Effects & Atmosphere
Particles
Smoke, sparks, dust, and grass from a single efficient emitter — start from a preset, then tune count, color, motion, and glow.
Open in the interactive manual →The interactive version has full-text search, a table of contents, and light/dark themes.
A particle emitter sprays out a cloud of little points — smoke, sparks, embers, dust, grass. Each emitter is efficient (one draw call no matter how many particles, up to 5,000 each), so you can sprinkle atmosphere liberally.
Adding an emitter
Either Create ▸ Particles for a blank emitter, or Create ▸ Particle presets to drop in a ready-made effect:
| Preset | Effect |
|---|---|
| Dirt cloud | Brown debris settling like kicked-up dust. |
| Sparks | Glowing sparks shooting up with trails. |
| Glass shards | White-blue shards scattering outward fast. |
| Weeds · Grass tufts · Grass ribbons | Rooted grass that sways in a breeze — see Grass, weeds & breeze. |
| Smoke wisp | Soft grey haze drifting slowly upward. |
Tuned an emitter just right? Click Save as preset… in Properties to keep it in your own library.
The emitter controls
Select an emitter and open the Particles section in Properties:
| Control | Does |
|---|---|
| Motion | Free (emit & drift), or the two grass modes. |
| Emitter shape | Point, Sphere (with a radius), or Box (with X/Y/Z size) — where particles are born. |
| Count | How many particles (up to 5,000). |
| Lifetime | Seconds before a particle respawns. |
| Speed · Spread | Launch speed, and how tightly aimed (0 = a straight beam, 1 = a full sphere). |
| Gravity | Vertical pull — negative falls, positive rises. |
| Size · Size over life | Particle size, and whether it grows or shrinks as it ages. |
| Start / End color | Color fades from spawn to death. |
| Opacity · Blending · Glow | Transparency, Additive (bright, glowing) vs Normal blending, and a 0–4 glow boost. |
Extras
- Autoplay — uncheck to freeze the cloud so you can position it.
- Fade in / Fade out — seconds each particle takes to bloom up from transparent at birth and dissolve out before it dies, so motes appear and vanish instead of popping. 0 on either means an instant on/off.
- Variance — random ± wobble on speed, size, lifetime, and hue so the cloud isn't uniform.
- Tracer Lines — give each particle a fading trail.
- Texture (sprite) — swap the soft dot for your own alpha PNG.
Glow = instant magic
Set Blending to Additive and push Glow up, and even a handful of particles read as fireflies, embers, or magic dust. Any glow above 0 forces additive blending automatically.
Spotted something off, or want a topic covered? Email buck.rackley@gmail.com.