(RELEASED) Cartoon FX: Cartoon/Comic Book styled Particles Effects Pack

Jean Moreno Cartoon FX Packs are a day one sale for me, incredible job!

 

Thanks a lot, I'm glad that you like the packs so far

 

Just bought FX Pack 3 and I'm getting the following errors in the console:

I have cartoon fx pack 1 and 2 and they're updated to the latest versions.

 

That's weird, I've just imported the three packs and didn't get the error. Maybe you relocated the first two packs in a particular folder?

Anyway, just search for both files "CFXEasyEditor.cs" and "CFX_SpawnSystemEditor.cs" and delete the duplicates so that there's only one version of each in your project; it should fix the problem.

 

Thanks, I deleted the ones that were in the old Cartoon FX path, assuming those are older versions.

I didn't move the first 2 packs, they're in the default location. But I see that you've changed your folder naming scheme - the first 2 packs were in this structure:
Cartoon FX/CFX Prefabs
Cartoon FX/CFX2 Prefabs

This new pack has the following structure:
JMO Assets/Cartoon FX/CFX3 Prefabs

Might have been cleaner to stick with the original structure. Or maybe you've changed the structure in CFX and CFX 2 but my updates haven't altered the install locations?

 

I did change the folder structure, yes! But I'm suspecting Unity to only have updated the files without changing their location.
I suggest that you just move all Cartoon FX Packs in "JMO Assets/Cartoon FX" then!

 

Unity newbie here. I'm using 2d toolkit for a 2d game, and I just got cartoon fx pack 3. When I spawn my particles, I have the particle system gameobject's z position set so it appears in front of my 2d assets relative to my camera. However, sometimes the particles will disappear behind my objects. I am assuming this is because the particle system is in 3d space while my 2d objects are all constrained on the same z plane.

What is the best way to ensure the particle system's entire effect remains in front of my 2d scene? Two thoughts that came to mind were either a way to lock the z position of the child particles, or to have another camera dedicated to displaying particles and just have that display on top of my scene. Or, since I am a newbie, is there another way to get this done?

EDIT: I actually was tinkering around with things and figured this out. In 2d toolkit, i am using an orthographic camera. So, I just increased the z distance between my camera and my 2d asset's plane. I then positioned the particle system's z to be halfway between my camera and my 2d plane. This gave much more 3d world space for the particle's to travel without crossing my asset plane's z boundary.

 

This is the best solution I think.
Another thing possible to do is to set the Scale Z value of an effect to 0, which will scale the emitter so that all particles are spawned at the same Z position - though it might not work very well with all effects. This way you can sort them without having to have too much space between the camera and the scene (although that's not that much of an issue, technically).

 

Excellent packs.

I have a scenario where I want a glowing aura type of thing to be positioned behind an object. This object is more or less a 2d flat object. I like your LightGlow Air for this, but since it's 3d it will protrude through the object. My question...is there a way for me to edit this prefab such that the effect is constrained to 2 axis (and flattened in the remaining axis)? Or what solution, if any, would you suggest?

 

That can be done, you have to modify each sub-system so that it renders as flat as it can!
I'll take the CFX3_LightGlow_A_Air effect as an example, set to be flat on the Z axis.

• The parent effect is a growing star spawned at the middle of the effect. You can't do much on this except change the Renderer to Vertical Billboard instead of Billboard. This will prevent the particles from facing the camera on the Y axis, but they still will along the XZ axis.
• The first subeffect is CFX3 Spikes, it renders the 3D star branches. They use the Streched Billboard renderer, which uses the particles velocity to know where to stretch them to. So you need to disable their velocity along the Z axis (Y axis locally): enable the Limit Velocity over Lifetime module, enable Separate Axis, and set the Y value to 0 (or Z if you set World Space)
• The last subeffect is CFX3 Stars which renders the small stars. You can repeat the steps as above the prevent them from moving along the Z axis, and you can set its Y Scale value to 0 (in the Transform component) which will flatten their Sphere emitter to a Circle.

Hopefully this will get you what you need!

 

great effects.:razz:

 

I get a lot of duplicate classes in the same namespace errors. What's the best way to handle these? Remove the old versions from Pack 1/2?

 

This is likely due to the folders structure change I made a few weeks ago to all my assets; it seems that they don't get moved to the new folders when updated.
You can either move them manually to "JMO Assets/Cartoon FX" (you'll see that the three packs share some folders), or delete them and re-import the packages (if you haven't modified anything).
Don't forget to delete CFXEditor.cs which has its own folder now under "JMO Assets".

 

I bought a couple of packs and love them. I have a small problem with FireBall in pack 2.
I used spawn system and made the fireball to move. It works great but the "CFXM3 Fire Trail" doesn't show up.
I already checked if the simulation space is World.
Any idea to fix it?
( I really love your particle effects packs )

 

Just bought the Cartoon FX 3 at $10 -- great asset, great price...

I do have some questions with using the Spawner:
1) In the examples in this thread, it shows a call to the spawner passing the name of the effect object (stored in the spawner stack)... however, the variable that has to be passed is actually a GameObject containing the prefab, yes? This is the way I did it (made a public var in my game handler script, and assigned the prefab to that and to the spawner as well, like so...) Is this the correct way? (seems to be working, anyway) ... I also noticed the example given did not explicitly pass the Boolean argument, however when I called it without it did not like that the args didn't match (I'm using JS Strict, fyi)

Code (csharp):

1. var hitEffect : GameObject;
2. var effect : GameObject = CFX_SpawnSystem.GetNextObject(hitEffect, true);

2) I have a problem when I switch Scenes... the pre-loaded effects that I had placed in my Spawner no longer work, and a runtime error occurs:

Non matching Profiler.EndSample (BeginSample and EndSample count must match)
UnityEngine.GameObject:SetActive(Boolean)
CFX_SpawnSystem:GetNextObject(GameObject, Boolean) (at Assets/Plugins/CFX_SpawnSystem.cs:45)

(I also get "MissingReferenceException: The object of type 'GameObject' has been destroyed but you are still trying to access it.", but I am assuming this is related to the other error...)

Any idea how to get around this? It appears the pre-loaded prefab must be getting destroyed on level load, and a new one not re-instantiated...

(some of my objects I am keeping alive via DontDestroyOnLoad... I have tried this with the spawner object as well, but that doesn't fix the issue of the destroyed particle effect... I haven't sorted through the Spawner code line by line yet to see what it is actually trying to do, but somehow it's losing the prefab to spawn...)

 

Could you tell me how to add two materials to one particle like Cartoon FX?Thank you~

 

It seems to be an issue with CFX_ShurikenThreadFix.cs : open the script and change the Awake() function to OnEnable(), the effect should then properly work with the Spawn System.
I'll issue the fix across all packs soon, thanks for the notice!

[HR][/HR]

Yes this is the correct way; you need to pass the reference to the same source prefab you dropped on the Spawn System Inspector.
I don't use JS, but I'd guess that default parameters don't work with strict JS so that would be why you'd need to pass the bool parameter no matter what.

It indeed looks like the preloaded effects get destroyed, which is the expected behavior when changing Scenes. I'm not sure if it'll work, but you can try to modify the Spawn System script to call DontDestroyOnLoad on the script itself, as you did, but also on each preloaded copy, i.e. look for the addObjectToPool method, and add this line after the Instantiate call:

Code (csharp):

1. Object.DontDestroyOnLoad(newObj);

[HR][/HR]

I'm not sure what you mean by "two materials on one particle", but you can stack Particle Systems on top of each other: just add other systems as children of one to make them part of the same global system.
See here: http://docs.unity3d.com/Documentation/Manual/ParticleSystemGrouping.html

 

I frequently need to flatten an effect out to be mostly planar to something else. If you're ever looking for something to add to your Easy Editor, a flatten to X Y or Z button would be cool.

 

I'm using these effects on mobile and re-using them but after a while the effects are out of position even if i give them a set position or a parent and zeroing their vect3 position and local any reason why? I've set all the particles to be local aswell

 

I'll keep that in mind, though it wouldn't be trivial to do I guess; flattening effects heavily depends on how they are setup initially so I'm not sure if a generic flattening could be done...

Have you tried to add the CFX_ShurikenThreadFix script on them? It could be due to the bug where systems start emitting in their thread before having been re-positioned, though this bug shouldn't happen on local space particles...
Other than that I don't have any clue, especially if the problem only appears after a while :???:

 

Another Problem with Fire Ball in Pack 2
I used the spawn system and made the fire ball setActive false when it hits an enemy. The problem is when I reuse the fire ball , the CFXM3 Fire Trail
still appears from the previous fire ball. Is there any way to disappear all the trail effect before I do setAcitve false?
Thanks in advance.

 

I guess you mean Pack 3!
I think the ParticleSystem.Clear() method is what you're looking for: it will delete all living particles from a system. So my guess is that you should call it after having replaced the effect (i.e. after having spawned it again), to make sure that the generated trail from the last position to the new one gets deleted.
Let me know how that goes!

 

PERFECT !!!!
Now everything works great!!!. I do appreciate your help

 

I have a white background to my 2D game (its like a page out of a notebook). The VFX displays very translucent and almost invisible on top of the background. Any advice for making the VFX more visible?

 

This is because most of the effects materials have an Additive blending mode.
You can try to change the shader to "Particles/Alpha Blended" and make them semi-transparent (change the Start Color alpha value in the Particle System), and you'll get better results against white backgrounds, though it won't look exactly the same of course.
You may also have to create the alpha channel depending on the original texture used, either by checking the "Alpha from Grayscale" option in the Texture Importer, or by making it yourself in an image-editing software (Photoshop, GIMP, etc.).
You can also try other shaders in the Particles section and see if you can get better results for your situation!

 

Hi Guys! I need some help

I've just bought the Cartoon FX 3 pack and it's impressive. But just after the import process appears a fatal error:

"Assets/JMO Assets/Cartoon FX/Scripts/CFX_ShurikenThreadFix.cs(11,14): error CS0101: The namespace `global::' already contains a definition for `CFX_ShurikenThreadFix'"

And I can't play my game. Since I'm not a programmer (i'm just an artist ) I don't know what to do in order to fix it! Any ideas guys? Anyone has win this fight?

 

This means that Unity has found the file 'CFX_ShurikenThreadFix.cs' twice in your Assets folder (and sub-folders).
Maybe you had imported a previous version of Cartoon FX Pack 1 or 2 (or War FX) that were placed directly in 'Assets/Cartoon FX/' rather than the new folder structure 'Assets/JMO Assets/Cartoon FX', which has caused some common files such as the aforementioned script to exist twice, hence causing the error.

If so, you can move the old 'Cartoon FX' folder to 'JMO Assets' and overwrite existing file to merge all packs together (you can also delete the whole folders and re-import each pack, provided you haven't modified any to not lose any changes).
Always make a backup before doing anything though, just in case!

 

How can I rotate the effects? Just rotating the prefab doesnt seem to affect everything, like the billboards.

 

Love the Effects!!! Another question for you:

The Text effects in the original VFX pack -- Is their a way to change the text within the effects? Does it use a font ? For instance, could I put a damage number in place of the word "Boom!"

 

Hi,

i do manage to activate the spawn system but how do i set the location of the spawning?

thanks!

Update: OK got it... now it works!
other question, do i have to mark "only deactivate" in auto destroy script if i'm using spawn system?

thanks again...

 

It depends on how you want to rotate them, and can end up being more or less tedious.
If you want to rotate the particles, you'll have to change the Render Mode (in the Renderer tab):
- Billboard will make them always face the camera
- Stretched billboard will make them have one axis look at the camera, and orientate the other 2 axis towards their direction (i.e. influenced by their velocity)
- use Mesh with a quad mesh to get full control of the particles rotation (they will get affected by the Transform rotation component)

If you want to rotate the whole effect, you can try several things depending of the effect:
- change its Simulation Space from World to Local and try to rotate the effect
- if that doesn't do anything, you'll have to look at the different velocity-altering tabs (Velocity over lifetime, Force over lifetime, etc.) and set them to Local as well (and possibly swap the previous values), then rotating the effect should affect it properly

You can follow this tutorial I wrote to create similar texts: http://jeanmoreno.tumblr.com/post/31791889042/tutorial-create-comics-like-texts
Having a dynamic text will be harder though; you can use a 3d text (Test Mesh component) that you attach to the prefab and change the text dynamically from your spawning script but you won't have the gradient and outline effects.
If it's just numbers, you could also prepare 10 textures in the same style with each digit on it (0 to 9), add them to the prefab, and then activate and swap their texture according to the number you need (for example, say you added 3 digits to the effect prefab (max value would be 999) and you need to output the number 24, so you'd deactivate one of the digits when spawning the effect, and swap the textures of the other two to have 2 and 4 displayed, along with changing their position so they're centered and next to each other! Let me know if this doesn't make sense!)

The Spawn System will automatically activate the 'only deactivate' flag when creating the effect pool, so you shouldn't have to do anything on this. Let me know if that doesn't seem to work though!

 

Hi Jean Moreno,

I have a question, i'm editing the BOOM! texture (CFXXM_T_Text_Boom) to make a new explosion prefab with YEAH! in it. But i can't get it to look as smooth as you created yours. Did you do something in photoshop with the textures? Here's how mine looks in the material preview:

 

I've detailed my process in this blog post: http://jeanmoreno.tumblr.com/post/31791889042/tutorial-create-comics-like-texts
It's been made with GIMP but should work the same with Photoshop.
Note that the Alpha channel creation is not relevant anymore in Unity 4.x because there's the 'Alpha is transparency' option now in the texture importer that takes care of that!

 

I have implemented these effects into my game, but I have a noticeable frame rate drop whenever an effect is triggered. I think I am doing it wrong...

I want these effects tied to some prefabs (e.g. a cannon that has an explosion when it fires) rather than simply loaded to each scene separately.

So my canon prefab has:
* an instance of the spawner script
* an instance of the explosion effect

The spawner script instance has the 'explosion' effect added to the preload list.
My script for triggering the cannon uses the following code ('explosion' has been populated in the inspector as the same object added to the spawner script):

Code (csharp):

1. CFX_SpawnSystem.GetNextObject(explosion, false);
2.                explosion.transform.position = this.transform.position;
3.               explosion.SetActive(true);
4.  

This works, but whenever the effect is triggered the framerate stutters. Am I doing something that is preventing the preloading of the effect? Should I not be doing it this way?

An alternative I was thinking of is to preload all the effects at the launch of my game and re-use them. Could I do this somehow? My game currently only uses 3 different effects, and only uses 1 or 2 per scene. Loading them once and keeping them in memory seems perfect for my needs.

Any help would be appreciated.

 

This is actually the purpose of the CFX Spawn System!
It looks to me that you were linking the Spawn System to a canon Prefab that you Instantiate, which would actually make the Spawn System useless (or even worse), because each time you Instantiate that canon Prefab then the Spawn System will Instantiate effects, which is likely to cause your frame drop.

The Spawn System should be on 1 object only for your whole Scene (akin to the Singleton pattern), and it should hold all the effects you want to spawn in your Scene. You should not Instantiate it, instead just place an empty GameObject with the Spawn System script on it, and drop your effects on its Inspector.
Then what you should do is link the same Prefabs you dropped on the Spawn System into your own script and use the static method CFX_SpawnSystem.GetNextObject(effectPrefabReference) to spawn the effect (where effectPrefabReference is the variable holding the same effect prefab you dropped on the Spawn System).

I hope this is clear enough; see here if you prefer a step by step explanation:
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/14...s-Pack/page7?p=1264669&viewfull=1#post1264669
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/14...s-Pack/page7?p=1264727&viewfull=1#post1264727

 

What would cause this error when importing your assets?

importer.GetNPOTScale() == TextureImporter::kNPOTKeep

 

I've typically seen this error when importing assets on an incompatible version of Unity.
Which version of Unity are you using?

 

Ok. I don't know what's going on (besides I'm coding at 2 am maybe). Followed the steps. Got my torch all perfected and prefabbed with one of your flame effects from pack 1. I create 2 copies in my scene. The first one loads, the second tells me that the thing hasn't been preloaded. Looking at the editor panel, it clearly says there are 3 instances waiting to be used.

I can work around it by re-creating the Spawner GameObject everytime I want to add an effect, and then just add all the items with scripts on first, then create the spawner, then manually add the items to it. I'm not sure that's going to work out in the long run, but I haven't look through your scripts to see the code behind yet either.

 

Hi, sorry for the late answer!
The Spawn System is designed to be placed in your scene manually, and to add Prefabs you want to preload directly within the Editor. If you want to manage prefabs preloading/unloading through code then you'll most likely have to modify it or make your own solution (or find another one on the Asset Store).

Anyway if you get a message saying the Prefab hasn't been preloaded yet, it could be because your code has been executed before the initialization of the Spawn System. My suggestion is to wait at least 1 frame before accessing the Spawn System in your code, so that all instances of your Prefabs have been correctly preloaded (you can also use Unity's script execution order tool).
If this doesn't seem to be the issue, please verify that you used the Spawn System correctly (see this guide on the faq). If the problem persists, please elaborate so that I can have a deeper look at it! (you can contact me directly by email if you prefer)

 

Hi back, sorry for the late response
For the project I'm working on now, I'm just placing them in the scene as your instructions indicate. And it's working fine (well, I'm using torches, and for some reason they blaze like the surface of the sun for about 5 seconds before fading back to what they are supposed to be, but that's probably a problem with my config)
Am I going to able to dynamically generate them then? A future project of mine relies on procedural generation, and I'd need something that I could script into existence. I could kludge it by moving the same 3 or 4 torches around, but I'm trying not to kludge things these days...

 

Well I'm starting to wondering if you need the Spawn System at all actually!

If you are using it for static torches, i.e. they stay in the same place throughout the game, then you could just place them in Editor and culling should handle enabling/disabling them on demand during runtime.
As for the procedural side, it depends on how you plan to use procedural generation.
If the levels will be generated at start (e.g. you'll see a loading bar and the world will be generated) then you can directly use Instantiate as the torches shouldn't be spawned on random places (supposedly).
If the procedural generation will be streamed (i.e. the whole level is continuously being built as you play in it), then a pooling system would be useful, but in that case I suspect that a more robust pooling system should be used instead of the CFX Spawn System (especially if you also have to pool 3D objects and props).

Initially the Spawn System was designed to be used with single-use effects, such as explosions. Looped effects shouldn't need a pooling system (unless you have hundreds of them but even then, just moving the same ones again and again should be enough since they don't need to be deactivated).

 

Yeah, that's what I think I'm going to develop. But before then, I'm just trying to actually deploy a couple static torches. Apparently the ID gets changed in the process. Do you have any documentation for this? Thanks.

 

If the ID changes, then it's not the same GameObject. Not sure if that's the case here, but be careful not to mix up the source Prefab, which has its own ID, and the instances of that Prefab that essentially are independent copies of it, with their own IDs, and possibly with different values on certain properties (for example, their position).
I'm afraid I don't have any good resource link about this that I can think of.

 

edited: ok, question of a newbie here!
i need different versions of the same effect (size), how can i do it? becouse if i use the easy editor , it will change the prefab for all the instances right?


awesome effects, i have versions 1,2 and 3! need the 4th so bad! (please make 5 )

 

Well you can just duplicate the prefab, give it another name (e.g. "MyEffect_x2") and scale this one with the Cartoon FX Easy Editor! You can then use either prefab however you want

 

ok. thanks.. now it works, except for 1 detail. i am using your water material to test splash effect, but when i generate the effect near the plane that contains "water", its barely visible (even tough the effect is over the water, not under). but if a add more "space" between the plane and the effect, it is seen OK.
(in the image: water yCoord:2f , left effect ycoord:2.2f, right effect ycoord:3f)
any idea?

 

welll. i know that is becouse the shader, but if i change it, it is worst. ther is some way to fix this? (by fix i mean not blending at all).

 

It sounds like a Soft Particles issue.
You can either disable Soft Particles entirely in the Quality settings (Edit > Project Settings > Quality), or tweak the "Soft Particle Factor" in each material used in this effect.

 

nothing.. i tried that.. put in 3 the value of soft particle factor, and the result is the same. as you can see, the aprticle in the right is whiter than the other. the only idfference, is that the one on the right is 0.6 unis more in the Y axis (the x and z are the same). can you helop me please? is the only thing i need to make this perfect!

ps: i tried wit the "slash" effect, and is the same. is white blue near water and yellow when is far

 

I still think it comes from the Soft Particles in your screenshot above, however it does affect the particles even when maxed out at 3.
Two solutions:
- disable Soft Particles entirely in the Quality settings
- replace the shader with one of the zip file attached (which are the default particles shaders without soft particles)
Also make sure that you modify the material of the relevant child in the effect, for example in the "CFX_Splash" effect you most likely want to affect the material of the Ripples & Ripples2 children (they use the same material which should be "CFX_Ripple_AddSoft")

As for the slash effect going from yellow to white, this is most likely due to the additive blending mode used (as it uses the Particles/Additive shader) which will add the color of the effect (here yellow) to the color already present on screen (the blue water).
Pure yellow is (255,255,0) in RGB, and pure blue is (0,0,255), hence why the addition of the two tends to go towards white (255,255,255).
To solve this, you can either change the shader used in the material to another blending mode (for example Alpha Blended), or use one of the special blending shaders I made in Cartoon FX Pack 4 (see in the screenshots).