Particle Playground

Thanks for making it a support errand! I've received your example scene and sent back a solution.

For anyone else having similar issues of rendering the particles, the problem is well connected with the Shuriken particle system being outside of the camera's frustrum. It also looks like that if you have a narrow field of view the behavior appears with a border inset from the camera frustrum as well.
I'm sorry about this, it's out of my hands before I roll my own particle system or Unity updates the Shuriken render behavior.

 

Version 1.1 is in the making and in full speed ahead. There are a lot of new features (expect a video showcasing them on release), here's a glimpse of the somewhat improved visual way of working with Particle Playground,



I figured the Inspector was far too bloated, and with all new features it really got out of hand.
The main addition is being able to paint emission positions of particles. You're also able to create your own brushes (as presets as well) to paint with, using your own textures and specifications.

Thanks for all feedback so far!

 

And another tiny update on the Playground Manager's Inspector. Now you can overview and structure the particle system list from the Inspector. This also acts as a jump-list making it easy to jump between particle systems (to quickly see and alter their settings).

http://www.polyfied.com/development/unity/playground/particleplayground-manager-20140105.png

 

That's looking slick Save

Nice work

 

I still havent had time to play with my copy of this yet! Looking forwards though, ideas are certainly not a problem

 

Thanks MoHoe! Aiming for that GUI backslick look.

Glad to hear that! That's much appreciated, when you find the time (1.1 here in about two weeks if you want to wait for that).

 

In my cack handed way trying to put together a rough proof of concept of what i'm trying to do, which what im doing atm is extremely time consuming and i dont even get to let the desktop do anything else, im looking forwards to some fun particle work going on when im back in control of my cpu

The speed its going, 2 weeks sounds reasonable!

 

Gotcha! Still in anticipation of that dev thread. Hopefully a later version of PP can serve a greater purpose in massive implementations such as yours. I think it won't be abled to really until it stands on its own feet, away from Shuriken (I think it's a great particle system, it just doesn't fit for PP where it's headed).

Last couple of days I've also worked on a sketch for a future behavior of procedural particles, where each particle can behave like a trail for instance. Along with that I'm looking into adding turbulence fields of manipulators. I think that will be a breakthrough in simulating realistic smoke or partly fluid solvers... but it's a couple of updates before I can implement it.

 

One suggestion I would make is to consider a particle effects 'importer' from different popular 3D packages like SoftImage, Max, Blender, etc... I worked on a project recently that required me to translate all the particle effect settings by hand and tweak them to match the 3D designer's look and feel. Perhaps this is something that could be sold separately from PP but there is definitely a need for it, especially when working with broadcast designers it seems. Thanks.

 

Thanks contempt! Yes I love the idea. I'm hoping to get in touch with third-parties along the production path, it would open up for interesting collaboration opportunities. I think when PP has bumped up a couple of versions this will be possible for sure.

1.1 is near...

 

Hi,

I just take a look at the manual and the historical version (both about 1.1). This update is excellent. The "Playground Wizard" is a nice idea.

 

Hi! Glad to hear, I hope it'll meet with the expectations.
I'm awaiting the update to go live, then I'll give a bit more comprehensive info (instead of a sneaky doc update).

 

Here we go, the new and improved version of Particle Playground is alive! Available on the Asset Store: http://u3d.as/5ZJ.

Video

The key features:

• Source Paint
• Brush Presets
• The Playground Wizard
• Particle Playground System Presets
• Manipulator editing directly in Scene View
• Reworked UI with improved workflow
• New lifetime sorting - Nearest Neighbor
• Transform support for all sources
• Velocity ranges and bending
• ”Source only”-positioning

Please see the Version History document for more elaborate information about the changes. To read more about each feature please refer to the Manual.

Welcome home (screen)!

The Playground Wizard is now the new home screen for Particle Playground. From here you can create new Particle Playground Systems and bake your own presets for future use. You find it in Window/Playground Wizard. When creating a new Particle Playground System you also have a better preset to start creating with (this can be changed to one of your own as well).

Paint emission positions into the Scene

With the help of brushes you can paint live into the Scene View (painting directly in runtime is also available through helper-functions). Every position has information about their parent, where it is in the scene, if they are rotating or rescaling and which direction the mesh’s normal is pointing. This opens up for some unique uses where every current position with Initial- and Delta Velocity will be calculated for. The painted positions are calculated every frame along with the rest of the Update-cycle in one single loop, which makes this extremely fast computed.
Creating your own brushes to paint with is available through the new Brush Wizard.
You can either choose to color your particles from their source (such as your brush) or by lifetime color. You can also combine lifetime color alpha with the source color if you need.
See the example scene ”Paint” for an easy scripting example how to paint in runtime.

Inspector-ific

Particle Playground’s UI is overhauled in v1.1, along with being able to reorder all the lists (particle systems, states and manipulators), duplicate their items and easier access to creating, jumping to and editing all Particle Playground Systems within the scene.

Improved particle behavior

Now you’re able to set particle positions strictly towards the source. This is good if you for instance want to create visuals that doesn’t use velocity - but per object repositioning (for instance the pre-smashed state of the cube in the video). The initial velocities have ranges now so you can spread the particles velocities which creates a more realistic behavior of their initial flow.
An experimental feature called Velocity Bending has been introduced where you can bend the path of a particle’s current velocity. Use this to create interesting movement patterns.

Hello neighbor!

A new lifetime sorting is available, which lets you sort by distance away from/or towards/ an origin position. This creates a ripple effect in their lifetime behavior which can be applied to any type of source.

Transformation
Lastly, all sources can now have a transform assigned, which makes you able to move, rotate and scale a state directly in the scene with handles for instance. Thanks to this, all sources also handle Delta Velocity.


Many of these added features are a result of all the invaluable feedback. Thanks to all of you participating in making the product better.
Enjoy!

 

The manual that is tagging along the 1.121 package is incomplete regarding some of the paint features, please see the online manual instead. Sorry about that. Let me know how 1.1 is treating you.

 

I just bought it. It looks to be a pretty significant update!

I'm having trouble accessing the PlaygroundParticles class though. My entire project is in c# and I just realized that all the scripting is in Javascript. Is there anyway to access the class so I can manipulate my particles or am I out of luck? My C# scripts are not finding "PlaygroundParticles."

 

Try putting the js scripts in a folder called 'Plugins' in your project

save this is looking great so far and i just want to get this bloody terrain done (having spent a month on getting it going how i'd like its getting old, although my own fault, certainly not the devs of the software), so i can actually have some fun, and this is looking like a lot of fun and increasingly perfect for various plans. keep up the good work! one day i'll actually be able to use it

Although not to be mean but I do hope by that day its all in c#, using js in the plugins folder is a pain in the butt for Visual Studio, unless you know an answer for that

 

Thanks!
I can only second what lazygunn is saying. Put the Particle Playground scripts "Playground.js" and "PlaygroundParticles.js" in a folder called "Plugins" in the root of your "Assets" folder.



Then from your c# scripts you're able to:

Code (csharp):

1.  
2. using UnityEngine;
3. using System.Collections;
4.  
5. public class Example : MonoBehaviour {
6.  
7.     PlaygroundParticles particles;
8.  
9.     void Start () {
10.  
11.         // Create a particle system from c#
12.         particles = Playground.Particle();
13.  
14.         // Alter the particle system
15.         particles.initialLocalVelocityMin = new Vector3(-10, 0, -10);
16.         particles.initialLocalVelocityMax = new Vector3(10, 0, 10);
17.     }
18. }
19.  

Let me know if you're having troubles and I'll try to assist you further.

Hah well thanks! Yes I hope you get some time off for particle action soon. I'm not yet aware of any great solutions except rewriting PP to c#, anyhow I've many times wanted to be able to control passing things by reference or by value, something that is really lacking in js. I'm hoping to get more familiar with c# and a rewrite a bit later isn't impossible (but I don't want to promise anything at this stage).

 

I've had a fair bit of experience moving things from c# and js back and forth although not quite as large as this but I can say that I think it's much much easier than you might think it is. If you have a good look at equiv js and c# scripts there's just some minor changes in structure and syntax if you've already logic etc already working (which you obviously have). So i'd suggest spending half an hour having a good look at it and maybe make the translation something to do over time rather than it eating up a bunch of your time at once. I'm not being patronising mind you've probably had plenty good look at it and i've never had to move something so large over but i've already bought it so i'm not exactly trying to twist your arm for a sale to me, it's more it's going to be waaaaay more attractive to others if it's in c#, specifically if they use VS or something instead of Monodevelop (unless someone can set me right there). I usually have to switch to Monodevelop when doing anything with js now just for the highlighting and intellisense style completion and its a bit of a headache after being used to VS so much

There's probably some fix for this but i'm not aware of it thus far and i'm not a great programmer at all but find VS a much more comfortable environment, esp when switching to non-unity projects as needed. I spose it's just one of those things people can get pretty picky about, like people holding off buying rendering based asset store stuff because it doesn't support deferred and suchlike

Like i say it's not going to stop me messing around with it when I can remotely but would be time well spent in terms of people picking up a copy i reckon!

 

I placed everything in the Plugins folder and it seems to be working fine.
Thank you!

 

I can only agree, I find no reasons not to - but my current shortcomings in c# and the timeframe needed. Many good points, thanks for bringing them up! And I mean, who doesn't want to step up the game really. Around 1.3 this shouldn't be too impossible... let's see!

Glad it worked out! Get back to me if you need to dig deeper into the scripting possibilities.

 

Yes, I thought everything was fine, but I've run into a rendering problem it seems. I'm unable to instantiate a preset particle and have it render properly. :sad:

Code (csharp):

1. Playground.InstantiatePreset("Playground Holobot");

I see the object appear in my hierarchy, but the object looks like the image below
If I click on the object in my hierarchy, the object will render properly all the sudden. Do you have any ideas on what could be causing Unity not to render upon instantiation until I click on the object in the hierarchy?



Some Important Background Info
I had to move files for the playground to stop giving errors. I don't know if this is relevant to the problem above.

• I have the main scripts inside the Plugins folder since I am using C#, and I need to separate the Javascript files.
• The presets had to be exactly in Particle Playgrounds/Resources/Presets or I'd be getting errors.
• The inspector/editor scripts had to be outside the Plugins folder else I'd be getting errors regarding RendererLayer below.

Code (csharp):

1. RendererLayerEditor.cs(15).The type or namespace name `RendererLayer' could not be found.
2. RendererLayerEditor.cs(15,2): error CS1502: The best overloaded method match for `UnityEditor.CustomEditor.CustomEditor(System.Type)' has some invalid arguments
3. RendererLayerEditor.cs(15,2): error CS1503: Argument `#1' cannot convert `object' expression to type `System.Type'
4.  

EDIT: I looked at where all your files were located above. But I could not find "RendererLayerEditor." Where should this file go?

 

Sorry to hear that it continued to give you trouble. I'll try to give you as good as an answer I can at the moment as I'm out of office, so bear with me.

Presets
The presets have to be in the folder which the 'preset path'-variable in ParticlePlaygroundWindow.js is pointing to ("Particle Playground/Resources/Presets/"). You need to change that path string if you want to place it elsewhere (along with the 'icon path' to be able to see the icons in Playground Wizard).
You should not have to dissect the entire package as the Editor and Resources folders are functional from wherever in the hierarchy. If you try to package everything as shown in previous image, does that work better for you? (It's a solution specifically to not break the Preset-path and to not break the Editor scripts within the Plugins folder)


Particle rendering
If you hold right mouse button in Scene View (Free look) and look at the particle system origin / or enter Play mode, will the particle system play then? This is currently a known issue where the Editor won't update the Scene View until necessary. Sometimes I've also seen that a particle system gets stuck (in Editor's non-play mode only) and you have to select it to re-initiate Shuriken. You can use the jumplist from the Playground Manager which is also available in the Playground Wizard if you find that easier.
I'm hoping to fix this in the next larger update where the particles will be entirely created by the Playground (and not Shuriken, where I have better control over the initiation and rendering process).

RendererLayerEditor
RendererLayerEditor.cs is not a part of Particle Playground. I'm not familiar with what that script does unfortunately. Is it by any means connected to this http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/604703/sortlayer-renderer-extension.html?

 

Thanks, I was able to get my hierarchy all proper.

As for the particle rendering, I'm getting that image while the game is playing.

I'm in workaround mode right now just trying to get the particle system to active and deactivate when I want it to. I'm deactivating the particles when I'm done showing the particle animation, but the particles remain after I disable the game object. I tried using Playground.Clear(particles) but I no longer see the particles appear after reactivating the particle object.

 

One down one to go! It doesn't sound quite right what you're experiencing.
- What version of Unity are you using?
- Are you using any other scripts that disable Shuriken components in the scene at Awake or Start?
- Could you please send the project as isolated as you can to support@polyfied.com? If that's not possible, could you post or send the code you're using?

Try to either use particleSystem.emit = false/true or Playground.SetParticleCount(particleSystem, amount). Does that work better in your case?

 

Currently a tiny bug found thanks to a support errand. If you're having trouble doing a one-shot on initiation using any of the sorting Burst, Nearest Neighbor or Nearest Neighbor Reversed you're not alone. Any of these sorting modes will play next lifetime cycle instead.
This will be mended in next update but till then here's a quick fix. Put this script on the Particle Playground System's GameObject, this will work when instantiating presets as well.

Code (csharp):

1.  
2.     function Start () {    
3.        
4.         // Make sure that this runs after PlaygroundParticles initiation by yielding two frames
5.         yield;yield;
6.        
7.         // Cache the Particle Playground System component
8.         var particles : PlaygroundParticles = GetComponent(PlaygroundParticles);
9.        
10.         // Fix direct spawn for burst mode, this will force them to recalculate on next frame
11.         for (var i = 0; i<particles.particleCount; i++)
12.             particles.playgroundCache.life[i] = particles.lifetime+1;
13.        
14.         // Yield one frame before disabling
15.         yield;
16.        
17.         // Disable emission (when in Burst mode)
18.         particles.emit = false;
19.     }
20.  

Thanks for helping out making this product better!

 

hi save
the new version is awesome!!!!!! presets are soo coool, i never thought these kind of effect could be done with this tool, remind me a lot of the famous particle effect plug in for after effect called particular.

really neat!

antoine

 

Hi Antoine!

Presets actually originated from your wish on the Asset Store review, so I'm happy you liked the implementation.
Ah, I'm well aware of Trapcode from my previous career in motion graphics, they're from Stockholm as well. I'm not really sure why we like particles a little bit extra in this town.

I'm working on the details to open up for other developers to create presets and sell as their own on the Asset Store. This would be a good cause for all involved in PP the way I see it. So presets is something that will evolve as well in the future!

Anyhow, thanks!

 

I don't know why more people aren't onto this, maybe the 'playground' bit in the name makes it sound trivial, when its obviously a huge bunch of fun. Every time I get close to messing with this, the further away I get cause of the damn terrain!

Do you remember an old program called Particle Illusion? used similar kind of gui and execution as shruiken although not exactly the same - I am hoping however, to bring some of their (enormous) particle effect library to Unity, especially with this, could solve one or two section of my volcano dilemma, as well as pretty much make up a huge majority of beautiful filler. If you haven't, no worries, if you have, then it could give an idea of what could be brought over. Good luck and keep going. You really are upping the game, lets see how far you can get!

Just of note, weren't Trapcode once an amiga demoscene outfit in the last 80s/early 90s or is that some other guys

 

Thanks lazygunn for encouraging words, they mean a lot!
The "playground" part is probably off-putting to many devs, but I kind of like the challenge to have even more to prove in that case. What I'm hoping it also mediates is a low threshold to step into and that it encourage sandbox creativity.

I can't remember that I've played with Particle Illusion, sorry. I remember having classes in Combustion and all sorts of After Effect particle plugins a decade ago though. Would love to see some examples!
I would like to open up for other developers in bringing a more broad flora to PP, if you do I would definitely welcome you to sell it yourself. However I have to layout this with the Asset Store team and create some guidelines so it doesn't end up in a mess. I'll get back to this a bit later on for sure, there's a win for everybody involved walking that path.

I think the evolution of 'procedural' particles in PP planned for introduction in 1.2 will solve a lot of issues regarding your plans on the volcano. It's around a month to that next big release if everything goes as planned.

I think at least one from Trapcode were big in the demoscene, a lot of swedish software companies started in the hack conventions.

 

I'm using the newest Unity version, 4.3.2f1 and I am not having any other scripts in the project.

Please see my uploaded project. Maybe I am instantiating it wrong?
[link removed--do not publicly post other people's assets please]

Thanks again for your support in helping me use the tool!

 

Thank you, could you please send it to support@polyfied.com or the link in a private message and I'll have a look at it. I think you might have accidentally posted the source to PP (no harm done).

 

It seems like preset instantiation through code is having a bit of trouble assigning itself onto the Playground Manager. Please use this solution till next update:

Code (csharp):

1.  
2. public class SpawnPreset : MonoBehaviour {
3.     void Start () {
4.         PlaygroundParticles particles = Playground.InstantiatePreset("Playground Cubism");
5.         Playground.reference.particleSystems.Add(particles);
6.     }
7. }
8.  

Thanks for having patience with these nasty bugs!

 

Version 1.124 is sent to the Asset Store, a small update addressing the recent found bugs. Let me know how it plays!

 

Working on pre-scripted PP-presets for next update, here's a laser!



If you want to make one right now, attach this to a PP GameObject:

Code (csharp):

1.  
2. #pragma strict
3.  
4. @script ExecuteInEditMode()
5.  
6. var laserMaxDistance : float = 100;
7. private var particles : PlaygroundParticles;
8.  
9. function Start () {
10.     particles = GetComponent(PlaygroundParticles);
11.     particles.source = SOURCE.Transform;
12.     particles.particleCount = 1000;
13.     particles.onlySourcePositioning = true;
14. }
15.  
16. function Update () {
17.  
18.     // Send a Raycast from particle system's source transform forward
19.     var hit : RaycastHit;
20.     if (Physics.Raycast(particles.sourceTransform.position, particles.sourceTransform.forward, hit, laserMaxDistance)) {
21.        
22.         // Set overflow offset z to hit distance (divide by particle count which by default is 1000)
23.         particles.overflowOffset.z = Vector3.Distance(particles.sourceTransform.position, hit.point)/(1+particles.particleCount);
24.        
25.     } else {
26.    
27.         // Render laser to laserMaxDistance on clear sight
28.         particles.overflowOffset.z = laserMaxDistance/(1+particles.particleCount);
29.     }
30. }
31.  

 

After i instantiate prefab with a particle effect (Play On Awake)i only have white sphere ;-( what is it i missed?

 

Sorry about that, it's a known bug. This is fixed in the update (sent and waiting for approval), till then the issue is that presets instantiated through code doesn't get attached to the Playground Manager.

Code (csharp):

1.  
2.         var particles : PlaygroundParticles = Playground.InstantiatePreset("Playground Cubism");
3.         Playground.reference.particleSystems.Add(particles);
4.  

Did this help you?

 

Thx for the answer Sir! Ill try it later on at home.

 

Finishing up box shaped manipulators, coming up in version 1.125. Thank Paul for making that wish.

 

PP is really evolving right now. Coming up in version 1.125, property manipulators. More on those on next update, they can do some really neat stuff however.



Have a great Friday!

 

Hey save,

I must say, your plugin sounds really interesting! I can think of a thousand of uses to it...

I just wanted to know exactly how does this perform on mobile devices... which is the focus of my work. I am very inclined to buy it, but I must make sure i will be able to use it =P I am developing a quite complex mobile game and FPS is not exactly a resource I have plenty of... lets say, if I replaced my regular particles for your system, would it cause a huge performance hit?

Thanks for the info!

 

Hi Alan!
I'm happy you see the potential, I'm eager to see how developers will make use of all the different functionality it offers. (No sales talk intended)
PP is tested continuously on mobile during development. One of the grander goals is to boost performance as many of its features requires a high number of simulated particles - to actually recreate what it's intended for. This is done through built-in arrays where every particle and its properties is cached, it's what's referred to as the 'particle pool'. Thanks to that structure it's extremely friendly for devices that has limited memory resources and can't address fresh memory in a hurry. Another architectural choice is that the calculation for every particle is living in a single for-loop, no matter if it's painted, coming from a vertex or a pixel (skinned/meshes needs one extra for extraction). CPU-wise that's also a mobile friendly considered approach.
There is some overhead from certain parts however, calling cached references from the manager for instance - but as far as testing goes this has proven to run well.

The caching is what makes PP faster than using a regular Shuriken system. I would say you're good to go, and if you find areas you'd want to improve I'm listening. Feel free to ask any specific questions of course! Thanks!

Edit:
Oh and all current particlers, don't forget to update to 1.124, just out!

 

Version 1.125 is sent to the store for review!
The main features are new possibilities to manipulators, particle rotation settings, source point overflow mode and some new presets.

• Manipulator type Property - alter color, velocity and size on the go (with ability to lerp)
• Box-shaped manipulators
• Overflow by source point - using the source's normal direction for each particle
• Set Initial rotation of each particle
• Rotate towards velocity - with ability to set the normal plane (which vector the particle rotates around)
• New presets (and reworked ones) - cloud, laser, fire, soap and hearts
• More materials and textures
• Example scene - Thunder (interact with a thunder cloud) - Try it

Example of changing particle properties on the go with a manipulator. Using the cloud preset and using the property color,


Using the same preset to fill a room with vertex lit smoke,


Or perhaps use your crazy to do something different,


The property manipulator can be used to lerp values as well, creating smooth transitions. You can also send the particles towards a desired direction using velocity and the manipulator's transform direction or resize particles.

Goes without saying, much content to create with!

 

this is really impressive!

 

Thanks Konst! Hoping it will serve to be the solution for many ideas out there.

Here's another (quite plain) example of using property manipulators with the new 'rotation towards direction' ability,

 

Version 1.125 is alive (and lost due to the current store-madness)!

Looking for a couple of beta users (don't have to be a PP owner). Some big features are coming up in segments the nearest months which needs to be tested on a more variety of machines out there. Let me know if it sounds interesting!

 

I don't exactly know how this will pan out but i more or less had this stroke of genius after messing with old scenes and some new technology and thought i should get to know what tools i have and do some promoting meanwhile, so im going to finally put my main work on hold a sec and have a play around with my copy of this and see if it will go into my 'playground' of sorts, which will have as many of my purchases thrown into it as possible, and offer a demo for more and i get a good insight into issues arising and knowing what tools i have to mitigate them

So yes hopefully i'll have something really cool to show off everyones good work and i'll say hello for a beta place once im familiar enough with pp to be of any use

 

Looking forward to see what comes out of this!

 

A little reflection around Particle Playground, but mostly about particle rotations.
http://polyfied.com/reflections/index.php/posts/rotating-a-particle-towards-its-direction

 

Preparing for all owners to easily distribute particle systems to the Asset Store, that's right - make particles and make money.



Guidelines and more essential info on release!

 

Wooo!!!!. Good move and great idea.