Sparks tab

Sparkle count - how many particles this layer creates per flight.

20-40 for a subtle shimmer, 100+ for a dense shower. Start lower than you think; particles add up fast.

Emitter - Follow the coin path makes particles along the flight. Burst at the target fires them all from the pot when the coin arrives.

Burst mode parks the mode, origin and system-life controls, because there is no travelling emitter to relate them to.

Mode - Loose (particles) gives each particle its own life and lets the forces move it. Locked to path draws a band of sparkles pinned to the route behind the emitter, with no life of their own.

Loose for anything that should drift, fall or fly apart. Locked for a glittering band that hugs the path exactly - it is closer to a trail than to a particle system.

Emit from - the coin's centre, or one of the rim emitters from the Coin tab.

Particle life - how long each loose particle lives, in seconds.

0.3-0.6 s for sparks off a fast coin. Longer lives mean longer trails of particles, and a longer linger after the coin arrives.

Particle life randomness - variation around that number, so they do not all die at once.

Always some. Particles dying in unison is one of the clearest tells of a cheap effect.

Emit start / Emit until - the window, measured in flight progress, during which new particles are born. The whole count is spread across that window.

Emit until 0.3 with a high count gives a dense puff at launch that then travels on its own. Emit start 0.7 gives sparks only as the coin arrives.

Emit offset - where particles appear relative to the emitter, as a share of the flight. Positive is behind it (on a point the coin has already passed); negative is ahead of it.

A small positive value makes the sparkles lag behind the head by a fixed amount whatever their life - much more reliable than trying to get the same look out of Particle life.

Cull at flight end + End fade - when the flight ends, fade every living particle of this layer out over End fade seconds instead of letting each finish its own life.

Switch it on for win lines. Without it, the head disappears at the end of the line and its sparks hang in the air after it, which looks like a bug.

Band length - Locked mode only: how long the band of sparkles is behind its head, as a share of the flight.

Gravity - downward pull. Negative floats particles upward.

400-800 for sparks that fall like embers. Negative 100 for smoke or bubbles that rise.

Gravity direction - where gravity pulls. 90° is straight down; 75° or 105° slants the fall, 0° or 180° is sideways.

Wind strength / Wind angle - a constant push in one direction. 0° is right, 90° is down.

Turbulence - a noisy per-particle wobble that grows as the particle ages, so wind and drift are not identical for everyone.

A little turbulence is the cheapest way to make a wind look natural rather than mechanical.

Wander / Wander rate - a smooth random walk that is there from birth: how far, in pixels, and how often it changes direction, in Hz. Turbulence is the small fast wobble; this is the big lazy drift of a snowflake or a fly.

30 px at 0.2 Hz drifts like a snowflake; 140 px at 1.5 Hz darts like a fly.

Drag - air resistance. Slows burst, wind and gravity over time.

Raise it and a burst stops feeling like it was fired from a cannon: particles shoot out, slow, and settle.

Burst speed - the speed each particle gets at birth.

Burst direction + Spread - which way the burst is aimed and how wide its cone is. Spread 360 fires in all directions. On a sparkle layer the direction is measured from the way the coin is travelling: 0 is forward, 180 is straight back.

A narrow spread (30-60°) aimed upward gives a fountain. 360 gives an explosion.

Spin - how fast each particle rotates over its life. Negative spins the other way.

Attract to path - positive pulls particles back onto the route (or the target) by the end of their life; negative pushes them away.

A positive value gathers scattered sparks into the pot as the coin lands, which reads as "collected" instead of "spilled".

Cohesion - positive draws a layer's particles toward their own centre, like a flock; negative spreads them apart.

Swirl - rotates each particle around its path point over time, giving a vortex.

Swirl plus a long particle life is how you get spiralling magic dust rather than a straight spray.

Stretch by speed - stretches fast particles along their direction of travel and turns them to match.

This is what turns round blobs into streaks. 1-2 on a fast burst reads as speed.

Emit radius - particles are born anywhere inside this radius rather than exactly on the path.

Jitter - random spread around the path that grows over life.

Path looseness / Velocity influence - how far loose particles drift from the route, and how much of the coin's speed they inherit when born.

Raise velocity influence and sparks fly off in the direction the coin was going, like water off a wheel.

Follow path - how far each loose spark keeps riding along the path after it is born. 100 % is the normal drift along with the coin; 0 % leaves the spark where it was born, and only the forces move it; a negative value slides it back along the route already flown. Loose mode on the path emitter only; it is greyed out for Locked mode and Burst at the target.

0 % with Gravity -100 for bubbles that rise behind a swimming fish and stay behind it, instead of racing ahead along its route.

For sparks shooting out of the back of a jet or a rocket, give them a Burst speed, set Burst direction to 180 and Follow path to 0 %. A negative Follow path is not an exhaust: it pulls the sparks back along the curve of the trail.

Burst stagger - spreads the birth times so they do not all appear on the same frame.

Size variance / Flicker - random variation in size, and per-particle brightness flicker.

Flicker on a tiny bright spark sells "ember". On a large soft glow it just looks like a fault.