My project for #UnityHackWeek this year was focused on a few down-to-earth improvements for particle systems: Improved stretched particles, and improved moving fire. (Music by http://bensound.com)
Work on Freeform Stretching for particles is now done ™ and will ship with Unity 2020.1.
@runevision looks like it enables scaling in directions independent of the rotation of the sprite? is that what's going on here?
@reedbeta Not sure, since I'm not quite sure what you mean. You can see the difference clearly for particles in the lower left corner, since these are moving towards the camera. They are thin lines in the classic stretching method.
@runevision Sorry, I still can't tell what's different with the very short clips in the video. The particles heading toward the camera are still elongated, do you mean you are putting a limit on their aspect ratio in some way?
@reedbeta Did you see the video in the original message of the thread? https://mastodon.gamedev.place/web/statuses/102349237919258873
@runevision Yes, that's the one I was referring to
@runevision Sorry for being obtuse, but still I can't tell what's different after you turn on "use alt scaling"... I can see *something* is different, but not *what*. It doesn't help that you only gave a 1 second clip of the new method, lol 🙂
@reedbeta You avoid this artefact where particles moving towards the camera get squashed thin. I don't know how else to put it.
@reedbeta This is not done by putting a limit on the aspect ratio but by stretching by a different method which treats the particles more as if they were 3-dimensional. Result should be equivalent to stretched sphere.
@runevision Do you mean it avoids perspective-foreshortening the particles?