Search Unity

  1. Welcome to the Unity Forums! Please take the time to read our Code of Conduct to familiarize yourself with the forum rules and how to post constructively.
  2. We have updated the language to the Editor Terms based on feedback from our employees and community. Learn more.
    Dismiss Notice
  3. Join us on November 16th, 2023, between 1 pm and 9 pm CET for Ask the Experts Online on Discord and on Unity Discussions.
    Dismiss Notice

Particle Flickering

Discussion in 'Editor & General Support' started by seejaypeeko, Feb 23, 2012.

  1. seejaypeeko

    seejaypeeko

    Joined:
    Aug 8, 2010
    Posts:
    2
    Alright. I'm stumped.

    I've been playing with the new Particle System, and I'm having a small issue. I've got multiple particle systems attached to an object. The particle systems are being turned on and off with ParticleSystem.enableEmission=true/false, and forces are being added to the parent object.

    If the parent object is moving, when enableEmission is false, any remaining particles begin to flicker. When the flickering starts, the triangle and vertex count goes nuts. Turning vsync off makes this less noticeable.

    First, is this the appropriate way to turn the particle systems on and off? Second, does anybody have any idea what's causing the flickering?
     
  2. Meltdown

    Meltdown

    Joined:
    Oct 13, 2010
    Posts:
    5,796
    The problem is called z-fighting. The video card is not sure what to draw as both particle systems occupy the same depth.
    I'm having this same issue and cannot solve it.

    Although some things that have been recommended are...

    -Add an Offset property and changing the value of it for each vehicle's dust particle shader. See here on how to do this
    -Make the camera near and far plane as close as possible
    -Adding less particles

    Let me know if you find a solution that works for you.
     
  3. peoplelone

    peoplelone

    Joined:
    Mar 8, 2012
    Posts:
    3
    I'm having a small issue. I've got multiple particle systems attached to an object. The particle systems are being turned on and off with ParticleSystem.enableEmission=true/false
     
  4. kennymack007

    kennymack007

    Joined:
    Mar 3, 2012
    Posts:
    22
    Try messing with the option for "use local space" and "use world space".

    When the particles are turned off, the remaining ones should float in the world for their remaining lifespan instead of trying to follow the object.
     
  5. Nevermind

    Nevermind

    Joined:
    Jun 10, 2010
    Posts:
    66
    Did you solve this problem? I'm seeing the same behaviour: particles attached to moving object sometimes simply won't render for a single frame. This doesn't seem to happen in empty scene, so it's probably frame-rate dependent or something.

    For now, I've used legacy particle system in place of Shuriken one, but I don't like this workaround. Shuriken is so much more flexible.
     
  6. inewland

    inewland

    Joined:
    Dec 6, 2012
    Posts:
    20
    The way I solved this was fixing the scale on my particle system.

    For example, I created my particle system in the scene, which set a default scale to 1,1,1... The problem was that I made it a child of a transform that's scale was 200% the original size, however, the scale on my particle system stayed at 1,1,1. I dropped the particle scale down to 0.01 on all axis and it fixed the issue.

    Note that you may need to scale up if your parent object is smaller than 1,1,1...
     
  7. RedWarriorKF

    RedWarriorKF

    Joined:
    Mar 19, 2013
    Posts:
    1
    In the particle system, go to 'Renderer'. Change the 'sort mode' to 'By Distance'. Done
     
    ricmage likes this.
  8. TobiasB

    TobiasB

    Joined:
    Jul 4, 2013
    Posts:
    4
    I had a similar problem with whole particle systems flickering on and off seemingly random.

    We found out that if you do not have the Cull Off tag in the shader used by the particle system in can cause the whole particle system to flicker on and off at random frames.

    Hope this helps someone else out there! :)

    Kind regards, Tobias Biehl - Tech Artist @ Playdead
     
  9. ricmage

    ricmage

    Joined:
    Sep 10, 2013
    Posts:
    2
    uhuuu Gracias RedWarrior