UI Toolkit Particles - Particle Image for UI Elements

Links: Manual

Adds a particle image control to your UI Toolkit library.

✔️ Easy to use

No coding skills required. Works just like the default Unity particle system.

✔️ Animated Preview in UI Builder

See how your particles behave while you are designing your UI.

✔️ Performance

Each particle is just one quad within the UI Toolkit visual hierarchy. This significantly reduces overdraw.

✔️ Lots of examples & documentation

Check out Kamgam/UIToolkitParticles/Examples. The gems & coins demo and the progress bar are included too.

✔️ Full Source Code

I publish this asset with full source code because as a developer I know how annoying it is to not have source code access. If you like it then please remind others to purchase the plugin. Don't just copy and paste it everywhere. Thank you ❤️

✔️ Supports Unity 2021.2+, 2022, 2023 ... LTS

Things you should know (Read this before you buy):

There is an intro section in the manual. Please read it first.

⚠️ This is NOT a UGUI component, it's for the new UI Toolkit. If you are looking for a UGUI solution then here is an excellent asset.

⚠️ Unity 2021.2 or higher is required since that's when Unity added the UI Toolkit module.

⚠️ Unsupported modules:

The particle system is the Unity default component. However, not all its features are supported. The most notable limitations are:

X/Y-axis rotation: Only rotation around the z-axis is supported. The reason is that UI Toolkit will clip anything that is rotated on the other axis.

Texture Sheet Animation: Texture sheet animations would require multiple texture support in UI Toolkit. Sadly that is not possible at the moment. Hopefully Unity will add this feature one day. If you need multiple textures simply use multiple particle images.

Custom Materials & Lights: Since we can not set the material in UI Toolkit rendering we can not assign any shaders. The UI Toolkit default shader is unlit. Hopefully Unity will add this feature one day.

Sub Emitters: These are not supported at the moment.

Trails: These are not supported at the moment as they would require a second material.

Custom Data: The ParticleSystemForImage does not have an API to access custom particle data. If needed you can add the code yourself it's just that there is no ready made ap for it.

Renderer: The particle renderer is not used at all in UI Toolkit and thus none of it is supported.

⚠️ Please keep in mind that UI Toolkit as a whole is still a work in progress and not quite ready for prime time. Unity itself still recommends using UGUI instead of UI Toolkit for runtime applications (source).

✍️ Usage

1) Open the UI Builder

2) Create a UI Document in your scene and reference the UI asset

3) Save the scene

4) Drag in a ParticleImage from the Library (custom controls)

5) Save the UI

6) Select the particle image and check the scene inspector for the configuration of particles.

😎 HINT 1:

Always save your UI and your scene. UI Toolkit is a bit picky about that. Your changes may only become visible once you saved your assets. Keep your scene and your UI in sync!

🧐 HINT 2:

Enable the renderer module on the particle system in the scene for debugging (disable in builds!).

🤠 HINT 3:

Read the whole manual once (especially the intro and the FAQ section). I know this sounds boring but it will pay off, I promise!

☎️ Support

If you have any questions please write to office[at]kamgam.com. Please be patient, replies may take a few days. Please include your Asset Store Order Nr and the exact Unity version in your request. Thank you.

❤️ If you like this asset then maybe you'll like these too:

📄 UI Toolkit Script Components

Link script components to your UI

https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/slug/248976