FxChain v3: Procedural Animation Sequencing for Unity

Key Features:

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• Visual Chaining: Through the inspector, each FxChain component is linked to the next via the ‘Next in Chain’ list. Create parent-child relationships independent of the scene hierarchy. The chain structure is dynamic – remove a link, and it smartly splits into separate chains! Any script can become a new chain root.
• Instant In-Editor Preview: A dedicated "Play" button on every component lets you preview the entire chain's output directly in the Scene view without entering Play mode. This rapid feedback loop dramatically speeds up iteration, allowing you to fine-tune timings and behaviours instantly.
• Timing Control: Each component in the chain allows you to assign an Initial Pause and Duration, with options to inherit or modify timings based on parent data for perfectly synchronized or offset effects. This allows for procedural timing changes and easy sequence retimes.

Modular Components: Build complex behaviours by combining specialized components:

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• Animate: The core movement tool to apply position, rotation and scale transforms over time. Features include diverse orientation options, preview of end transform, dynamic object targeting (move towards targets that can change at runtime), randomization, world/local space control and multiple options to fine-tune your easing.
• Animate (Spline Mode): Effortlessly animate objects along splines. Simply specify an object with an existing Unity Splines Container or Line Renderer component. Includes options for alignment, look ahead, banking, easing and offset control. These make it perfect for coordinated camera movement.
• Repeater: Powerful spawning system! Create multiple instances ('spawns') of subsequent chain elements with controls to offset/randomize timings. Attach spawns to geometry mesh points, along existing splines or arrange them in an arc, line, grid or volume - Then combine with randomization, orientation control, and optional motion inheritance. Think particle systems, but fully integrated into your animation flow. (Familiar with C4D Mograph? You'll feel right at home!)
• Trail: Create dynamic trail effects that follow object movement using LineRenderer. Features time or distance-based modes, trail shrinking, velocity-based effects, customizable width/color gradients, and performance-optimized point management. Perfect for motion trails, speed lines, and magical effects.
• Material Properties: Animate material properties over time using Unity's Material Property Block system for efficient, non-destructive changes. Supports color/emission gradients, custom float/color/vector properties, multiple renderer types, shader keywords, flipbooks, texture scrolling and automatic reversion when animation completes. Ideal for dissolve effects, glow animations, and material transitions.
• Scaling: Specialized to control scale over time animations using the curve editor. Simple but very effective.
• Spritesheet Control: Easily manage and play single or multiple spritesheet animations. Includes a helper tool for easy setup and in-inspector preview with scrubbing/playback for quick view and testing. Features playback controls, randomization, color/alpha/emission over time, and dynamic sorting layer adjustments.
• Mass Repeater (new): Thousands of copies of one mesh drawn with GPU instancing, without GameObjects: sparks, debris, swarms.
• Light (new): Intensity, color and range over time, with flicker.
• Camera Shake (new): Smooth noise shake. Several shakes add together.
• Particle Control (new): Plays, stops, clears or bursts a Particle System in time with the chain.
• VFX Control (new): Sends start and end events to a Visual Effect Graph and animates an exposed float.
• UI Animate (new): Slide-ins, pops, fades and color flashes for UI elements.
• Text (new): TextMeshPro typewriter reveal with a per-character fade and wave.
• Look At (new): Turns an object to face a target, blended in and out.
• Blend Shapes (new): Drives blend-shape weights for expressions, morphs and squash and stretch.
• Physics Impulse (new): Pushes rigidbodies with a directional force or an explosion.
• Volume Weight (new): Fades a post-processing Volume in and out for hit flashes and other screen effects.
• Decal (new, URP): Fades and grows a Decal Projector for scorch marks and impact rings.
• Event (new): Switches objects, sets Animator parameters and calls UnityEvents in time with the chain.
• Branch (new): Plays only some of its children: at random, by weight, in sequence, or the one your code picks.
• Parent Link: A null node for organizing chain branches.

For New Users:

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• Getting Started: A guided first effect, step by step.
• TIPS: Every inspector section has a TIPS dropdown explaining its options.
• 44 ready-made effects: Split into 11 genre demo scenes.
• Chain Templates: A gallery of ready-made effects to drop into your scene.

Additional Features:

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• Chain Timeline: Visually see the animation timings of the whole component chain. Enables you to play, pause and scrub through the animation.
• Chain Doctor: Automatically finds and lists problems in your chains, such as things that would silently do nothing or break in builds, with Fix buttons.
• Flexible Orientation: Control object facing and up directions using various targets (Objects, Camera, Axes, Own Trajectory, Chain Data).
• Randomization Power: Inject life and variety into your animations with built-in randomization options for transforms, timings, and spawn properties. Uses complex seed generation to ensure natural differentiation throughout your animation and components.
• Performance Ready: Includes option to preload all potential spawns ahead of time (e.g., during a loading screen), ensuring smooth playback even with complex nested Repeater setups.
• Code-Free Workflow: Design and implement intricate animation sequences entirely within the Unity Inspector – perfect for artists, designers, and developers alike.
• Scene view handles: Drag where an Animate component moves to and see where a Repeater spawns.
• Script Integration: Leverage FxChain's timing system to trigger your own custom scripts, audio clips, or video clips. Your scripts become part of the chain.
• External Control:
• Trigger FxChain sequences from your own C# scripts with expanded capabilities. 
• Pass dynamic parameters (position, rotation, scale, targets, birth count) via "Use Data" toggles.
• effect.Play(), await effect.PlayAsync(), Pause(), Resume(), Stop() and Seek(seconds) on any component of a chain. 
• Scaled, Unscaled (for pause menus) or Manual time, a speed multiplier, and C# events or UnityEvents for start, completion and loops.
• Adapt animations to game state or user interaction with complete programmatic control.
• Advanced Trigger System: Custom Condition and Variable Watch triggers allow animations to respond dynamically to game state through boolean functions or continuous variable monitoring with comparison operators and configurable polling rates.

Who is FxChain for?

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• Game Designers & Developers: Quickly implement dynamic UI animations (menus, HUD elements), character/item effects (introductions, power-ups), environmental interactions (timed sequences), timed camera movements, and interactive feedback loops.
• Motion Designers: Create sophisticated visual effects, procedural animations, and motion graphics without deep coding. Especially powerful for those familiar with node-based or procedural workflows like Mograph.
• Solo Developers & Small Teams: Accelerate your animation workflow with a powerful, intuitive toolset that bypasses traditional keyframing complexity.
• Anyone wanting dynamic, synchronized animations: Ideal for UI/UX, procedural generation, cutscenes, AR/VR projects, and real-time broadcast graphics.

A Note from the Developer:

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Animation, I've found, lives and dies by iteration. You can spend hours planning the perfect sequence, but it's only when you see it move that you spot what needs adjusting. The difference between serviceable animation and something with real character often comes down to those small refinements, tweaking an ease curve here, adjusting timing there.

This has been reinforced throughout my work as a freelance motion graphics artist, working extensively with tools like Cinema4D, Houdini, and After Effects where quick preview and refinement are simply part of the workflow. When developing games in Unity, I found myself rather frustrated by the disconnect between coding transforms and seeing the results, the slow compile time wait after pressing the play button is, ironically, the quickest way to kill flow…

FxChain started as a handful of utility scripts I wrote for my own projects, nothing particularly grand, just reusable tools to avoid reinventing the wheel each time. Over time, these scripts grew more sophisticated and I began connecting them with a timing system that let them work together. Eventually, it occurred to me that other developers might find the whole thing useful, and so FxChain was born.

I hope it proves helpful in your projects, and I'd love to see what you create with it.

Requirements:

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• Requires Unity version 6.0 or newer
• Tested on 6.0 and 6.6

Optional packages:

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• Splines (spline arrangement / paths)
• Timeline (Timeline track)
• Visual Effect Graph (VFX Control)
• TextMeshPro / UGUI (Text, UI Animate, part of Unity 6)
• URP (Decal, demo scenes and templates)
• Burst (faster Mass Repeater updates)

Documentation: included in the package as a PDF, and online: FxChain Documentation.

Join the Discord Community! https://discord.gg/6NuvwfBPrq

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Design. Preview. Refine. All in-editor. No code. Just creativity. FxChain.