Nine animated effects, one taken from each of the nine Taproot VFX volumes, so you can drop them into a real project and see how they behave before buying anything. Same files, same license, same quality as the paid packs - just fewer of them.

These are 2D sprite animations. Every effect is a flipbook of drawn frames, not a 3D particle system and not a VFX Graph asset. You play them on a sprite, a quad or a UI image, which is why they behave the same in any engine and need no per-engine setup.

How the volumes are organised: each paid volume is one theme, holding seven or eight effects, with two to five separate animated variations of every effect. This sampler carries one variation of each of nine effects, one drawn from each theme.

Every effect here ships in four formats, ready for whatever your engine prefers:

frames/001-024.png - numbered RGBA sequence, 512x512

sheet.png - one 5x5 spritesheet, 2560x2560, RGBA

anim.png - lossless animated PNG with alpha, for web and UI

preview.gif - small looping preview for quick browsing

What is in it, and where each one comes from:

Explosion - fireball with ember sparks and rolling smoke, from Animated Game VFX Vol. 1

Lightning Strike - branching bolt with a bright core, from Elemental Spell VFX Vol. 1

Crit Hit - red starburst for damage numbers and hit confirms, from UI & Combat Feedback VFX Vol. 1

Campfire - looping fire over logs, from Environment Loop VFX Vol. 1

Fireball - travelling orb with a streaming trail, from Projectile VFX Vol. 1

Sword Slash - curved crescent arc with a motion trail, from Melee & Impact VFX Vol. 1

Frost Aura - looping ring of ice and cold light, from Status & Aura VFX Vol. 1

Magic Circle - rotating rune ring, from Portal & Summon VFX Vol. 1

Laser Beam - thin white-cored beam that snaps on, from Sci-Fi Tech VFX Vol. 1

The Unity download is a real .unitypackage exported from the editor, so the textures arrive as Sprites with alpha kept, no compression, and each 5x5 sheet already sliced into its 24 frames. UNITY_README.txt walks through turning a frame sequence into a playing clip, and which additive material to use.

It also carries a demo scene. Open Demo/FreeVFXSamplerVol1 Demo.unity and every effect in the pack is laid out on a ground plane, playing at 24 fps with its name beside it, each one already wired up with a SpriteRenderer, an Animator and an additive material to copy straight into your own scene.

These are additive effects: authored on black, with alpha derived from their own brightness. In Unreal use a Translucent material with Blend Mode Additive plugged into Emissive; in Unity a Particles/Standard Unlit material in Additive mode. Normal alpha blending also works and reads slightly flatter. Every animation is 24 frames at 24 fps, 512x512, and ships as a numbered PNG sequence, a 5x5 spritesheet, and an animated PNG.

Authored at 24 fps. Campfire, frost aura and magic circle are built to loop; the rest play once and stop.

Royalty-free for commercial and personal projects, with no attribution required. No resale or redistribution as an asset pack; full license text is included in the download. The same terms cover the paid volumes.