- Home /
Particle System: Color over Lifetime - How to control alpha ONLY
Fading particles in and out is a common effect. The Color over Lifetime module makes that easy.
Using randomly colored particles is a common effect. The Start Color setting in the Particle Main module makes that easy.
I want to combine the two, and am struggling. That is, I want randomly colored particles that fade in and out over time.
The issue is that the Color over Lifetime module setting blends with the Start Color setting. So if I stick with the default white color in the Color over Lifetime module, then all of my randomly chosen start colors get washed out. Ideally, I would just like the Alpha setting of the Color over Lifetime module to be included. Is there a way to do that?
Thanks!
Answer by ifurkend · Apr 19, 2017 at 10:19 PM
This sounds odd to me because if you're using the built-in Particles shader, white color does NOT wash out the color mixed from another module. Can you capture a screenshot which shows the gradients of your start color and color over lifetime in your particle system?
Answer by Livealot · Apr 20, 2017 at 07:41 PM
Good to know what I thought should happen does actually happen. It was NOT the white that was washing out my colors, it was the alpha settings themselves that were creating that perception. I assumed the pink I saw was my startColor of Red blended with my ColorOverTime of White. That was a bad assumption. In my experimentation with gradients in the ColorOverTime module, some of the Alpha keys got set too low. So the pink I saw was actually my startColor of Red blended with a low alpha from my ColorOverTime gradient seen against a light background.
Your answer
![](https://koobas.hobune.stream/wayback/20220612120041im_/https://answers.unity.com/themes/thub/images/avi.jpg)
Follow this Question
Related Questions
[Newbie] Particle System not playing, C# (unity 5.5) 3 Answers
Script sets color to multiple objects from instead of only one object with Random.range() 0 Answers
[Newbie] Particle System does not work right. 1 Answer
Why do my VFX Graph particles look green when alpha is low? 0 Answers
Multiple Cars not working 1 Answer