Particles above UI without setting screen space to camera

I’m running into a bit of an issue, I want to add a particle system to my project, but it only shows behind the canvas UI. I know that this is because the canvas’ render mode is set to “screen space - overlay”, but I need it to be there, I cannot use “screen space - camera”. Is there a way to do this? I tried using camera stacks, it still showed behind the canvas, I also tried using the UI Extension project, it worked, but they don’t support particle trails yet, so that’s out. Does anyone have any ideas?

I’m honestly surprised the ability to use particle systems in the UI is not natively apart of Unity. I hope they are working on it.

The most straightforward way to do this off the top of my head is to render the particles using a secondary camera to a RenderTexture that is assigned to a RawImage component on the UI.

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There is API to do this, this uses it GitHub - mob-sakai/ParticleEffectForUGUI: Render particle effect in UnityUI(uGUI). Maskable, sortable, and no extra Camera/RenderTexture/Canvas.
Native support is something we have been working on but there’s no ETA.

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I did see the MeshBake/MashTrailBake methods but I wasn’t sure if they were meant for real-time use. I suppose they were! Very cool to see.

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Hi, sorry for necroing an old thread. I just wanted to check in, since this was a while ago. I looked at the GitHub and it looks finished. Is it? Looking forward to using it. Can I use this in my game or should I wait?

The native support has not been finished so the GitHub link is still the best way to go. It’s unlikely that we will be able to land native support for particles and UGUI at this point so I would not wait.

Thanks for the quick reply! May I ask why? It seemed like an awesome addition to Unity :frowning: Is there coming something else in its place?

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I’m not really sure of the reason. It was a hackweek project and needed more work. It was also not much more than what that GitHub project does so would not have made a big difference. We are focusing our attention on UI Toolkit now so hopefully we can get it right this time with native particles support. We have a huge list of Other things that need to come first though.

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Check this video it has everything about particles system on the UI Canvas on unity

Hi Karl,
sorry to necroing this old thread but it is March 2025 and the UI Toolkit still has not native particle support. Any news about this?

No theres no news at the moment. Its on the roadmap but I cant give any timelines.
https://unity.com/roadmap/unity-platform/ui

Hello Karl
Hope you are fine
I am using unity 6.0.40f1
Is there any solution now or shall i use the github link or the video solution that “novalyst” uploaded ?