Particle Systems.

Hey guys

Just getting into using the particle systems and have a few questions. I read they're pretty heavy on performance, so what is the standard for using multiple particle systems? If the settings are very different between objects, should they have their own separate particle system? Should you only pool systems that are alike, IE something like fires or torches would share, but an explosion uses a separate one?

Is it better to just have a couple for everything and everything sets it up manually at runtime?

Are there any good videos about this out there?

Thanks in advance guys!

 

As for performance, you can have a couple hundred, max thousand(s) depending on the system. The particle system is CPU simulated and able to interact with the gameworld. If you want something only for visual effects, you are better off with the new VFX graph, since it allows for GPU simulated particles (which thus cannot interact with the game world, other than visually) and allows for hundreds of thousands if not millions of particles, depending on the system.
Since i'm not super experienced with the particle system i'll let somebody else answer those questions