Rendering materials: ParticlesOverLife

ParticlesOverLife is the stock material type for animating colour, scale, and opacity over each particle’s lifetime. Both variants (2-stop and 3-stop) share a single fragment shader; the vertex shader drives a normalised lifetime parameter (vLife = 0 at spawn, 1 at death) through mix() for the 2-stop path and interpolate_3x() for the 3-stop path, then premultiplies the result before the fragment stage.

Stock material instances live in ParticlesAssetPackage/Materials/; the shared material type lives in ParticlesAssetPackage/Material Types/.

2-stop variant

Instance: ParticlesColorOverLife. Linearly interpolates colour, scale, and opacity from spawn to death. The default choice for most effects.

Property	Type	Default	Effect
ParticlesOverLife.ColorStart	Vec4 colour	White (1, 1, 1, 1)	Particle colour at spawn.
ParticlesOverLife.ColorEnd	Vec4 colour	White (1, 1, 1, 1)	Particle colour at death.
ParticlesOverLife.ScaleStart	Vec3	(1, 1, 1)	Size multiplier at spawn.
ParticlesOverLife.ScaleEnd	Vec3	(1, 1, 1)	Size multiplier at death.
ParticlesOverLife.OpacityStart	Float 0–1	1.0	Opacity at spawn.
ParticlesOverLife.OpacityEnd	Float 0–1	1.0	Opacity at death.

Ready-to-use tinted instances ship with the asset package: ParticlesColorOverLife_Green and ParticlesColorOverLife_Red are pre-configured starting points for common colour ramps.

3-stop variant

Instance: ParticlesColorOverLife3Stop. Adds a midpoint for each interpolated channel so that the value can peak, dip, or hold at an intermediate point before the end. Use this when a single linear gradient is not enough — for example, fade in from transparent, hold a mid colour, then fade out.

The 3-stop variant accepts all 2-stop properties plus:

Property	Type	Default	Effect
ParticlesOverLife.ColorMid	Vec4 colour	White (1, 1, 1, 1)	Colour at the midpoint.
ParticlesOverLife.ColorMidPoint	Float 0–1	0.5	Lifetime fraction at which ColorMid is reached.
ParticlesOverLife.ScaleMid	Vec3	(1, 1, 1)	Scale at the midpoint.
ParticlesOverLife.ScaleMidPoint	Float 0–1	0.5	Lifetime fraction at which ScaleMid is reached.
ParticlesOverLife.OpacityMid	Float 0–1	1.0	Opacity at the midpoint.
ParticlesOverLife.OpacityMidPoint	Float 0–1	0.5	Lifetime fraction at which OpacityMid is reached.

Midpoint values are clamped to the open interval (0, 1) to avoid division-by-zero at the segment boundaries.

Renamed and subsumed materials

Note

All stock rendering material names had their 2D suffix removed. If your project references any name in the Old name column below, reassign the material instance to its new name.

Old name	New name	Notes
ParticlesColorOverLife2D	ParticlesColorOverLife	Material type changed to ParticlesOverLife.
ParticlesColorOverLife2D_Green	ParticlesColorOverLife_Green	Renamed.
ParticlesColorOverLife2D_Red	ParticlesColorOverLife_Red	Renamed.
ParticlesColorOverLife3Stop2D	ParticlesColorOverLife3Stop	Now uses the 3-stop ParticlesOverLife type.
ParticlesFireScaleOverLife3Stop2D	(removed)	Replace with ParticlesColorOverLife3Stop; configure the Scale properties as needed.
ParticlesSmoke2D	ParticlesSmoke	Renamed.
ParticlesVelocityColor2D	ParticlesVelocityColor	Renamed.

See also

• Particle rendering materials

• Sort type selection

• Particle editor reference § Particle rendering properties and particle-rendering materials tables.