Unity Playmaker - 3rd Person Adding Particle System to Walk

In this Unity Playmaker tutorial, I'll be showing how to create a dust particle system for Walk and Run. I'll set up dust particles and then play the particles with the Walk and Run animations. ► Download Playmaker at https://bit.ly/3dV8JzC ► Download Unity at https://unity.com Chapters: 00:00 In

This tutorial adds a subtle puff of dust under a third-person player every time a foot hits the ground. You create a dust particle system from a hand-drawn smoke sprite, tune it so each puff drifts, fades, and grows, then nest it inside the character model so the walk and run animations themselves can switch the particle on and off at the right frames.

Create the dust sprite and material

In Photoshop, sketch a rough, soft puff of smoke with a varied brush and save it as "puff," painted white so it can be tinted to any color in Unity. Import it into a sprites/particle folder. Make a material named particle dust and change its shader from URP Lit to URP Particles, Unlit. Drag the puff sprite into the Base Map, set the Surface Type from Opaque to Transparent, and use Alpha blend mode so the soft edges read correctly.

Add and orient the particle system

With the player selected, right-click and create an Effect, Particle System. Under Renderer, replace the default Particles Unlit material with your particle dust material. By default the particles fire out along the Z axis, so set the system's rotation to -90 on the X axis so the dust rises upward instead.

Tune it to look like dust

Set Start Lifetime to Random Between Two Constants of 0.4 to 1, Start Speed to about 0.1 to 0.2 so it barely drifts up by the feet, and Start Size to roughly 0.3 to 0.5. For Start Color, eyedropper a slightly light ground color. Shrink the Shape radius to its minimum so dust stays at the feet. Set Simulation Space to World so puffs are left behind as the player moves. Set Emission rate over time to 0 and add a Burst that spawns 1 particle. Finally add Color Over Lifetime fading alpha from 100% to 0%, and Size Over Lifetime as a curve that grows slightly, so each puff dissipates naturally.

Drive the puffs from the animations

Rename the system "dust" and drag it inside the character model so the animations can control it. In the Animation tab, with the idle (Happy Idle) clip recording, toggle the dust object off so no dust appears while standing still (a keyframe marks the property disabled). In the walking clip, record keyframes that turn the particle on as each foot plants and off as it lifts, so a puff fires on every footfall. Repeat the same on/off keyframing in the running clip. The end result is a very subtle but convincing puff of dust under each step while walking and running.