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Trail Presets

Pro packv3.0.0-43D3D VFX

Twelve ribbon looks for 3D games: fire, neon, a light-cycle wall, plasma, frost, a rainbow, a comet, a sparkler, smoke, shadow, a sword slash and toxic. Give one something to follow and it leaves evidence of where it went.

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Released October 14, 2026 · updated October 20, 2026

Trail Presets: a screenshot of its demo
A note about these graphics

Expansion packs don't come with graphics. This screenshot is one way of drawing what the pack does, made for its demo: none of the sprites, tiles or backgrounds in it are in the pack.

That's by design. A pack is a game's logic, mechanics and effects, and it works with whatever art you give it. Some packs draw effects, backdrops or 3D scenes of their own, but none carries a game's sprites.

So the look is yours. Make the art on phaser.io, bring your own, or let your agent draw it in code: the same pack can look like anything.

What it does

The pack registers twelve presets with trails-3d, the shader-drawn ribbon renderer. game.trails.preset(name, { follow }) starts one: it records the path, draws a continuous ribbon behind the object, sheds sparks along the way and ends by itself once the target is gone and its tail has run out.

The idea is that one ribbon, with its dials set differently, makes very different looks. flame and neon are the same ribbon with fibre and erosion at opposite ends: flame shreds into wisps, neon is a hard flat-topped band. lightwall stands the clean look up off the path as a wall; plasma and sparkler lean on crackle, so glints crawl inside the ribbon; smokewake and shadow are not additive, because smoke and darkness hide light. A trail can also be fed by hand with point() each step, the tip of a sword as it swings, and jump() moves the head for a teleport without a streak across the world.

Features

  • Fire and energy — flame, a burning wake shedding rising embers, and plasma, electric blue with sparks spitting off it.
  • Clean light — neon, a hard blue band for a racer, and lightwall, a wall of light standing on the path, the light-cycle trail.
  • Ice and space — frost, an icy band breaking into shards, and comet, a white-hot head with a long dusty tail.
  • Celebration — rainbow, the spectrum head to tail, and sparkler, a white-gold streak spraying golden sparks.
  • Dark trails — smokewake, a grey wake for a damaged engine, and shadow, a violet-black wisp for a wraith.
  • Weapons and hazards — slash, a pale arc gone in about a fifth of a second, and toxic, a green wake that drips.

Good for

  • Spellcasting — fireballs, ice bolts, plasma bolts and curses with a trail behind them.
  • Melee games — a slash ribbon on every sword swing or claw swipe.
  • Racing and arena games — neon behind racers and hover bikes, light-cycle walls behind bikes.
  • Space and flight — comets, meteors, firework rockets and a smoke wake behind a crashing plane.

Make it yours

preset(name, overrides) takes any trail spec key, so a game re-skins or re-sizes a preset without copying it: a red light cycle is lightwall with new colors, a thinner frost for a small ice dart is frost with a smaller width and a shorter life. An offset puts the trail at an exhaust point rather than the object's centre. For a look of your own, copy a definition and register it with registerTrail3d from trails-3d.

A quick look

A comet tail on an orb, a red light cycle and a sword slash fed by hand:

game.trails.preset('comet', { follow: orb });
game.trails.preset('lightwall', { follow: bike, colors: ['#ffc0b0', '#ff4020', '#a01000', '#300400'] });
const swing = game.trails.preset('slash');
game.step('blade', () => swing.point(tip.x, tip.y, tip.z));
swing.stop();

Works with

  • trails-3d and particle-textures — required: the ribbon renderer and the frame its sparks draw with.
  • post-bloom — makes the additive trails glow.
  • particles-3d — a trail of separate particles rather than a ribbon, such as dust behind a runner.
  • particles-2d — the 2D counterpart, with an emitter that emits per distance travelled.

Good to know

  • The trails are tuned for objects moving a few world units a second: a much faster one wants a smaller spacing, a much slower one a shorter life.
  • One ribbon per trail, with no branches or forks; a lightning tree is vfx3d-lightning's job.
  • smokewake and shadow draw dark over anything, so against a black sky shadow reads only by its violet head.
  • lightwall ignores the camera by design, so from directly overhead it is a line; headless, nothing draws.

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