Hi, I created this system to make sword slashes creation very easy.
While I was spending a year building this system, two similar tools from other developers appeared. But mine is better and more polished
Epic Sword Slash Effects System is a procedural solution for creating smooth sword, weapon, and slash trails in Unity. It supports multiple material layers, reusable presets, custom UVs, low-FPS curve smoothing, alpha fading, particle effects, and shader-based dissolve. Multiple weapons can be controlled by one Animation Event component, with optional continuous operation without an Animator. Dissolve starts from the value assigned in the material and uses MaterialPropertyBlock, allowing multiple trails to safely share one material.
The pack includes 23 presets weapon-following sword slash effects designed for RPGs, action games, fantasy battles, arena combat and stylized character abilities. These effects are made to follow sword movement and help make attacks feel more powerful, responsive and polished. These trails can be added to anything, not just characters with an animator!
Features:
Weapon-following slash effects
Great for melee combat and fantasy abilities
Suitable for RPGs, action games, hack-and-slash games and arena battles
High-quality real-time visual effects
Easy to use and customize
Works well for player attacks, enemy attacks, skills and special moves
Supports standard and custom materials
This asset is designed for developers who want to quickly add polished sword combat effects to their Unity projects.
Congrats on the release! I’m actually one of those developers you mentioned
I’ve been following your work for years and always liked your VFX, so it was really cool (and slightly terrifying ) to see your take on procedural slashes.
The presets look fantastic, wishing you a successful launch!
Thank you, yes, but also there was a free asset to make trails for almost 10 years - „Simple trails”. It was amazing asset, but not as popular as it should be because of the missing settings.
I intentionally made HS_SwordTrailPreset.cs independent from the main trail component. Licensed publishers are now allowed to create and sell their own preset packs for Epic Sword Slash Effects System on the Unity Asset Store and include the unmodified preset script in those packages.
The base Epic Sword Slash Effects System must be listed as a required dependency and is sold separately. No other files from the original asset may be redistributed.
This means that if you create custom materials, shaders, themed slash collections, particle effects, or other presets for this system, you can publish them as your own Asset Store package.
The complete permission terms are included in the documentation. If anyone is interested in creating presets, feel free to contact me!
One more question for the community: I’m considering launching an exclusive VFX contest for owners of Epic Sword Slash Effects System, with prizes of $150 for first place, $100 for second, and $50 for third.
The goal would be to demonstrate how creatively the system can be used. Your entry would not have to be a sword slash, you could create any type of effect, as long as Epic Sword Slash Effects System is used as part of it.
Would you be interested in participating? If enough people are interested, I’ll publish the complete rules and deadline!
IMHO, to have a contest where people need to buy your pack to join feels odd.
In that case, why not create a more global contest and give the top 3 your pack and/or a monetary bonus?
that said, giving something back to the people who purchased your content is cool. edit: rephrased because it sounded more mean than I intended it to be.
Now, I am considering making it available to participants for free, though without commercial usage rights. As for the winners, I would provide asset vouchers and potentially increase the number of winning spots to 5–10, depending on the level of interest.
) to see your take on procedural slashes.