Reorder properties in the Particle node inspectors for better usability

[Calinou]

The most "important" properties (process material and mesh/texture) are now placed at the top.

The GPUParticles3D Draw Passes section folding was removed since it often got in the way (in my experience). This means the new GPUParticles3D inspector will take less space when having 1-2 draw passes, but will take more space if you have more draw passes (which is uncommon).

This applies to CPU and GPU particles, in both 2D and 3D.

Since this change is backwards-compatible, a 3.x version of this PR can be made once we reach an agreement on this one.

Preview

All inspectors were fully expanded by clicking the toolbox icon in the top-right corner then choosing Expand All Properties.

GPUParticles2D

Before	After

GPUParticles3D

Note: The "Before" screenshot looks more compact because it's missing one property (I was using a build that didn't have particle trails support).

Before	After

CPUParticles2D

Before	After

CPUParticles3D

Before	After

[AnilBK]

Wouldn't it be better if Emitting and Amount were at top most,followed by everything else?
My reasoning being,they wouldn't be buried down below when expanding the Process Material property, and you can easily change emission amount or restart(enable/disable) the particle system.

[Calinou]

Wouldn't it be better if Emitting and Amount were at top most,followed by everything else?
My reasoning being,they wouldn't be buried down below when expanding the Process Material property, and you can easily change emission amount or restart(enable/disable) the particle system.

This is what I initially did, but I ended up putting Texture and Process Material at the top because you absolutely need to set those before you can do anything else. This is also more consistent with the Texture property being at the top in Sprite2D.

There are many other properties you'll want to adjust to get a good-looking particle system anyway, not just Emitting and Amount.

[AnilBK]

Totally makes sense about them being consistent.

AnimatedSprite,Sprite,Tilemap etc all have texture related properties at the top and checkable properties following them.

So,it's fine,I guess.

[QbieShay]

I would personally prefer if the process material was at the bottom, Because it's one huge blob of things, otherwise it will separate useful stuff from one another (mesh, lifetime, etc.)

[Calinou]

I would personally prefer if the process material was at the bottom, Because it's one huge blob of things, otherwise it will separate useful stuff from one another (mesh, lifetime, etc.)

I would really prefer to keep "what's being drawn" (mesh/texture) to "how it's being drawn" (process material) as close as possible to each other. The current visual disconnection between those properties is what makes things really hard to edit for me.

Remember that subresources can be collapsed at any time, and you will probably have to do that at some point anyway.

[QbieShay]

Okay, makes sense. I think worse case it can be reverted :)
For particles it could be really useful to have the process material in a separate dock but that's besides the scope of this PR

[Ansraer]

Have you considered renaming the "Time" category? Time makes sense for "Lifetime", "Preprocess" and the FPS stuff, but I would never look for something like "Randomness" or "Explosiveness" in the Time dropdown menu.
I think that "Generic" or maybe just "Particle" would be a better name for this category.

[Calinou]

I think that "Generic" or maybe just "Particle" would be a better name for this category.

We can do one of the following:

• Remove the section entirely for those properties. A "Generic" section isn't very useful; the name doesn't tell you anything about what it contains.
• Split those properties into two sections, "Time" and "Random". However, explosiveness is a time-related property, not a randomness-related one.

[RPicster]

I think the general approach is good, one thing I like better in the comment of @AnilBK is that the ParticleMaterial is not between properties.

Because expanding that resource would move some of the important parameters below them (like amount and emitting).

[Calinou]

Rebased and tested again, it works as expected. Check OP for updated screenshots 🙂
Edit: As requested above, I moved Process Material to be below Emitting and Amount (not shown on the screenshots).

[reduz]

I do not think this is a better usability. The timing and lifetime values need to be exposed higher since you change them much more often than the draw passes and other information. The current order should be fine as-is.

[mhilbrunner]

PR meeting cc @QbieShay Agree that this should be rejected/closed? :)

[KoBeWi]

I think the change for GPUParticles2D makes sense. Right now texture and process_material are inside 1-element groups... (and it's something you set for every particle system)

[arkology]

Is this PR still valid?

[QbieShay]

I'm not a huge fan of reordering things in the inspector: it's very disruptive. Unless we're removing annoying things that are often in the way, we shouldn't reorder them.

I'm not a fan of moving lifetime around personally. Considering I will already have to reorder things once i rework emission, i'd rather we think about this later. Nevertheless, I would like this to stay tracked (perhaps copy-paste in a proposal?) so that we can track all annoyances of the inspector and discuss them.