Pawel
February 12, 2026, 6:35pm
5
can particle fx interact with colliders so particles actually land on terrain instead of passing through it?
The particles emitted from the Particle FX component is not interacting with collision objects, so no, there is no such solution for them, but you could of course do this with your own spawned game objects with collision objects and sprites, like in Acid Rain or Defold Debris .
Can I set random textures from atlas to particles?
To particles in the Particle FX component - no, not yet, please follow the issue:
opened 10:22AM - 13 Nov 20 UTC
feature request
engine
editor
particlefx
community vote
It would be great to be able to use a number of different images for particle fx… to pick from at random.
This would make the workflow much smoother because the current solution (using multiple emitters) is something that leaves much to be desired. In fact you're forced to rebalance all the emitter parameters if you decide to add an image to give it more feel.
Is there a built-in billboard mode?
No, I would say, or at least not-so-out-of-the-box, but you can achieve it with a custom shader:
This immediately crash the Editor, can’t build anymore using 1.9.7 alpha. Any suggestion?
[Screenshot 2025-01-18 at 15.30.56]
Edit: My bad, sorry. I forgot to add proj uniform
There’s also an issue for this feature to track:
opened 06:47PM - 20 Jul 22 UTC
closed 11:05AM - 20 Feb 26 UTC
feature request
engine
render
community vote
3d
**THE PROBLEM:**
At the moment, sprites, labels and particles look flat when … viewed in 3D from the side.
I'm talking about the "alignment to the camera" that is used for billboards.
Here's an example of a video of how it should be:
https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/7888071/180055916-35b51fc0-5b0d-4294-8245-a3068aebe7a5.mp4
But that's not the case in Defold right now. :(
Look at that miserable particle system - how it flattens out in Defold when rotated in 3D:
https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/7888071/180056536-abf4fd57-7423-4ab0-a28c-c5f2d4ec42eb.mp4
The bottom line is this: is it REALLY necessary to pass labels, sprites and particles NOT as billboards?
All the games I’ve seen - they all use particles and labels as billboards.
It would make sense that this (billboards aligned to the camera) would be the **default behaviour** for _sprites_, _labels_ and _particles_ in Defold!
**PREFERRED SOLUTION:**
Pass in the vertex data the centre of the sprite/label/particle.
For example, the vertex declaration for sprites/particles/labels now has the format position + texcoord.
Pass in each vertex additionally the centre of the sprite/particle (you know it anyway).
With this information, it will be possible to deploy the object frontally in front of the camera in the shader.
In fact, this will allow you (or me) to create true and perfect "billboard material".
This solution is completely compatible with previous versions of the engine and does not break anything.
What it looks like in my shader:
```
// we get the central position of object in world coordinates
highp vec4 base = world * vec4(0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0);
// obtain the local offset of the current object vertex to be processed
highp vec4 local_pos = vec4(position.x - base.x, position.y - base.y, 0.0, 0.0);
// putting it all together
gl_Position = (view_proj * base) + (proj * local_pos);
```
**ALTERNATIVE SOLUTION:**
Manually rotate all sprites and labels on each frame towards the camera.
And you can forget about particle systems in 3D at all. :(
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