Recipes

Eight finished effects and one way to show them off, each a short list of steps. Build one exactly as written, then change one thing at a time and watch what happens - that is the fastest way to learn what the controls really do.

1. A clean comet tail

The effect most coins want, and the base for everything else.

1. Trails, layer 1: bundled glow, blend Add.
2. Trail length 0.35, Samples 60.
3. Size over life: preset Shrink - fat at the head, thin at the tail.
4. Opacity over life: preset Fade out, ending at 0.
5. Add a second layer: same picture, Transform scale 0.45, opacity 1, trail length 0.18.

The wide faint layer is the halo, the small bright one is the core. Two layers is the whole trick.

2. Sparks that fall like embers

1. Sparks, layer 1: Emitter Follow the coin path, Mode Loose.
2. Sparkle count 40, Particle life 0.5 s, life randomness about 40%.
3. Forces: Gravity 600, Drag 1.5, Burst speed 120, Spread 360.
4. Velocity influence up a little, so they fly off the way the coin was going.
5. Size over life Shrink, Opacity over life Fade out.
6. Tint: white at birth, orange at 0.4, deep red at death.

Anything hot starts pale and cools as it ages. That colour change is what makes it read as fire rather than as orange dots.

3. A landing that feels solid

1. Hit: tick Show pot hit (it is off by default).
2. Layer 1: preset Soft flash, Particle count 1, Hit delay 0.
3. Layer 2: preset Shockwave ring, count 1, Hit delay 0.02 s.
4. Layer 3: preset Spark explosion, count 30, Hit delay 0.05 s.
5. Set Variation on the Hit tab to about 25% so no two landings are identical.

Flash, then ring, then debris - in that order, a few hundredths of a second apart.

4. A win line that draws itself

1. Header: switch to Win lines.
2. Paths: Shape Smooth, Smoothing 0.8, Overshoot a little, Extend before and after 120 px.
3. Motion: Passes 2, Duration per pass 500 ms.
4. Line glow: Gold - this also sets the line colour.
5. Trails: one layer, Render Ribbon, trail length 1.0, Tint by line colour on.
6. Sparks: one layer, Emit offset slightly positive, Cull at flight end on, End fade 0.2 s.
7. Hit: Hit fires at First 3 symbols, one Soft flash layer, count 1.

The ribbon draws the line, the sparks trail behind the head, and each winning symbol flashes as the head reaches it.

5. Butterflies circling a walking character

The case the emitter ring exists for: the character must not spin, but something should circle it.

1. Coin: upload your character sequence. Rotation: Align to path on, Keep upright on, Rotations 0.
2. Emitters: add two points, Angle 0 and 180, Radius about half the character width.
3. Ring: Follow coin Coin size only, Rotations 3, Direction clockwise.
4. Ring: Radius over life - start at 0.2, rise to 1.4 in the middle, back to 0.3 at the end.
5. Sparks: two layers, each Emit from a different emitter, a butterfly sequence as the picture, Particle life long, Swirl small.

The character walks upright while two followers orbit it, spread wide mid-flight and gather again before it lands.

6. Slow magic dust

1. Paths: Duration 1600 ms, Path nodes 4, Wave 60, Randomness 0.4.
2. Coin: Wobble amount 8, Wobble speed 2.
3. Sparks: Mode Loose, count 60, Particle life 1.2 s.
4. Forces: Gravity -60 (floats upward), Turbulence 40, Swirl 120, Drag 2.
5. Sequence: Start frame Random, Frames Stretch to life.
6. Tint: pale blue at birth, white in the middle, violet at death.

Slow, floating, never repeating. The three controls doing the real work are turbulence, swirl and the random start frame.

7. Bubbles that pop

Bubbles that rise behind the coin and some of them burst into a ring. The first pop most effects want.

1. Sparks, layer 1: Emitter Follow the coin path, Mode Loose, a round bubble picture if you have one.
2. Sparkle count 30, Particle life 1.2 s, life randomness about 40%, Size variance up so the bubbles differ.
3. Forces: Gravity -120 (they rise), Wander 20 px, and Follow path 0% so they stay where they were born instead of racing along with the coin.
4. At the end of the Sparks tab, + Add pop: a Bubble pop attached to layer 1.
5. Trigger: Chance 40%, Offset -50 ms, so the ring starts as the bubble fades.

Most bubbles simply fade; the ones that pop leave a ring the size of the bubble. That imbalance is what makes it believable. See Spark pops.

8. Fireworks from an invisible shell

Sparks nobody sees fly out and fall, and each one bursts into a firework where it dies.

1. Sparks, a new layer: Mode Loose, Sparkle count 8, Particle life 0.8 s, life randomness 30%.
2. Forces: Burst speed 350, Spread 120, Gravity 300, so the shells arc out and start to fall.
3. Open the layer's Pops group: + Add pop to this layer, preset Firework burst. Do it twice more, and give the three pops different tint gradients: gold, red, green.
4. Still in the Pops group: Pick One pop per spark, and each pop's Chance at 30%.
5. Untick Draw the sparks. The layer is now a carrier: only the bursts show.

Nine shells in ten burst as one of the three colours and the tenth fizzles out. Each burst keeps a little of its shell's speed, so it drifts the way the shell was going.

9. A demo clip over game footage

Not an effect, but what you do with one: put a finished coin over real footage in your video editor.

1. Build or open the look you want to show. Check the isolation bar: nothing muted or soloed that should be in the clip.
2. Settings, Render PNG sequence: What to render Selected coin, Frame rate 30, Size Full, Passes Per blend mode (exact), Output Folder.
3. Press Render..., pick an empty folder, read the numbers, OK.
4. In the editor, import each pass as an image sequence at 30 fps and stack them over the footage in number order, 01 at the bottom.
5. Set each layer's blend mode to the word in its file name: _normal stays Normal, _add becomes Add (Linear Dodge).
6. Slide the whole stack to the frame where the win happens in the footage.

The passes are the same length, so they stay aligned when you move them together. For a whole win sequence, render All coins or, in Win lines mode, The lines set the same way. The full story is on the Settings tab page.