Procedural VFX Kit

Procedural VFX Kit

32 ready-to-use visual effects for Godot 4, in 2D and 3D: hits, explosions, fire, magic, lightning, weather, trails and pickups. They are drawn entirely with shaders and particles, so there are no textures to import, and one tint recolours any of them.

Lite gives you the whole runtime and six everyday effects: a hit spark, a dust puff, a muzzle flash, an explosion, a torch and rain. Complete adds more impacts, fire and smoke, magic, lightning, more weather, trails and slashes, and pickups. Lite is a strict subset of Complete with the same API, so upgrading is a drop-in replacement.

Lite (free, MIT)

• Hit spark, dust puff, muzzle flash, explosion, torch with embers, and rain with splashes, each in 2D and 3D.
• The whole runtime: VK_Effects.play_2d() and play_3d() with pooling (no allocations once warm), tint, scale and speed per play, looping effects, and parts you can switch off.
• Tint recolours: an orange fire tinted blue burns blue and keeps its white-hot core. Multiply is one setting away.
• Rain that follows the camera, with intensity and wind you can change while it falls.
• Accessibility: a reduce-flashing option dims every flash.
• No textures and no third-party code: shaders and particles only, so every effect is light to ship and easy to restyle.
• Drag an effect's scene into your level, or play it with one line of code. Everything is documented in Godot's help.
• Tested in Forward+, Mobile and Compatibility, so it runs in the browser too.
• Pairs with Juice Kit Complete: play any effect from a feedback sequence (hit-stop, shake and sparks together), with no code connecting the two.

Complete

• Everything in Lite, plus:
• Impacts: heavy hit, shockwave ring, and a bullet impact that takes the surface's colour.
• Fire and smoke: campfire, fireball with its impact (homing projectile), burning (attaches to a target), smoke column.
• Magic: heal, buff aura, rune circle, teleport out and in, charge-up, level-up burst.
• Electric: sparks, a lightning bolt between two points, and chain lightning that follows moving targets. Under reduce flashing, lightning flashes at most three times a second.
• Weather and ambience: snow, falling leaves that flutter, fireflies and dust motes, with a wander you can change while they fall.
• Trails and slashes: sword slash arc, dash trail, projectile trail.
• Pickups and celebration: pickup pop, confetti, loot beam.

Try it in your browser

The demo above has every effect on a pedestal, in a 2D arena and a 3D room. Choose 2D or 3D to start; the demo prepares its shaders once, so you only wait for the one you came for. Pick a page, click a pedestal to play its effect, and change its tint, scale and more in the side panel while it runs. Each effect says whether it is in Lite or Complete. The target dummy takes the same hit with effects on and off, and with Juice Kit. The Stress test shows how many effects your machine can hold.

Performance

Measured with the demo's Stress test on a desktop with a Ryzen 9 3900X and an RTX 3060, at 1280 x 720:

• On the desktop: 100 effects alive at once at 250 to 410 fps in Forward+ and Mobile, and 160 fps or more in Compatibility, in 2D and 3D.
• In the browser (Chrome): a steady 60 fps with 30 effects alive at the same moment, and 50 to 60 fps with 50, in 2D and 3D. A laptop or a phone manages fewer.
• Pooled: once warm, playing an effect allocates nothing.

Requirements

• Godot 4.7.x, tested on 4.7.2 (standard build; .NET not tested).
• Tested with the Compatibility, Forward+ and Mobile renderers; the browser demo runs on Compatibility.

More addons and packs

• Juice Kit
• Stylized Shader Pack Vol. 1
• Stylized Shader Pack Vol. 2
• Save Kit
• Horde Survivor Template
• Card Roguelike Template