Particles in Viewport Frames

Feature Requests Engine Features
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#15

Bump, would be useful feat to me right now.

#16

Bump.

As a fullstack programmer and visual effects designer, this would be phenomenal! It would allow for even more modern, advanced UI, such as showcasing an ability within the frame, or a cosmetic.

#17

bump
it has been four years since this topic was created, please add particle support in viewport frames

6 Likes
#18

Roblox should overall update viewport frames. Not only particles, but also proper neon material and better lighting.

1 Like
#19

I disagree. This hurts performance far too much and is not going to improve the experience in any way.

#20

Do you have any evidence that particles are a significant rendering cost? From what I know from my experience of scouring Microprofiler graphs, usually the most expensive part of the scene is rendering opaque geometry (Id_Opaque label) like Parts and MeshParts, which literally make up most of the game world. Meanwhile, I’ve never seen a significant amount of rendering time go to particles. You can check yourself by looking for the Id_Transparent Microprofiler label.

There’s plenty of ways people’s game’s can be improved by this feature, just look at this thread, for instance:

As you can see, @bryanf84 is extremely distraught by this feature not existing, shown by them repeating the emoji combination “:pray::pleading_face:” 3 times whole times, truly a praying-pleading moment. Please! Help bryan make an engaging UI experience!

4 Likes
Counter for number of times a post has been edited is inaccurate
#21

Your first issue is this. Why are you using it for UI? This is highly illogical.

#22

Maybe they want a 3D UI effect that always draws over the game environment so it doesn’t clip into anything? Like, 3D text, for example, or a 3D background for UI, just generally anything 3D that, if it was 2D, would be made up of UI elements.

If we are specifically talking about usecases specifically with particles, maybe they want an item preview for an item with stylized particle effects? 3D backgrounds yet again like an erupting volcano? Honestly, you never really know what you’re missing out on until you have the capability to experiment and have the gift of hindsight

3 Likes
#23

This would be a great convenience, please do. Beams as well.

#24

I quite literally just set up an inventory system using a part with particle emitters inside it for each item to display the different particles the player can purchase and found out the hard way that it’s literally not supported and is not a feature. This would be really REALLY helpful but now I’m going to have to go into photoshop and make 84 unique image icons for each.

Very upsetting.

1 Like
#25

This would be really useful for my main menu i’m making right now. Wish this was a thing

1 Like
#26

ay! 5 years now
please add particles in view port frames

1 Like
#27

I want this and I need this please!

2 Likes
#28

Bumping this, we really need this badly! This will improve my loading screen by alot! But for now, I guess I can use a low quality spritesheet animation to manually make these particles…

#29

Bump. I’d like to make a shop with particles but I cannot display them to the user (static images are not good enough, gifs would be inefficient) for a preview. Supporting ParticleEffects in viewport frames would make this much easier.

#30

Bump. This would save me an insane amount of time and open a hell of a lot more possibilities for my games.

#31

This would be amazing for the future of games. Imagine the amount of time that would be saved letting viewports render particle effects instead of having to make image label GIFs. I hope this gets added sometime soon.

#32

Maybe this isn’t possible because particles could be a seperate rendering pass that would be difficult to add. A lot of rendering features are missing from viewport frames such as shadows and post processing. It seems that viewport frames just have a more streamlined rendering pipeline either for performance or other reasons. (Though it would be really nice to have more powerful viewport frames.)

#33

Gonna keep bumping this; I was really hoping I could just use particles but now I have to spend a couple hours of my time to make a gif.

#34

So, What about…

  • Rendering Overhead: Viewport frames are already challenging because they’re essentially mini 3D viewports embedded in the 2D GUI. Rendering a 3D scene within a 2D interface means the engine has to do a ton of extra work. Now, add particles to the mix. Particles are a bunch of tiny, moving objects that need to be calculated, rendered, and animated constantly. It’s like asking a mouse to pull a truck; it’s way too much work!
  • Particle System Complexity: Particle systems aren’t just static objects. They involve physics calculations, animations. Every single particle needs to be tracked, animated, and rendered. On desktop, you might get away with this, but on mobile? No way. Mobile devices have way less processing power and memory. Cramming all those extra calculations into a viewport frame would slow down your game to a crawl, or worse, crash it.
  • GPU Limits: Mobile GPUs are nowhere near as powerful as their desktop counterparts. They have fewer cores, less memory bandwidth, and are designed to be power efficient rather than high performance. Rendering particles within viewport frames adds an extra layer of graphical processing that mobile GPUs just can’t handle effectively. You’re basically asking a toy car to perform like a race car.
  • Memory Usage: Particles use up a lot of memory, especially if you’re doing something like confetti with hundreds or thousands of pieces. On top of rendering the main game scene, you’re asking the engine to keep track of all these particles within viewport frames. Mobile devices, with their limited memory, are gonna struggle with that like a novice at an eating contest.
  • Battery Drain: Let’s not forget the power draw. All those extra calculations and rendering tasks would drain the battery life out of a mobile device super fast. Users would dislike your game for turning their phones into portable heaters.
  • Integration Complexity: Roblox’s engine is optimized for certain tasks. Adding particles to viewport frames means a lot of fundamental changes to how the engine handles rendering and GUI elements. It’s not just flipping a switch; it’s a major overhaul. And any mistakes in this process could lead to massive performance issues or bugs.
  • Cross-Platform Consistency: Roblox is big on cross-platform play. If you add particles in viewport frames, it’s gotta work smoothly on PCs, consoles, and mobiles alike. Ensuring it performs well across all these devices is a huge task, and any weak link would drag down the whole system.
1 Like