Changelog

v2.2.0

A major release that grows Photon from a particle editor into a full real-time VFX toolkit: a Unity-style Timeline, node-based Shader Graph and Post-Processing editors, a formal simulation-space and force-field model, mesh/model particles, a GPU-instanced render pipeline, and a way to package and ship finished effects.

Timeline

A non-linear timeline for animating effects over time.

• Animation tracks — keyframe almost any emitter/module property with curve, gradient, and expression clips; keyframes, tangent handles, and color stops are directly editable.
• Record mode — play the effect and capture live edits as keyframes.
• Signal, Seed, and Audio tracks — fire events, re-roll randomization, and drive sound; tracks can be grouped.
• Post-Process track — schedule post-processing effects as clips.
• Multi-select, edge snapping, no-overlap placement, and smooth scrubbing.

Shader Graph

Author particle / trail / beam materials as node graphs instead of writing GLSL.

• Full node palette: scene color/depth, geometry (position/normal/view) across object/world/view space, camera, UVs, math, and texture nodes.
• Curve / gradient / sampler value types with inline editors, plus reusable function subgraphs.

Post-Processing

An Effect Graph chains fullscreen passes, each pass its own Fullscreen Shader Graph.

• A library of built-in effects: bloom, depth of field, blurs, vignette, chromatic aberration, glitch, film grain, outline, color grading, and more.
• Requested as timeline clips with animatable weight and per-parameter overrides; overlapping requests blend by weight.
• Custom Mask / Custom Depth — per-object masking (Unreal CustomDepth/Stencil style): flag emitters into named groups, then cull or outline effects to just those pixels.
• Custom texture inputs — feed external images (LUTs, noise, ramps) into effects, baked into the graph or exposed as a clip-settable sampler parameter.
• Hand-written core-shader passes work alongside graph passes.

Simulation & Forces

• Simulation space — Local / World / Custom; particles are stored in their simulation space, so moving or rotating the whole effect behaves correctly.
• Force Field object — mirrors Unity's ParticleSystemForceField core set (directional, gravity, drag, vortex).
• External Forces module — emitters respond to force fields in the scene.

Models & Meshes

• Particles can render as 3D meshes; a universal mesh input backs both the Shape module and a Model render mode.
• OBJ and JSON model sources, plus built-in primitives.

Custom GPU Data

• Per-emitter custom data streams (vector/color functions) readable per particle in shader graphs and hand-written shaders, on tile / trail / beam / ara-trail, with selectable time sources.

Rendering

• Rebuilt into dedicated renderer classes with GPU instancing for tile, trail, and beam particles (toggleable per emitter).
• Per-instance render overrides — override an emitter's material/renderer at runtime and from the timeline, with no data copies.
• Smoother AraTrail tails with UV fixes; flat and tube trail rendering.

Distribution

• FX Packs — export an effect and everything it references (materials, graphs, meshes, textures, shaders) into a single .fxpack (a standard resource-pack zip). Shared resources are content-addressed and deduplicated, and packed textures stay reskinnable.

Quality of Life

• Reworked timeline UI, curve-editor improvements and rendering fixes, clearer FX hierarchy interaction, new icons, better number-function configuration, and clip right-click menus / paste.

Performance

• Parallel particle updates with a safe light-cache handshake and small-queue threshold, emitter update micro-optimizations, and coalesced scrubbing with fast-seek replay.

Stability

• Fixes for sub-emitter thread-safety and gating, looping bursts, bounce, lifecycle, NaN guards, GPU light ordering, UV sheet wrapping, and rotation-axis parity.