Particle Systems

What Is a Particle System?

A Particle system is a technique where hundreds/thousands of very small sprites, 3D models or other graphics are combined to create special effects. Every videogame uses this one way or another as a way of displaying visual information, they can do this through colors etc, e.g red being hurt and green being health.

How I made Mine

Our task was to make a particle system that could be used to signify health for players, here is my design –

To do this I had to create many different materials (sprites) which i spawned hundreds of in smaller sized which when combined together gave me the floating effect of all the small particles. Instead of making them spawn in a straight line I had to set it so that they could spawn anywhere within a pixel radius, this was hard to match to the outline of the circle as the radius was in a square shape so I had a few particles outside of the edge.

This is a screenshot of my effect being created in Unreal Engines Particle system editor.

 

Where/How/Why are they used?

Particle effects are in essentially all video games whether it be pick-ups, smoke grenades etc.. They are a very good and easy way of making these as it gives the creator full control on what they want to create as they can use their own assets to create something completely unique.

Examples Of Particle Systems In Games

League Of Legends is a great example of where I can show particle systems because of all of the champion abilities that you can use, here we see a spinning attack, toxic gas, death effects, healing effects and shielding effects.

The effects used here are very colorful and you can distinguish which each one represents, healing being green and any harmful ability being a darker color.