#pfx

Big Al, Kamui Gakupo and the Kagamine Twins

Unity Tutorial #1: Run with Dust~

Add satisfying flair to your game’s movement by having little dust clouds puff out of your players as they run! 

Step 0: Observe how other games’ particle effects work.

Think about what is common or what is different across several games to determine what kind of artistic liberties you can take with your particle effects + what kind of behaviour your particle effects should have. 

Observations

Animal Crossing New Horizons

Dust cloud sprites are realistic

Dust cloud starts small and increases in size.

Dust is spreading and dissipating.

Dust clouds appear close to feet of player character.

Dust clouds fade in quickly then out slowly.

Overcooked 2

Dust cloud sprites are cartoonish and round.

Dust cloud start big and decrease in size.

Dust clouds appear behind the player character.

Dust clouds appear suddenly, then dissipate into smaller clouds.

Step 1: Draw some cartoonish clouds!

3 of around the same size will do. Arrange them in the same file, equidistant to one another. This is your cloud sprite sheet.

Step 2: Open Unity and create a material.

We’re using the Standard 3D pipeline for this tutorial.

Right-click the Assets window and navigate to Create > Material. Change the material’s shader to Particles/Standard Unlit. Change the rendering mode to ‘Fade and the Color Mode to ‘Multiply’.

Import the cloud spritesheet made in step 1 into Unity and set it as the material’s albedo.

Step 3: Create a particle system. Assign the material to it.

Right-click the Hierarchy window and navigate to Create > Effects > Particle System. Drag and drop the material from step 2 onto the particle system in the Hierarchy window.

Step 4: Check all the relevant particle effect properties.

Select the particle system in the Hierarchy window and view its properties in the Inspector window. Check all the properties shown below.

Step 5: Adjust the numbers as depicted.

Step 6: Attach the particle system to your character! 

Put it slightly behind the character’s feet. The character we are using here is Mix And Jam’s mascot!