I’m trying to optimize reduce the amount of particles in an effect I’m working on in Unreal, but I’m not sure how to confirm my numbers are correct. To illustrate this, I’ve set up a particle emitter that burst spawns five sprite particles every 1 seconds, with each particles lifetime being 1 second.
Inside of Cascade, I’ve always assumed that the numbers in the corner represent the number of particles drawn, with the left number showing how many are drawn right now and the number on the right showing how many particles can theoretically be drawn given the emitters current lifetime and spawn rate. So for instance, in this picture Cascade is telling me it’s currently drawing five particles and that it could theoretically need to draw up to twelve particles at the same time assuming the lifetimes and spawn rate synch up in such a manner that such a thing would occur:
Wanting to dig a little deeper, I used the Particles stat tab inside of the level to view my effect. Keep in mind that this is the same effect from Cascade:
According to the stats here, my average particle count is 11.58, with a maximum value of 20; Neither of these numbers seem to make sense given my count values inside of cascade. I can halfway understand the Average value; After all, my “max” inside of cascade was 12 so it makes sense that the average would be close to that, but how in the world is my Max value 20? Not to mention, these stats only seem to display averages instead of exact number of sprites drawn.
With all that said, what is the best way to confirm my particle count assuming I have a particle limit I need to hit?