Ultimate VFX - Massive Visual Effects and Particle System Collection

thank you for the direction, the whole VFX thing is pretty interesting to me, although I'm a developer myself

 

Hey @MirzaBeig
Just purchased the pack! I'm newer to VFX, but your tutorials helped out quite a bit and inspired me to grab the pack. I was interested in using your mats to play around in my current project, but I don't want to import all the files (worried about bloating the build since space is a concern). What importing info or general workflow suggestions would you recommend? Do I only need to import the Particle Systems > 1 - Assets > Materials > Particles > Sprites & Texture > Sprites and just delete the ones I don't end up using at the end? Wondering if there's a better way of going about this.

Thanks in advance !

 

@ocholicious

Hey!

Only the textures (from effects) that you use in scenes that are included for the builds will actually be packaged when you compile your project, so you don't have to worry about that. Quick note about materials: these barely take up any size and only define the properties that are passed to the shader, along with which shader is used for rendering. With art packages you should mostly be concerned with the textures if size is an issue.

If you'd still like to cut down as much as possible (although it won't affect your build size), you can import UVFX into a clean project and build your prefabs there. Then, when you're finished, just select the prefabs, right-click, and "Export Package..." to prepare something that you can use in your other project. This will only bring in the relevant files needed for that prefab.

You can check Unity's output log after building and you'll be able to see which elements of your build took the most space. For example, for audio files, textures, scripts, assemblies, etc.

> https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/LogFiles.html

If you find that your effects are still taking up too much space via textures, then right-click and select the dependencies on the prefab, and find which textures it uses.





Lower the max size here in the editor (most single sprites are 1k -> 4k and sprite sheets are 4k -> 8k), which... for mobile... is overkill. You can increase the max size or decrease it as required without actually having to modify the original texture in any way. If you need more quality, crank the size up at the cost of using up more texture memory and maybe performance, or turn it down for speed, performance, and smaller build sizes.

Hope that helps! Feel free to ask me any questions.

 

Ultimate VFX is about to get another juicy update to along with an official upcoming sale.

Changes...

- New effects (obviously).

- All the old image effects have been removed and replaced with a single post-processing behaviour component to go along with (included) profiles I've created using Unity's new free post-effects stack plugin. The newest screens are taken directly from the editor, and you can get a similar look just by tweaking the included profile for the plugin.

> This is what it looks like: http://imgur.com/a/LT9Nb.

- Several new demos based off projects submitted for Wallpaper Engine on Steam.
--> HERE: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=914417720

- Old screenshots that don't accurately represent UVFX anymore have been removed (demos that were removed since v2.0).

- I haven't been able to create new videos, but they are coming soon. I'm currently back to having awful upload speeds so it's hard to get new videos up. I'm also thinking about making 4k demos.

Here are some screens!







And some videos:

GFYCAT: https://gfycat.com/ElasticUnconsciousBernesemountaindog

For the stuff in the videos, I don't have the license to distribute the audio and skyboxes as non-embedded media (although you can't see the skboxes in these anyway and the background is made of particles as stars), but everything else will be there (I've removed the options because they're useless, so you'll get all the nice particles and some of the interactions!). If you have Wallpaper Engine, you can try them out. I'll see if I can also upload them as demos for standalone previews.

Finally, I also made this little mobile demo to stress test Ultimate VFX prefabs and the optimizations made to the Plexus and Force Affector components:

> DOWNLOAD APK.

It's an APK I tested on a Samsung Galaxy S5 and it should work really well! Please ignore the dumb name ("Spooky Game"). I put it together in an existing project where I had UVFX already imported.

If anyone has questions, let me know!

 

I was just going to post the two demos on your website have a bunch of missing scripts after being imported, but it sounds like once your latest update is published on the asset store, those will be fixed, plus we'll get a ton of new demos! Super awesome.

Just curious - do you take paid commissions for specific particle effects, or if not, do you consider requests?

 

Those missing scripts are intentional (note: not the same as errors, of course, since everything will work as intended). I make a note in the documentation of why

You'll notice in the screenshots that everything looks extra nice, and that's because I'm using Unity's provided image effects. I learned a while back that people prefer a streamlined experience when importing packages, myself included! So I stopped including them with the package. It was also another point of potential confusion for newer Unity users who may not realize they could get import conflicts because of folder structuring.

The missing scripts are those image effects I left in. So if you want to get a similar look to the screenshots, you can just import the cinematic and standard image effects packages and the missing scripts will fill themselves in. Not having those does not prevent projects from being compiled or tested, and beyond the warnings you'll get in the editor it has no actual impact!

With the latest release, however, there's only going to be one or two such potential "missing" script on the camera, and only if you don't already have Unity's new post-effects plugin imported along with their Global Fog effect. At any time if you add it in to the project, it should all fill itself in and start using the included profiles. This way, you don't get any added clutter into your project, the download is smaller, and you get something more accurate to the screenshots.

Here's an example:



I tweaked the final output a little, such as by changing the profile parameters between shots or colour grading images, but you can also edit the profiles that are included, where the newest demos have their own profiles entirely:



I know this may not be immediately obvious, so two things come to mind: I should re-work the documentation to include a FAQ at the top along with the quick-start guide (don't worry, you're not the only person who's asked me this!), and maybe include another .unitypackage within the asset download itself that couples together all the missing stuff so if people want, they can quickly and easily get everything right in there. This also keeps everything clean, but it does increase the file size a small bit.

Hope that helps!

 

I do both! But for the former I can't at the moment as I've got a backlog of things I need to do with multiple projects I'm currently working on. Feel free to drop some requests.

EDIT:

Just a heads up, I have v2.7 ready to go (the one the newest screenshots are based off), but it needs to be uploaded/published and approved by the store. As usual, buyers can simply e-mail me with their invoice for a direct download.

 

Aaaand the sale has started!

 

Congrats on getting the daily sale!

 

How about a request that is also a challenge?

In the game EVERSPACE, there are some areas that are close to a star. These stars emit solar flares (just like any stars do), but since the game area is so close to the star, a phenomenon called a 'solar storm' happens.

Could you make something similar to this?

I took some screenshots of solar storms from my playthrough of EVERSPACE:

 

Just watched the video. That looks like it's in line with my style! I may be able to give it a go when I have some more time. The effect in the shockwaves expansion may be a good starting place.

 

Saw the notes above and in the documentation PDF about missing scripts, but still having trouble

I'm on Unity 5.6.1f1 and downloaded the VFX 2.7 version from the Daily Sale. I imported into a clean project and tried different attempts at loading Standard Assets/Effects, Legacy Cinematic Effects, and Post Processing Stack, but the Global Fog script you included never synchs up to any of those. Removing it allows the project to compile.

So it would be good to know the best install tips for VFX 2.7 + Unity 5.6

 

@Livealot

Yeah, sorry - are you talking about the error on import regarding GlobalFog specifically with v2.7.0? That was in my project when I uploaded, but it was NOT in the folder I marked to be packaged up... so I don't know why Unity's tool included that extra stuff. I submitted an update last week that removes all of that and I'm just waiting on approval.

Deleting/unmarking the Standard Assets folder at import is the most correct solution since it shouldn't be with the base package, but you can also try applying the patch I attached if you do want Global Fog.

If you've already started using v2.7.0 after having resolved the issue, I don't recommend anyone upgrade to v2.7.1 (the version awaiting approval) because of a lot of changes in file naming and potentially different looking effects for the same prefabs and shaders (it'll also be clearly indicated in the Asset Store update log so people are aware).

I improved the distortion shader a lot for v2.7.1:







A lot more control and customization options.

 

Yep, the global fog script is included in the current asset store download.
I look forward to downloading the update once it posts.

 

v2.7.1 is live now in the Asset Store - just in time!
I tested this import from the store directly and it's all in order.

For Global Fog, just have it in your project before the import and it will link up with the camera script. For the Post-Processing stack you can add it before or after import and it doesn't seem to make a difference either way.

 

I really like your Particle Affectors, especially Attraction. I'm having trouble recreating some of your examples and demos, so hoping to get some more detail on how best to use them.

For example, did you use Turbulence or Attraction to create Force Affector GIF #3?

Or, in the UVFX demo scene, example 112 (lightning attack), what's making the mouse trail flow directly to the attractor?

In my own experiments, I seem to only be able to bend or spiral a particle flow. I'd also like to be able to swirl and dead-end a particle flow but haven't figured out those tricks yet.

 

@Livealot

That one is a combination of the turbulence, attraction, and vortex force affector.
A few of the prefabs in the Titles expansion may be useful for deconstruction if you want to look into that more.

It's a global force affector that will attract all particles in the scene without exception, which is why the demo mouse trail effect gets pulled in. I actually submitted an update just today where I changed it so only the particle systems for that prefab have the force applied to them.

My understanding of what you're trying to do might be ambiguous, but feel free to ask more questions or for clarification and I'll do my best to explain how to use these components. If you have any reference videos or images then I can take a look at those, too.

This is an old video that I want to make a new version of which may also have some useful things in it for you:

It makes references to GPU variants which I removed. Later on I just spent some time heavily optimizing the cross-platform components vs. maintaining the compute shaders and found that I got some great performance gains just using the former anyway. Later on, I want to go into multi-threading using Unity's experimental job system for these, but I have to wait until they're released.

 

I'll check out the title prefabs, and would encourage you to make a set of Affector prefabs to help learn each system. I think that would help a lot, especially for effects advertised in the asset store description, screenshots, and videos.

As I'm learning it seems that the speed of the incoming particle system has a bigger impact on the visual end result than tweaking any of the settings in the Affector components. That is, if you point 2 separate particle streams (with different speeds) at the same attraction sphere, you'll get 2 very different results.

What I'm trying to get a feel for is what combinations of incoming particle speed and attraction component settings I should use to create various effects, including:

1. Particles bend around the attractor sphere then keep going (e.g., moonshot)
2. Particles get caught in the attractor sphere and maintain orbit
3. Particles get caught in a spiraling, decaying orbit into the center of the sphere
4. Particles get drawn directly into the sphere origin (this is what the mouse trail did in example 112)

And if the answer is more about mixing and matching various components (e.g., Gif #3) rather than the settings of the components, then helping understand that would be helpful.

 

@Livealot

I agree, that sounds like a good idea. Although the screenshots are prefabs directly from whatever is in the package.

They work using Shuriken's physics integrator, so that's the expected result. Imagine throwing a spring-tethered ball with a lot of force vs. a light throw, or what would happen to an asteroid as it passed a large planetary body. The particles will behave just about identical to how rigidbodies would behave with forces of the same kind along with how forces work in the real world. Once you start thinking from that perspective it's just a matter of tweaking the values to get the intended effect.

1. For example: to get a slingshot, the force of the attractor would have to be weak enough to allow the particle to escape, taking into account it's current heading and speed - just like in real life. You can use the force over distance curve to attenuate how strong the force is over the normalized distance.

A linear "curve" from 1.0f -> 0.0f with an attractor radius of 10.0f would mean that a particle 10m away from the attractor center would not be affected, where as being at 5m would apply half the force. The default for the force over distance curve for all affectors is a constant 1.0f - meaning the force is constant regardless of the distance of the particle.

The arrive and stop radius variables change it up a little bit. Arrive describes the point at which a linear falloff is applied to the force the closer it gets to the destination (which is always the center of the affector). The stop radius is basically a deadzone where no force is applied.

2. Maintaining orbit is difficult because you'd have to get the right balance between all the values, and there's no one answer to what those values will be because it depends on the forces being applied to the particle combined. The easiest way is just to apply a vortex affector and limit the velocity over lifetime from the particle module itself.

3. Similar to 2, it's easier to just add a vortex + attractor, then limit the velocity over lifetime rather than trying to build a near-perfect simulation of orbital mechanics.

4. This one is easy.

All you have to do is have a particle system where the particles have little to no speed of their own. They'll "fall" right towards the attractor. Maybe play a little bit with the arrival and stop radii so the particles don't hurl themselves back and forth once they've reached the center. Same with using the limit velocity over lifetime module.

This page explains a lot of how this stuff should work: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_mechanics.
Just keep in mind that Unity isn't built for scientifically accurate simulations so cheating is on the table.

I do want to make a proper video tutorial on all the affectors so I can show by example rather than just typing. It's just a matter of finding the time.

By the way, it seems that for Unity 2017.2 they are adding more physics stuff to particles, like drag rather than having to use velocity limiting, which is really cool!

 

While a video would be great, a quicker step would be just to cut and paste your excellent tips here to your documentation PDF for the Affector section which was blank for me. Thanks a bunch!

 

Hello,

I am already using some effects and now I want to upgrade to the latest Version.

What is the best way to install? Completly Import it in my Project? Will unused textures then added to my build and eat up my Memory?

OR Import it in some own Project and only copy those into my Project which are really needed?

Thanks a lot! And have a nice Weekend.

 

Since I installed 2.7 by importing it directly into my Project I have this error:
C:\Unity\Biotopia3D 2017\Assets\Mirza Beig\Scripting\Effects\Particle Affectors\Scripts\ParticleAffector.cs(45,45): Error CS0136: Eine lokale Variable mit dem Namen 'force' kann in diesem Bereich nicht deklariert werden, weil dadurch 'force' eine andere Bedeutung erhalten würde, was bereits im Bereich 'übergeordnet oder aktuell' in anderer Bedeutung verwendet wird. (CS0136) (Assembly-CSharp)

It says force cannot be declared because there is already a "force".

I used the refactor to rename it to "forceX". It was 2 times the same Thing. I am using Unity 2017.1

 

@Firlefanz73

Sorry for the late response! For some reason I didn't get an e-mail like I usually do when someone posts here.

It's absolutely not recommended to attempt to upgrade an pre-UVFX-2.7.1 projects to the newest version(s) because of the reasons I posted here and in the upgrade log on the store. Things have been moved around and re-named which can cause conflicts.

My recommendation would be to continue using 2.6.5 to the end of your project if possible. It was a very stable release. v2.7 onwards is gearing towards lots of changes as I work on a "v3". I had v2.6.5 in a project which I was able to upgrade with minimal hassle by using the included "Multi-Asset Renamer" (Windows -> Mirza Beig -> Multi-Asset Renamer) tool and changing the names in the current project en-masse to match the same format as the latest version and then upgrading, but it's probably too much work and too easy to mess this up to make things worse to be useful to others.

Unused textures are never added to builds in Unity, but they will take up space in your project folder.

I have Unity 2017, I'll check it out with the latest version of UVFX and let you know! This doesn't seems like an issue with upgrading Unity but rather a conflict with importing v2.7.2 into a project using an earlier version.

EDIT: Just confirmed. Ultimate VFX seems to be fully functional with Unity 2017.1.0f3. If you don't choose to upgrade the API automatically, you'll get 4 harmless obsolete code warnings - but that's about it.

 

Thanks for the info

 

Hello,

can I global reduce the used texture size for all the particles in the solution? If not, that would be a great Feature for the next update!
I have seen this on other assets, Buttons for Resolution + and Resolution -

Have a nice Weekend!

 

Can you give me examples of assets that implement this? I want to see what sort of limitations there would be. UVFX has different resolutions accross the textures to best optimize the most likely use cases for them, but it does sound like a neat feature for organization and ease-of-use when compiling for different platforms!

 

UMA 2 uses this:

https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/35611

In the samples you will find the UMA DCS in the Scene inspector.
There it has a sub-component DynamicOverlayLibrary or similar.

It has one or two Resolution - and if lowered before Resolution + Buttons.
They reduce the used texture sizes and Memory consumptio0n I guess.

Good luck! This would be a good Feature in my eyes...

 

@MirzaBeig - You probably are aware of this, but in case you didn't know ... next month (Sept) a new release of Unity should be out (2017.2), with several new particle features (auto-destruct / disable, burst emission curve, inherit lifetime for sub-emitter particles, and linear drag).

 

@hopeful

Thanks for the update! It's about time they added built-in auto-destroy for particle systems (again). As a side note, I'm also looking forward to the multi-threaded job system. Hoping to use that to offload some of the custom scripting components for extreme performance gains.

 

Also, since I'm here...
I made this "procedural art" using just prefabs from UVFX. The original resolution of all of these is 8k+, but for viewing I have 1920x1080 below (they make for decent wallpapers ).

Spoiler

I'll include the post-processing stack profile(s) in the next update.

 

Hi Mirza,
Am a super happy customer of vfx and subscriber of your tube channel.

I've a suggestion for an effect which I don't think is there: a particle based progress bar. That would look super.

 

Great suggestion! Actually, a very old version of UVFX used to have a loading screen with particles all over, and there is a loading circle in the latest version, but an actual progress bar with particles would be good to add. I've just been really busy lately so it's hard to find the time to focus, but I'm looking to get back into it after my current schedule clears up.

 

Oh I'm using that loading circle, and its beautiful; I'm hoping something that we could pass a progress value to.

 

Hi Mirza, as you are the particle guru, I'm hoping you can advice me on following.

How do I get a particle effect to hug a mesh?

Suppose you have a house model and you only want the sloped roof to be on fire which happens to be a mesh on its own.

Of course the same principle can be used to show a fiery countdown timer.

 

@MirzaBeig Thanks again for the tips on how to approach the workflow with your package!

Some other questions I have:
-What would be your advice on how to layer particle effects with UI images? I've sort of managed to get some particle effects layered between various UI elements on my game with multiple canvases, but feels really messy and sometimes hard to manage between layers. Do you think this is the best method or would you recommend another way?

-What would be your advice on a burst particle effect that gravitates towards a single point? Like if I had an explosion of coins and I wanted those coins to then shoot to a specific point on the UI screen. I found this comment and was going to experiment with it, but would love to hear your thoughts or if you had other references you've seen that are quite helpful for this technique. http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/64932/creative-way-to-attract-particles.html

 

@ranaUK

Should be easy.

You can use the shape module and change the type to mesh. Select the house roof mesh and use type "Triangle" to be able to emit from the surface only.





Actually, if it's a simple enough roof, you could also just use two planes (either a mesh emitter or use the default box emitter and squash it flat) for the two angles.

 

@ocholicious

For UI images I unfortunately don't have a very good answer. It's something Unity has acknowledged is troublesome and last I checked they did have plans to improve native particle support with UI, but I haven't been able to keep up to date on the results. I've usually (just barely) gotten by doing what you did with multiple canvas objects.

As for the second point/question, you're in luck! Ultimate VFX has the custom particle attractor component which works using Shuriken's physics rather than interpolated script code (like in your link) or animations. This has the advantage of being non-destructive to Shuriken's velocity and speed module settings, but requires some more tweaking to get the same tight behaviour interpolation would give you.

So in your case, create a new object which you want to be the point of attraction and attach AttractionParticleAffector to it as a component. Then create a particle system for the coins and set that particle system to be used by the attraction object (there's an array/list where you can specify which particles are manipulated).

Someone asked me if it was possible to simulate a magnet using UVFX, and I made this video for them:

The coins would work in a similar way (you'd just need to tweak the settings on the attractor).

I've attached a prefab in a .unitypackage similar to what you see in the video. Maybe it can be a starting point for you.

Hope that helps!

 

@MirzaBeig I hella appreciate the time and effort you put into everything you've done - I'm a super fan! I'll check out what you mentioned in your pack, too! Thanks for the direction and tips!

 

Thanks man; will test it out, and if it works -- bloody hell I tried this before, but it had never worked; I guess I might have missed that triangle settings.

 

Hi,

Does this pack work for Desktop VR? or do the effects look 2 Dimensional and fake in VR? Also is the asset going on sale anytime soon?

thanks

 

Hi Mirza, quick heads-up;
1 - Ultimate VFX (Demo) raises an error at effect 71 (bulletStorm2). I'm using Unity 2017.1.p4

Sub-emitters must be children of the system that spawns them

 

Well I've some effects running on Vive (Linear + Forward + SinglePass), and it looks stunning; I did have to set to World in Billboard Render Alignment.

The only hard part is to decide on which effect to use

 

@KillerNads

Hello!

I have tested Ultimate VFX with an Oculus Rift DK2.

Yes, it works in VR. There's nothing in particular that would prevent it from doing so (it's mostly particle system prefabs and custom script components).

However, it's important that some things are changed when working with VR because of the "billboarding" rotation behaviour that all particles do by default.

This forum post of mine covers that: https://forum.unity3d.com/threads/3...effects-collection.349411/page-7#post-2942550

I've tested The Last Particle Demo and several of the effects with the Oculus Rift DK2 using the native VR tools and SteamVR, too.

To the best of my knowledge, no. But if Unity happens to pick it up for a sale that would awesome.

 

Thanks for the heads up! I just got back to my main workstation computer so I'll check it out soon. Not sure why that would be happening (the highest version I've used UVFX with is 2017.1p2).

 

Hi Mirza,

unfortunately can't get it to look right; added one image showing what it looks like right now; and another image I saw on the web somewhere; imagine instead of dots, it would be some fire effect.
Have you seen Tile Brush? It's that effect I am after.

 

@ranaUK

I haven't seen Tile Brush, and the images you posted are very different in terms of the effect. Did you want to create a long streamer effect, or set the dragon mesh on fire? If it's possible for you to send me the dragon mesh I can setup a quick fire effect with it for you using UVFX. It just looks like you need to turn up the particle count (I see the count at 18, whereas you'll need a lot more to cover the entire surface).

 

hi Mirza, thanks bro for your help. Now I actually thought those two to be similar in the sense that stream could be a mesh item with hugging particles.

Dragon is this one:
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/59053

Sent you a pm.

 

@ranaUK

Ah, I see now. I think I understand what you're trying to do, and it's actually a somewhat different effect than the house example (the setup, that is). I'll experiment a little and send you a reply PM soon.

Also, I checked out the prefab you mentioned that was giving errors, and it was okay on my end. It's possible I noticed a problem with that prefab a while back and fixed it in my internal project, but forgot to actually push it in an update to the store.

 

Hi!

First time writing on this forum!
First of all, amazing asset it has really good value for the price.
I just wanted to ask a basic question. Is there any distortion shader that distorts the whole image instead of applying the distortion over a duplicate of the image. Don't know if I'm being clear or not but the distortion shaders that comes woth this asset seem to duplicate the image that is going to be distorted (everything behind) and then it applies the distortion so the original image stays the same, only distorting the duplicate on top. I'm wondering if it is possible to directly distort the image on the screen with some shader or if you can add some shader for it.

 

@Shigam

Thanks!

What you're describing is the essence of most distortion shaders of this kind in games, which is what I aimed for with that effect. Basically, particles can be used to control the distortion on the screen, where they sample the screen behind their geometry through a grabpass and apply some distortion (either based on a normal map, alpha, or procedural input of some kind - but it could be anything, really). In UVFX, the alpha of the particle will also affect the distortion level, so if it's set to fade out or is removed, then the distortion fades and/or gets removed with it.

Are you asking if it's possible to permanently distort parts of the screen?