Particles

Particles are a cool way to add some atmosphere to a scene. They can be used for a lot more than that. Flames, Lightning bolts, Smoke, etc.

In this demostration I’m just going to add some dust floating around in the room.

Right clicking in the hierarchy then navigated to effects will show the “particle system” option. Clicking that will add a particle system to your scene. At first it looks kinda silly.

These little floating orbs can be completely customized. The speed at which they move, the direction, their size, color, etc.

In the inspector of the particle system you should see a few basic options.

Looping will make sure the particle system’s playback loops indefinitely. I have that selected and left everything else pretty much the same. I changed the start size to a random between two constants and set the values shown there.

Further down you can see Emission options, size over lifetime options, shape, etc. Playing around with these settings will be the best way to really learn what they do. For my dust particles I have the Emission set to the values shown below.

The Shape settings are spherical and the radius is changed so that the sphere takes up the entire room.

I have adjusted the size over lifetime parameters a bit so that the particles can fade in, be at their maximum visibility, then fade out.

Changing these super simple parameters allows for a fairly convincing, and easy dust implementation. There are lots of REALLY awesome things you can do with the particle system in Unity. I’ll link one of my favorite YouTuber’s channels below. He goes into detail about the VFX he creates and makes his videos very easy to follow along with.

The best way to learn this system is to just play around with it though. His videos help a lot, and I hope this article has given you some value and ability to get started!

My result looks like this:

Youtube channel: Gabriel Aguiar Prod. — YouTube