Project setup

When loading the PopcornFX plugin for the first time, a PKFxSetting.asset will be created under “Assets/Resources/”. This asset is used to configure all PopcornFX settings.

Those options are separated in 4 main categories:

General

• 1: Enable/Disable raycast collision queries. Might be necessary for certains effects. Might cause lag if used carelessly.
• 2: Relative path to source PopcornFX project. Make sure that the project has the same version as your PopcornFX Unity Plugin.
• 3: Path relative to “Assets/’ where baked assets will be stored.
• 4: Bake with force determinism: Your effect random are now seeded.
• 5: Enable/Disable console Unity logs from Native plugin.
• 6: Enable/Disable file logs from Native plugin.

Rendering

• 7:   Debug Only. Show effect bounding boxes.
• 8:   Debug Only. Show effect raycasts.
• 9:   Enable/Disable soft particles rendering.
• 10: Enable/Disable dynamic effects bounds.
• 11: Enable/Disable vertex shader billboarding. When enabled, billboarding will be handled on GPU. This relies on DrawProcedural from Unity API and VertexID and drastically improves CPU/GPU performance by reducing overhead.
• 12: Enable/Disable Mesh instancing. Will improve overall performance but need per instance data for the mesh color.
• 13/14: Enable/Disable Localized Pages.
• 15: Free unused batches if they are unused during a number of frames.
  • 16: number of frames during which the batch are unused before deletion.
• 17: See the reason for this option here.
  • 18: The size multiplicators are used to avoid resizing the meshes buffers too often.
    The formula to compute the vertex buffer size for a mesh is the following:
    BufferVertexCount = ParticleCount * VertexPerParticle + VertexBufferSizeMultiplicator * ParticleCount * VertexPerParticle
    Lets say that you have a Unity mesh which holds at most 10 regular billboard particles, if your vertex buffer size multiplicator is 0.5, the mesh will be resized to hold 10 + 0.5 * 10 = 15 particles, which means that if more particles spawn later on, the mesh will not have to resize until at least 5 more particles are spawned.
  • 19: Exactly the same thing as the vertex buffer size multiplicator, but applied to the index count of the meshes. Generally, you should try to set the same value in both multiplicators.
• 20: List of the PopcornFX rendering buffers with their maximum index and vertex sizes (computed using the values from properties 18 and 19).
• 21: Clear the existing list of rendering buffers.

Multithreading

• 17: Enables/Disables single thread to avoid visual studio hangs while debugging (see Visual Studio hangs: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/cross-platform/troubleshooting-and-known-issues-visual-studio-tools-for-unity).
• 18: Check when building for certains platforms with high multithreading contention.

Assets

• 19: Expose all Pkfx.asset in project. Useful on project upgrade where GUID can be regenerated and need an update in scripts.

Effect Importing

A PopcornFX Effect is the asset (.pkfx.asset) that will contain the sources of the PopcornFX Effect (.pkfx) (see Effect production pipeline). It is defined as an asset by PKFxEffectAsset.cs

To import an effect select the PKFXSetting, Set your “Source Effects Pack” with a valid PopcornFX project (.pkproj). Be sure that the version number of the project is matching the project version of your Unity plugin.

You can then import the whole project, or click on “Choose files” and choose wich effect to import with the interface provided (right image).

Scene basic setup

• It is required to have a single PKFxRenderingPlugin component present on a game object and active at all times.
  • The PKFxRenderingPlugin component will also instantiate a PKFxLogger which allows the configuration of logs from the plugin.
• For every camera that should render particles, there should be one attached PKFxCamera component.
• Instantiate your effects via the PKFxEmitter component.
  • Set your effect source asset.

ECS/Burst Integration

using UnityEngine;
using Unity.Entities;
using PopcornFX;
[UpdateInGroup(typeof(PresentationSystemGroup))]
[UpdateAfter(typeof(YourCustomSystem))]
public class PKFxSystem : SystemBase
{
    private PKFxRenderingPlugin m_RenderingPlugin;
    public void SetRenderingPlugin(PKFxRenderingPlugin rp)
    {
        m_RenderingPlugin = rp;
    }
    protected override void OnUpdate()
    {
        if (m_RenderingPlugin == null)
            return;
        m_RenderingPlugin.UpdateSimulation();
    }
}

var rp = FindObjectOfType(typeof(PKFxRenderingPlugin));
World.GetOrCreateSystem<PKFxComponentSystem>().SetRenderingPlugin(rp);