I made an ambient dust particle effect that spans my entire landscape. It has a positive X velocity so that it looks like there’s a slight breeze (and a Y/Z “orbit” so that they bob up and down, side to side). Looks great except I don’t want to see the distant particles on the other side of the map, because against the sky it looks like a flurry of snow and it’s not only ugly but it’s eating up a lot of resources.
I have looked around for a solution for the past hour or more, and I’m not finding quite what I need. One solution was to set the LOD max distance in the particle system placed in the world (from the Outliner), but that only seems to cull the particles based on their proximity to the emitter, and not the player/camera. Another solution was to attach the emitter to the player itself, which works, but the particles always seem to float away from whichever way I’m facing, and I need the wind to be in a specific direction.
I think there was a third solution which had something to do with a material property in my particle material, but while that seems to perhaps make distant particles invisible, I think they’re still being computed.
Is there any way I can solve this? It seems like such a basic thing to try to do.