Dust is a GPU-based particle simulation and rendering system for Unity.
Here's a video of it in action.
Add DustParticleSystem and a DustRenderer, either DustPointRenderer or DustInstanceRenderer to a game object.
All simulation is done in world space.
There's a bug in 2017.3 that incorrectly throws an assertion error when instantiating a compute shader. It runs fine so it can be ignored for now.
- >=Unity 2017.3
- GPU with compute shader support
- Rendering modes:
- Point cloud
- Mesh instancing
- Emission shapes:
- Sphere
- Mesh renderer
- 2D, 3D, 4D animated noise
- Color by life and by velocity gradients
- Mass, momentum, and lifespan random value range
- Size and rotation over lifetime
- Cast- and self-shadowing
- Inherit velocity Rigidboy or Transform component
- Align to direction
The particle system kernel handles simulation state via a structured buffer containing several attributes. Structures can be found in DustParticleSystemCommon.cginc. Rendering components send the particle system buffer to shaders for rendering. Rendering components can be stacked on the same game object for layering effects.
- Depth buffer collision
- Emission shapes:
- Cone
- Skinned mesh renderer
- Rendering modes:
- Sprite
- Trails
- Optimization:
- Precompute static random fields
- Make noise a separate kernel, static whenever possble
- Reload compute shader at runtime/live coding