Particle Effects
Add dust, smoke, fire, sparkles, confetti and sparks to your scene. Emitters attach to any object (or stand on their own), follow it around, and — because everything replicates — everyone in the session sees the same effect.
Particles are deterministic: each particle's motion is computed from a shared clock, so peers see identical results without streaming anything. They're also cheap — one draw call per emitter, simulated on the GPU.
Adding an emitter
There are three ways in, and they all end up as the same emitter.
From the object menu
Right-click an object ▸ Effects ▸ and pick a preset. It attaches immediately and starts playing (burst presets fire once so you see them right away). If you have several objects selected, the emitter is added to all of them.
From the Inspector
Select an object and open its Particles section:
- With no emitter yet: the Add emitter… dropdown attaches a preset.
- With one attached: tweak every property (below), swap the preset, Burst now, or Remove emitter.
As a standalone object
Right-click empty space ▸ Add ▸ Effects ▸ places a small marker object that carries the emitter — perfect for a campfire in the middle of the room with nothing to attach to. It moves, saves and replicates like any other object.
The presets
| Preset | What it looks like | Emission |
|---|---|---|
| Sparkles | glinting stars that drift and twinkle | continuous |
| Fire | rising orange flames + embers | continuous |
| Smoke | soft grey plume that trails and fades | continuous |
| Dust puff | a low brown scatter | burst |
| Confetti | tumbling coloured squares | burst |
| Sparks | fast bright streaks that arc and die — since 1.27 drawn stretched along their motion, and thrown along by a moving emitter | burst |
| Rain | streaks falling over an 8 × 8 m area, with a small splash ring where each one lands | continuous |
| Snow | flakes drifting down over an 8 × 8 m area, settling and fading on the ground | continuous |
| Ribbon trail | one glowing band behind a moving object — a sword swish, a comet tail (since 1.27) | continuous |
| Magic wisps | trails that curl off a moving object (since 1.27) | continuous |
| Fireflies | slow glowing points that drift and blink over a meadow or a pond at night (since 1.60) | continuous |
Rain and Snow (1.22) are weather: Add ▸ Effects ▸ Rain places the emitter up at cloud height, and the drops fall about 6 m to the ground below it, drifting with a little wind. Pair them with Water for a storm over the sea.
A preset is just a starting point — every value below is editable afterwards. A Sparks emitter added before 1.27 keeps its old look.
Continuous, burst, and on-impact
- Continuous emitters (Sparkles, Fire, Smoke) emit forever.
- Burst emitters (Dust puff, Confetti, Sparks) fire all their particles at once, then wait for the next trigger. They auto-fire once when you attach them so you get instant feedback; after that, replay them with Burst now or wire an event into the Particles node.
- On impact (physics) emitters fire automatically when a physics simulation lands the object on the ground or another object — a dust puff exactly when the crate hits the floor. Set the object's body to Dynamic, set the emitter's Emission to On impact, and press P. Every peer sees the same burst. Small settling bounces are filtered out (the object has to be actually falling), and a rolling object won't machine-gun bursts.
Throwing things
While a simulation runs you can grab and throw any dynamic object — drag it with the gizmo on desktop, or grip-grab it in VR — and it flies off with the velocity of your hand when you let go. Heavier objects (higher Mass) hit harder. Combine with an on-impact emitter for very satisfying crashes.
Properties
Open the Inspector's Particles section on an object with an emitter:
| Property | Range | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Preset | — | re-seeds every value from a preset |
| Emission | continuous · burst | one-shot vs endless |
| Count | 1 – 500 | how many particles |
| Lifetime | 0.1 – 6 s | how long each particle lives |
| Speed | 0 – 8 | launch speed |
| Gravity | −10 – 10 | positive rises, negative falls |
| Turbulence | 0 – 1 | how much the paths wobble |
| Size start / end | 0 – 1 | grows or shrinks over life |
| Opacity | 0 – 1 | peak transparency |
| Emit from | X / Y / Z | where particles spawn, relative to the object's center (local axes) — lift them to the top, a corner, an exhaust, etc. |
| Color | two swatches | start → end gradient over life |
| Draw as | Sprites · Stretch · Trails · Ribbon | how each particle is drawn — see below |
| Sprite | dot · streak · puff · star · confetti | the particle shape |
| Blending | additive · normal | additive glows (fire, sparks); normal for smoke/confetti |
| Space | local · world | see below |
| Inherit velocity | 0 – 1 | World space only — see below |
Note
Glowing presets (Sparkles, Fire, Sparks — additive blending) render through the object they emit from, so they're visible even when the spawn point is inside a solid mesh. Smoke, Confetti and Dust use normal blending and are properly hidden behind geometry.
Local vs world space
- Local — particles ride along with the object. Best for auras, fire on a moving torch, sparkles on a pickup.
- World — particles keep the spot they were born and the object trails away from them. Best for smoke plumes and debris.
Inherit velocity
In World space, Inherit velocity sets how much of the emitter's own speed a particle keeps when it is born. At 0 (the default) particles stay where they were born; at 1 they are thrown along with the moving object — exhaust off a car, sparks off a swung sword.
How particles are drawn
Since 1.27 Inspector ▸ Particles ▸ Draw as draws the particles one of four ways. The particles move exactly the same in every mode; only the shape on screen changes.
Draw as set to Trails.
| Draw as | What you see | Its rows |
|---|---|---|
| Sprites (the default) | one image per particle, as before | Sprite |
| Stretch | each particle is a streak pointing the way it moves: fast particles are long, slow ones round. The Sparks preset uses it | Stretch — the seconds of motion each streak covers (0.005–0.3) |
| Trails | every particle leaves a fading band behind it | Trail length (seconds), Segments (2–16; more give smoother curves) |
| Ribbon | one band joining the particles in the order they were born. In World space that is the path the emitter took — a sword swish, a comet tail, a car's tail light. The Ribbon trail preset is set up for it | none: the width runs from Size start to Size end, and the band fades out as its particles do |
- A ribbon needs Continuous emission: a burst is born all at once, so it has no order. On a burst emitter a ribbon is drawn as trails, and the Inspector says so.
- In Local space a ribbon rides along with the object; switch Space to World for a trail that stays behind it.
The Magic wisps preset.
- The emitter: Inherit velocity carries its motion into the trails.
Caps
To keep framerates high, up to 8 emitters render at once (500 particles each; in VR at most 200 per emitter in every Draw as mode, trails and ribbons included). Extra emitters beyond the cap are skipped with a toast. Particles are hidden in Wireframe view mode.
Tip
For fully flow-driven effects — emission wired to a slider, colour from a picker, or a burst fired by a click or key — use the Particles node in the node editor instead of the Inspector.