Simples question: does Unity currently support point sprites?

Unity Engine
1

As my title says, I would like to know if Unity supports point sprites shading. I am setting a custom GPU-based particle system that is currently able of generating different types of particles, both using the geometry shader and in the near future, GPU instancing. One of the most important things I need, though, is having point sprites.

Notice, however, that I mean real point sprites, not generating a quad on the fly from an original set of points passed to the VBO (this GPU-based quads I already implemented). The differences between that and point sprites is well explained here: c++ - Point Sprites for particle system - Stack Overflow

Is it possible to do that in Unity? If so, does anyone know of any example or reference that could be of help in learning how to do it? Thanks.

2

Yeah it does, but it won’t guarantee the size will be more than a point. So on some hardware it’ll be a pixel. On other hardware, you’ll scale it. You do it by creating a mesh with verts - you don’t need triangles, then in the shader you do your usual business - this thread might help - Unity4 point sprite texture coordinates - Unity Engine - Unity Discussions among others.

3

Thanks for the quick answer! Indeed that post is helpful. Just out of curiosity, you posted there some 3 years ago relating the above-mentioned issue. Have you ever heard from Unity about your bug report to learn whether it was indeed a but in Unity’s side or whether it was an unsolvable drivers’ issue across platforms?