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Particle Systems & VFX

Create stunning effects for games: explosions, fire, magic spells, and dynamic weather — powered by a robust particle engine.

5 Sections

⏱️ 5 Hours

Your Progress

📚 Sections

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Introduction to VFX

Section 1 of 5

Learn how particle systems power modern visual effects in games: explosions, fire, magic spells, and weather systems. We’ll build a flexible particle engine with emitters, updaters, pooling, and blend modes to achieve smooth, beautiful visuals.

Live Canvas Demo

Choose an effect and interact with the canvas. Click to trigger explosions or spells. Fire and rain run continuously.

Click to trigger bursts

🔑 Core Techniques

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Emitters

Spawn particles with configurable rate, position, velocity, and variance for bursts or continuous streams.

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Updaters

Per-frame logic: gravity, drag, acceleration, life decay, color ramp, and turbulence.

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Blend Modes

Use additive or screen blending for glow and normal blending for rain, debris, and smoke.

♻️

Pooling

Reuse particle objects to avoid GC and keep smooth 60 FPS performance during bursts.

🎮 Hands-On Projects

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Spellcaster FX Pack

⭐ Project

Features:

✓ Hue-cycling magic trails
✓ Rune circles and rings
✓ Projectile impact bursts
✓ Sequenced spell timelines

Tech Stack:

✓ Canvas API
✓ Additive blend
✓ Pooling
✓ Timing controllers

Learning:

✓ Color ramps
✓ Trail emitters
✓ Sequence scripting
✓ Performance tips

⏱️ 2-3 hours

🌧️

Dynamic Weather System

⭐ Project

Features:

✓ Rain streaks and splashes
✓ Snow flakes with wind
✓ Wind gusts & parallax
✓ Lightning events

Tech Stack:

✓ Canvas API
✓ Line rendering
✓ Parallax layers
✓ Event triggers

Learning:

✓ Directional gravity
✓ Layering & parallax
✓ Event sequencing
✓ Visual polish

⏱️ 3-4 hours

📚 Learning Resources

📖 Recommended Reading

• Pixar’s “Physically Based Rendering” (for rendering fundamentals)
• “The Nature of Code” – Particle systems chapter
• GameDev articles on VFX & particle design
• Blend modes & compositing guides

🔧 Tools & Libraries

• PixiJS (2D rendering)
• Three.js (WebGL & shaders)
• GSAP (timelines & easing)
• WebGL/GLSL (advanced GPU particles)

🎮 Inspiration

• Hades – spell and hit effects
• Diablo series – atmospheric VFX
• Genshin Impact – elemental visuals
• Ori and the Blind Forest – glow & particles

💡 Advanced Topics

• Sprite sheets & texture atlases
• Shader-based particles
• GPU instancing & batching
• Post-processing (bloom/blur)

🎉 Congratulations!

You've completed Particle Systems & VFX! Ready for the next lesson?

⚡ Next: Performance Optimization

Master object pooling, spatial partitioning, and advanced techniques to build lightning-fast games.

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