Hi everyone, Particle effects is our passion and we worked hard to develop a particle effects plugin for Unity.
Unity Asset store here. We made some FREE effects for you as well.
Basically you can create some amazing particle effects in our particle editor and then easily bring them into your Unity game or application. And enjoy the experience I would love to share some of our work here and any feedback or discussion is welcome.
There are many effects that need sequencing or timing. To make this process as easy as possible we added an ‘effects director’ to our editor which allows putting effects on timeline tracks that can easily be placed, resized, moved, grouped and such.
DOWNLOAD FREE EFFECTS!
We have created some stylized effects for Unity users free to use in their commercial or non-commercial projects. The 10-pack bundle is a mix of explosions, fireworks, magic twister, fire and others.
I don’t quite get it. What are the features of Fork editor which Shuriken does not have? I can see that UI is quite interesting but that’s about it. I would like to know:
What’s the material/shader workflow here?
Can I drive custom shader data inside this particle editor?
What are performance comparisons?
Can I spawn geometry?
Can I extend the particle system with any new features? Shuriken is pretty good at this. I can just write my own modules if I need them.
Is there any API I can use later on in Unity to drive particle behavior?
I know Fork has been used in a numerous games so I believe it is good but after seeing Asset Store page I find it difficult to understand what are the advantages of this editor over the build-in system.
Hi Michal, Thanks for your feedback and interest. Fork Particle is one of the options for vfx artists available from a small pool of real-time solutions. It’s particle editor is a dedicated art tool for creating particle effects and its workflow allows quick iterations. Although custom behaviors are supported, advanced particle effects can be created with Fork without having to script.
Here is some information in reply to your questions:
What’s the material/shader workflow here?
Particle Studio uses custom shaders via its plugin. You can create shaders in external shader editors and bring them into Particle Studio. The Unity integration uses Meshes to render particles. So with a bit of effort one can use their own materials and shaders even with this current version of the integration.
Can I drive custom shader data inside this particle editor?
Custom shaders can have custom data input from the user as well.
What are performance comparisons?
I shall post some performance comparisons soon. Performance looked pretty reasonable but we still need to get to detailed specifics.
Can I spawn geometry?
Fork’s particle engine and editor supports spawning mesh (FBX) particles. This pipeline isn’t hooked up to Unity yet, but we have it on our todo list. Though currently since particle data is coming through to Unity, one can spawn geometry objects for particles.
Can I extend the particle system with any new features? Shuriken is pretty good at this. I can just write my own modules if I need them.
Fork’s particle engine supports customizing particle behavior, but this pipeline is not hooked up to Unity. This one could actually a bit involved because currently Unity is only receiving display data.
Is there any API I can use later on in Unity to drive particle behavior?
We will certainly be looking into extending Fork’s integration with Unity to provide as much customization as possible. I shall post updates later on.
I would love to share some of our work here and any feedback or discussion is welcome.