particles emit from the whole spline)

The spline particles can also be affected by the other systems in the pack, like vortexes from turbulance and global attract/repel forces etc

EDIT: I post some pics showing the in game editing, all nodes can be moved, the spline is dynamically updated and length etc changes depending on nodes. Particles are setup to emit from the curve points. Of course this could be changed to make them emit from interpolated positions in between or any kind of other effect.

EDIT2: Added a sample pic of the skinned mesh particles exploding, i set this up in 5 minutes so it is a basic version, i will work more on the effect and inlude it in the demo.

 

UPDATE:

I have just finished extensive testing on the dynamic splines and i have done tests with physics added to the spline, everything works great and splines can be fully dynamic in game with physics (and animations), in all emission modes.

Also have added another 10 examples, with fire propagation in trees, more fireball/fire examples with focus on turbulance and multiple dynamic splines with physics

Added a multithreading mode to be used with turbulance too, that dramatically increases performance when using many vortexes (i will inlcude a demo with and without the multithreading to showcase the difference in effect and performance)

Now i have to give some more options in the particle projection and the pack will soon be ready to go (hopefully, since i will have to make the new images for the asset store etc too, which takes lots of time and doing some art for the spell effects too)

To sum up:

- Tested splines with physics in play mode, anything is possible and works great

- Added multithreading for turbulance, which increases performance when vortex number is high

- Added 10 more example scenes with fire propagation, physics manipulated particle emitting splines and fireballs focusing on turbulance effect

- Added particle variability based on texture sheet (particles can have different image based on sheet images)


To do:

- Add some cool textures for some extra spell effects
- Give extra options in projection mode

To do for v1.3:
- Consider how the GPU could be used to speed up particle drawing, but without the need of using DX11

Any comments on what else could be added is welcome

Also i was wondering if anyone would like to have the dynamic physics based spline manipulation as a separate cheaper package too ? The effects possible are really exiting

And would be nice to have suggestions on pricing for the v1.2, since it now offers dynamic splines, terrain effects and turbulance as well as global forces for particles and 100+ ready samples, i am thinking to set the price to 60-70$, but i would like to know what people would be the most comfortable with.

 

I think $60 sounds about right for version 1.2 but to get people to be willing to spend $60 they need to be able to see it in action to see what they are getting or have an asset with a lot of positive reviews to have confidence in buying it.

I would suggest that you release a web demo or at least a video showing off your particle system and keep the price at $40 for a short time to encourage early adopters and reviews . $40 is also an amount of money that people might consider spending even if they are interested mainly in the splines. Thats why I think you should release a spline web player demo and announce that along with saying that the price is going to rise shortly.


Later down the line you could then perhaps release a package that only contained the turbulence and splines at a cheaper price perhaps $30 .

If you want to do GPU acceleration without directx 11 an opencl.net wrapper for unity has just been released that you might want to try. Alternatively you could wait for Unity 5 where at some point they are likely to add opengl es3.1 that can use compute shaders. If possible I would try and keep your particles compatible with shurunken in Unity though as it is highly likely that Unity are planning to accelerate it at some point in Unity 5 themselves.

 

Thanks for the suggestions, they are all very usefull

I looked at the possibility of a GPU implementation and was stuck with the DX11 requirement because i want the pack to have global use and not just on certain platforms.

I have implemented multithreading for the turbulance and forces, which already gives a dramatic increase in performance and the next step would be to try and use the GPU, so the tip about the opencl.net wrapper is very nice to know.

As for the demos, they will come in numbers soon , i have a very nice physics based manipulated splines demo (Medusa) and multiple scenes showcasing the turbulance with vortexes, fire propagation, terrain and projection effects etc.

I plan to release 3-4 individual demos focusing on each feature and the pack will contain a very big playground with 100+ ready effects to choose from and interact with. I think that adding many samples for every case is crucial, since reading a manual is not anyones favourite , plus i can insert some artistic touch i imaged these effects could be used for. Also i may put the bigger mini game online too, for previewing, depends on how heavy it will be for online deployment.

Right now i am polishing the forest part of the demo, that will contain the physics based spline medusas, which can be manipulated in real time, burned (catch fire and enter emit mode in tentacles) and electrocuted with spells, plus affected by tornados etc. I attach some teaser pics above

 

Does this work for mobile?

 

Some pics from a new scene included in v1.2 (WIP)

Artistic effects and dynamic physics based spline creatures


And a view from above

It uses Shuriken and manipulation of its particles, so i suppose it will run, there is nothing outside Unity standard implementation.

Performance wise every script can be tweaked to give the desired quality-range vs performance for the effects.

For example the Turbulance has a multithreading mode that could benefit immensly the phones with a second core. Multithreading also gives a very big boost to desktop application of the effects. Also every vortex can be tweaked to affect smaller distances, the rate can be adjusted etc.

To be clear, i have not tested it on mobile, so i cant 100% guarantee it will perform well in every scenario, but i dont see why it would not work with some tweaking to get the performance right. If you come across some major issue, i will try my best to solve it asap, plus i would definitly want to know what performs well on phone, so i can provide demos specifically for mobile apps, pre-tweaked to give great effects.

The plan for v1.3 is to also create extra scenes from requests and mobile specific requests are more than welcome too.



Small (or rather big) update:

- Added editor preview for every effect, now all particle manipulation effects can be previewed (Turbulance, Spline emission, Mesh emission,Terrain conform, Projection etc etc) directly in the editor.

- Added more turbulance control options

- Making two new scenes, the one shown above (artistic) and the dark forest scene i described in the previous post, constantly tweaking and making effects work together perfectly.

 

cooooooool good job

 

Spider Web draft demo. Splines multi-connected with full physics (spring and fixed joints) and all points can be manipulated.


Magic Feeling demo

Thanks a lot, glad you like it

I am now experimenting with complex dynamic spline formations (like splines linked to other spline nodes), and adding more ease of use for such constructions and ready demos.

Also added emitting flyers in the Magic Feeling demo and some optimizations.

Update:

- Added options to enable/disable each spline manipulation points in editor. This makes the scene cleaner for bigger/complex setups with many splines.

- Added option to have splines show even when they are not selected, this will make connecting the splines easier for physics based setups

- Worked on the magic feeling demo and started the new spider web demo

- Added option in projected and terrain conformed particles to keep the initial projected position and then be affected by any applied force from the other scripts. This way i can have a tornado with turbulance and vortexes make whole flower fields projected on ground/rocks go flying. I plan to add a demo specifically with such a setup.

 

I have been testing the scripts on an Android mobile, so far everything has worked fine and performance is great, even with complex setups like the medusa one with the multiple physics manipulated emitting splines.

I will keep testing under various situations and probably provide a mobile specific setup for all the effects in a separate folder.

Here is a pic of the medusa, now i will add more and see how the performance is.



It is so fun controlling the medusa on mobile

One question, is there a way i can i see the framerate on my mobile ?

Also is it possible to grab pics directly from apps in Android ?

And how could i provide a demo that will play on mobiles ? Is it possible to host it in dropbox like the PC ones ?

Ok, that was 3 questions

 

Google 'screenshot *your device name here*'

It's usually device specific what combination of buttons you press but every android device we've had has had the ability

 

Thanks , that is great, i will search asap and post some proper pics

EDIT: Ok, did it



EDIT2:



Tested with 3 medusas, still going smooth

EDIT3: I get different performance when i have the mobile on the USB on my PC and when i unplug it. Is some energy saving module kicking in ?

EDIT4: Ok, i think i dont get a difference now that disabled the development mode, the turbulance works fine on mobile too (multithreaded version)

 

You can find out what fps it runs at by using the free fps counter asset from the asset store and drag it to your scene. If you want to create a demo for mobile just attach an apk download of it. If there is a link on a website then it will automatically install if clicked in the android browser.

It's probably easier to just create a web demo though and link it to this forum though.

The performance difference when not plugged into the usb may well be power related. It depends on your mobile device. It also depends how hot your mobile is at the time. Phones have batteries that get hot when being used and so the cpu has to clock down to compensate because they don't have fans like pc's. Alternatively if you have a very new phone with 8 cores it might be that it is using all 8 cores when plugged in but doesn't have enough power from just the battery and so only uses 4.

If it is slower when plugged into usb then it would probably be because you have debugging on or your phone is fast charging the battery that also gets it hotter.

 

Turbulance with Vortexes Multithreading - Dynamic Spline manipulation checked on mobile, working great

Thanks, everything in this post helps a great deal

Just got the fps counter, also i disabled the development USB mode and is now at full speed again, so this would probably be the cause

I am amazed at Unity, i could setup and run this complex system in Android in a few hours without any issues, just increadible

Also on mobile with the touch is just lovely, i am playing around for hours now

 

Looks like a very useful plugin

 

Gameobject Scattering mode and wind effects

Thanks , i try to make it as complete as possible

Just added another feature, gameobject scattering along with the particles

This is usefull for 3D grass + little particle flowers combinations

I have a preview mode to place and preview the grass in editor too


UPDATE:

- Added gameobject scattering in particle projection, with wind mode for grass and controllable local rotation (for simulating gravity etc)

Each grass blade can rotate independently and have added a Perlin noise mode for wind

- Added gravity lerp effect for flower field on tornado effects (tornado will make flowers fly around and gravity will let them settle to the ground afterwards)

 

Gateway to heaven demo scene (WIP)


Mobile all effects demo scene(WIP)


UPDATE:

- Added another demo scene for splines (first pic)

- Working on mobile specific demo, that will show the Turbulance, Fire propagation, Dynamic Physics based Splines, Dynamic Lighning, Animated mesh emission, Gameobject Scattering and wind, Vortexes, Projection and various other effects.

All effects will be dynamic and manipulated by in scene items, for example the tornado can be moved and affect the leaves on the ground or the fires, the medusa can be moved around to showcase the dynamic physics based splines, the red spheres can dynamically catch fire etc

 

UPDATE:

- Added full dynamic mode to scattering of gameobjects, now i can scatter in real time on anything with a collider and also enable effects like procedural animation of individual items (the red cubes are procedurally changed in the first pic and all cubes in the second, all derived from the same single red cube on the right side of the 2ond pic)

- Adding colorize effects for the scattered objects, thinking of various pattern options to enable

- Added follow particles mode, so gameobjects can inherit particle positions and be affected by all forces and turbulance (pic 3, gameobject go flying following the turbulance vortex motion)

- Working on the final demo (The flight) and the showcase pics for the asset store



Suggestions for what else could be added in the gameobject scattering system are welcome

 

Update:

- Adjusted gameobject scattering on skinned emission

- Adding demos for the effect

 

Looks good. If you want to get really fancy you could make it combine the separate meshes with boolean functions or convert it into a metablob. With the correct shaders you could then do fluid animations or true volumetric particles like smoke with the correct depth.

If you took that man made of square blocks. If you used a gravity manipulator on your particle system , told it to create a metablob around the meshes and then rendered it with a water shader it would look like he turned to water and fell to the ground. Or with a similiar system you could do smoke effects.

When do you think you are likely to release version 1.2 or release a web demo of those spline effects ? You might be best finishing off those demo's and then releasing that update first and add the other features in a future update if you think it will take a while.

 

Gameobject Spline emission



Emitted Gameobject from spline emitting other splines



Hair like motion with splines and spring dynamics

Nice ideas, i will definitly look into that for v1.3, especially the fluid /metablob one

There are 3 demos that i have not shown yet, in one of them i lerp positions and use smoothing effects and gravity, all that will be controllable in the demo to test

Also i have dynamic effects, where gameobjects may catch fire or cast chain lighting around them, or swirl around a point etc

I will release v1.2 soon, i am finilizing the demos and the code is now stable, took a while because i implemented in editor preview for all particle effects, which was not that easy afterall , plus i did the gameobject emission that had some difficulties too

Now i am making the manual and optimizing for extra speed in certain effects, the first demos should arrive early next week, one will be mainly about the dynamic splines and effects with them

EDIT: Posted a pic of the gameobject emission from splines, i also combine it with physics to get a rubber spider like effect

All effects will be controllable in the demos, splines will either be controllable in all their nodes or physics based and attached to one controllable point (like the center sphere in the pic above)

EDIT 2: I can also attach anything on the emitted gameobject, even other splines

Pic 2 is spline that emits gameobjects with other splines attached

EDIT 3: Added spring to the endpoint and i can get some cool hair like motion at low speeds

Is there a way to control the spring joint so that it does not go very far away from the attached point, no matter the speed ?

EDIT 4: Made hair work, needed a mix of fixed and spring joints and the right ratio of dumpen to spring force, i will add a proper hair sample too

 

UPDATE:

- added metablob support, my emission code works fine with the blobs with minor modifications i made to the blob script to grab the mesh properly

I am not sure i can include the metablob code itself though , since it is under the Creative Commons Share Alike 3.0 License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/).

Is it possible to include such code in a project that is not licensed with this license overall ?
I have the license and original contribution creator mentioned in the file of course

EDIT: Posted in the "answers" section too

http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/707610/can-i-use-a-creative-commons-share-alike-30-licens.html

 

UPDATE:

- Finished all samples and demo stages, added some extra effects like the dynamic letters above

- Finished with prefab creation and code clean up, everything is ready to submit

- Doing the tags in prefabs and writing the manual, hopefully this will finish fast


One question on skinned emission, i have two scripts doing the same effect, one is faster but cant be prefabed (it can, but the effect wont be enabled if not enabled in the editor first, so could be used for static scene objects). The other can be prefabed and instantiated, but is slower due to controlling the particles via script than Skuriken itself alone.

Is it ok to leave both versions, in case the faster one is needed for scene objects that dont need to be instantiated and need the extra performance for the effect ?

Also should the manual be more visual ? Like a step by step with pics, than just mention the script option use ?

 

Those letters look nice. If I were you I would keep both versions of the skinned emission included. Just make sure you give the other one a different name and perhaps add StaticNonPrefab to the end of it. It's most likely that people would most often want to use the prefab version but the faster version would be useful for an animated logo on a start screen for example.

I don't think the documentation needs to be graphical. If you have example scenes I think most users will just try and play with them first before even looking at the documentation. The documentation should just be clear and easy to follow as people will mainly be looking through it to solve an issue they have and the easiest way to do that is with words not pictures. Some people also include quick start guides as well as more though documentation which could be graphical if there is something that is difficult to show with words.

What I think you do need however is a web player demo and perhaps some videos. You could for example make a video demonstrating how to build one of the example scenes so that it would both be useful as a tutorial and promotion for your asset. Perhaps you should add a web player of one of your examples to this forum while you wait for the asset update to be approved. Speaking for myself I would like to be able to test out the performance of the dynamic splines to make sure it is suitable for my game before purchase.

 

I plan to post the full demo in the coming days, i have many spline examples in, like a follow and dynamic manipulation one

I have tried to make some videos with Fraps, but the result is not good, so i will post the demos first and try to make proper videos at a later time

I will let you know as soon as the demo is posted



EDIT: Here is a first version of the full demo, i will polish it a bit more for release, but should give an idea of every effect and how it works

Online DEMO:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/79230236/PDMv12/ParticleDynamicMagicv1.2_WebDemo.html

Just remember to grab and play with the manipulation spheres

 

UPDATED DEMO:

Hi everyone

I am glad to annouce that i have uploaded the updated Particle Dynamic Magic v1.2 webplayer demo, which inlcudes a fully editable spline in play mode to play with (see pics for the results above)

Also the GUI has been updated and the fire propagation response time has been tweaked for better results.

You can try the new demo here:

DEMO LINK:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/79230236/PDMv12_1/ParticleDynamicMagicv1.2_WebDemo2.html

The new spline effect has been added near the end of the demo (so use the back button to go direcly to the last two demo parts to get to the spline editor)

Pressing the "add point" button will create a new spline node and add a manipulator so can be moved around immediately to reshape the spline.

The new point is added in distance similar to the distance between the two last points (so the distance must be kept low to avoid going off screen)

 

Some updates

The manual is done and the release is coming next week.

I have posted a new demo for the pack, this is one of the 3 mentioned above.


Alien Invasion Webplayer Link:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/79230236/PDMv12_CITY/DEMO City.html


The focus is on getting a Blade runner like atmosphere using particles to give the varied and changing feeling in lights.

Use "c" button to lock the camera so it is easier to manipulate the spline nodes. All splines can change shape in game by moving the nodes, the central one can have nodes added with the menu.

Mount camera button will take to the air along the top spline, pressing again will dismount. The airial pathway can also be adjusted by the spherical nodes.

The v1.2 pack update will be submitted to the Unity asset store next week, so it is a good time to grab the pack at the current lower price.

 

Update:

The update to v1.2 is finilized and will be submitted in the coming days, probably tomorrow.

I post pics of some of the finilized effects and demos. Which picture you think would be best for the asset store front ?

 

Hi everyone,

The Particle Dynamic Magic v1.2 pack has been submitted to Unity asset store and pending review.


The features:

- Global forces, Gravity, Planar Gravity, Swirl and spin effects, Attract and Repel

- Turbulence with dynamic vortex creation (multithreaded)

- Spline particles with spline editor and dynamic play mode manipulation of splines

- Skinned animated / procedural / simple mesh and image based emission.

- Projection based emission and surface normal conformation for gameobjects.

- Gameobject scattering and emission (all particle effects apply)

- Particle painting propagation (e.g. set on fire and catch fire effects)

- Terrain conformation for auras and grass/flower fields

- Dynamic lightning with auto targeting

- Editor preview and multiple demos prefabs for all effects


Webplayer demo for all effects:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/79230236/PDMv12DEMO/PDMv12WebDemoFINAL.html

Everything is dynamic in the demo, so try to grab the manipulation spheres and move them around, even the spline nodes are movable

Asset store link (current v1.01):
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/16175

The price will be the current low one for a few more days, so it is a good time to grab the pack before the price increase if interested.

 

Hi everyone

The pack is up on the asset store !!!!!

https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/16175

Updated demo:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/79230236/PDMv12DEMO/PDMv12WebDemoFINAL.html



The WIP plans for v1.3

- Adding a music module, of what shape and form is still to be determined, i have started working with sound to get it rolling

- New patterns in gameobject placement mode and more than one type of emitted gameobjects

- Gameobject painting mode (painted positions may emit gameobjects, that will also follow the painted object's motion like the particles currently and align to the parent object)

- Optimizations for multithreading, gameobject emission and evaluate the possibility of adding optional DX11 based calculations for certain effects

- Fractals and growth effects (that is under evaluation)

- Procedurally created particle textures

- Spline attractor, snap near object on spline points (Can be done with attractors in v1.2, but will evaluate a more spline oriented approach)

 

Paint an object on any collider surface


Painted will dynamically follow any transformation of the object they are painted on


UPDATE:

Dynamic in game (and in editor) painting of gameobject and particle combination has been finished and is now fine tuned and extended for the v1.3 release.

All painted items will follow the objects they are attached to and are all pooled for the ability to concentrate the meshes if needed.

Per object effects are also possible by default, like the procedural shaping/coloring in the pics

Coming in v1.3 update

 

UPDATE:

Perlin noise motion added for painted gameobjects

Forest in the wind pic

Floating Islands webplayer demo: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/79230236/GAMEOBJ_PAINT_DEMO1/GAMEOBJ_PAINT_DEMO1.html

Coming soon in v1.3

In the next version of the forest demo, i will have the option to select different brushes for painting, it is ready for the editor and i am now working on the play mode implementation

 

UPDATE:

Hi everyone,

The version 1.2.2 has been submitted to the asset store and is pending review. Should be up in the next few days.

The main new feature is a new rotation mode for emitted gameobjects from projection, which will allow them to rotate based on their direction of motion. This can enable effects like insect swarms etc

The new effect is shown in the posted pics.

Also a new scene and prefab have been added to showcase the new addition and minor fixes have gone to 3 prefabs that were missing the "constructor" mesh.