Unity VFX (looking for assistance)

PeteHawk

Right so there isn't a massive amount on vfx for game using unity. And I'm having some trouble with getting my ideas down into action :poly127:
I did this very basic rifle shot effect in maya by just using a flat coloured cylinder:



Trying to replicate it in unity isn't going well, so far I've been playing with shuriken and I'm not getting any good results, maybe because I haven't got much of a clue on the matter despite the tutorials I've looked through :poly142:
Would it be easier to import the mesh? I'd have to rig it? The major limitation is that I don't have much room for memory as it's for a mobile (3/4 perspective, RTS), so their might be a couple of them and not too close up (double the distance from the character above).

kio

using geometry in fx is pretty common.

you can mix and match quite anything - animation with particles and shaders and scripts etc

leave the mindset 'fx needs to be done with shuriken' - you're only artifically limiting yourself...

kypo

Like Kio said, you should be able to stick your geometry is fine. Shuriken does have a mesh emitter but you can't scale on a individual axis. you could probable get a similar FX using the unity stretch sprite. Those planes can be warped in both axis using the speed and scale over time curves.

If you go down the road of an animated clip and intend of firing these FXs off rapidly, they probably won't batch together. Repetitively firing a particle system should on the other hand.

THendersonVFX

You shouldn't need to do anything fancy like warping axis. Make a muzzle flash mesh (planes intersecting each other with the same UV layout), render out your animation from a side perspective running through the anim. Pick the start frame image, the end frame image and some decently spaced in between frames. Pack these into a sprite sheet and apply the material to the mesh. Have Unity run through the sheet animation, adjust speed as necessary



EDIT: forgot to add, you'll need a separate anim sheet with circles that follow the same width as your rendered images for the flat plane behind the crossed planes (see image). This will give your effect a faked sense of volume, minus all the extra geometry. Just have the back plane as a separate particle system parented to the main one.