VOXEL VFX 3D

Install the library

1. Unzip VoxelVFX3D_Library.zip somewhere it can stay, for example Documents/Blender Assets/Voxel VFX 3D. The folder holds Voxel VFX 3D.blend, its catalogs, a README and the license.
2. In Blender open Edit > Preferences > File Paths > Asset Libraries, press + and pick that folder.
3. Leave the import method on Append (Reuse Data): every effect you add shares one copy of the player node group.

Use an effect

1. Turn any area into an Asset Browser (the timeline works well) and choose the Voxel VFX 3D library at the top left.
2. Pick a category on the left, or type in the search field: fire, portal, coin.
3. Drag an effect into the 3D viewport and let go. It lands on the surface under the cursor.
4. Press play (Space). Every effect loops from frame 1.

An effect is an ordinary object: move, rotate and scale it, parent it to something, duplicate it with Shift D. Its mesh is empty; the Voxel VFX 3D modifier builds the cubes for the current frame, so the effect only appears when the modifier is on.

Change an effect's size by scaling the object, or with Pixel Size in the modifier's Baked Effect panel (the size of one art pixel, 0.025 m by default).

Modifier inputs

Select an effect and open the Modifiers tab (the wrench) in the Properties editor.

Baked Effect panel

Timing

• Effects play from the scene frame, at their own frame rate, whatever your scene's frame rate is.
• To fire an effect at frame 120, set Start Frame to 120 and turn Loop off.
• To keep a loop going, leave Loop on; Start Frame then only shifts where in the loop it is.
• You can keyframe any input, for example Speed, or Start Frame to fire the same object twice.

Performance

• Viewport Simplify 2 or 3 keeps the viewport smooth with many effects; renders are not affected.
• LOD Distance around 10 m lets far-away effects use far fewer cubes. A scene with all 244 effects, seen from a distance, drops from about 1.3 million cubes to about 100 thousand.
• Voxel Size x2 has about a quarter of the cubes, x4 about a fourteenth.
• Hide effects you aren't working on, or disable their modifier in the viewport.

Rendering

EEVEE

The voxels are emissive. For the glow around them, open the Compositing workspace, press New to start a compositor node tree and add a Glare node set to Bloom between Render Layers and the output (a threshold around 0.5 to 1 works well). Point or area lights near bright effects (a campfire, a torch) sell the light they give off.

Cycles

Effects light their surroundings by themselves. Add bloom in the compositor the same way if you want the halo.

What's inside

244 effects in 21 catalogs:

• Fire 12
• Explosions 12
• Arcane 12
• Lightning 11
• Ice 10
• Water 12
• Nature 13
• Holy 10
• Shadow 12
• Sci-Fi 12
• Pickups 11
• Projectiles 13
• Melee 12
• Impacts 11
• Moves 12
• Status 13
• Spawn & Death 10
• Critters 12
• Weather 12
• Transitions 10
• UI 12

Transitions are wall-sized objects (4 x 2.25 m at the default size) that close and open again. Weather fills a deep volume, about 8 x 4.5 m wide and several metres deep. Status effects show on a small stand-in figure.

Troubleshooting

I dropped an effect and nothing shows

Check the modifier is enabled in the viewport, and that Loop is on, or that the current frame is after Start Frame. Some effects start small (a spark that grows into an explosion): play a few frames.

It looks flat or dull

Add bloom (see Rendering) and use a dark world. In Solid view the voxels show without their glow: switch to Material Preview or Rendered.

The library doesn't appear in the Asset Browser

Make sure the folder you added in Preferences is the one with Voxel VFX 3D.blend and blender_assets.cats.txt in it, then pick the library in the Asset Browser's top-left menu. Blender 5.2 or newer is needed.

The viewport is slow

Raise Viewport Simplify, set LOD Distance, or a bigger Voxel Size on effects far from the camera.