I like one side of the effect, but dislike the other (I like the shadow part, and dislike the light part)
With unlit it doesnt give the nice effect cuz it all blends togheter not casting shadows on each other ofcours. What would be the course to achieve only the dark side?
Stuff I tried: (will keep adding until i get it!)
lit > unlit
random value, random saturation and random hue
Didnt quite give the same vibe
There is a flag in the material called generate spherical particle normals, which does exactly what it says. It can give a more volumetric shading across the surface instead of shading each sprite like a flat quad.
However, it only covers a circle the size of the sprite quad, so if the texture goes outside that circle coverage you can see the edge of the circle. Instead you can use this, plug it into the normal slot in your material.
This generates a normal that is more like a cone. It has full coverage of the entire quad so you dont need to worry about the edge. The sharpness controls how fine of the point the tip of the cone is (in the middle of the sprite) a value of 0.5 is a very sharp point. As you deviate from 0.5 it rounds it out to be smoother. Start with 0.55 or 0.6. The constant bias scale is -0.5 and 2. The flatten normal is optional and just controls how strong the effect is.
If you want actual shadow casting you could make the material masked and enable shadow casting on the niagara emitter in the details panel.
One last tip, you mentioned you dislike the light side. It could be the lighting in your scene is blowing out the brightness. You can use the inverse eye adaptation node to remove the effects of the tone mapping eye adaptation on your material so the brightness doesnt blow out so much.
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Thanks a ton for the reaction!, ill make sure to give it all a try and see what works for me and what I could use in the future 