Hi, I’m currently using Reality Composer Pro on macOS, and I’m trying to work with particle emitters using only the built-in tools — no Xcode, no custom Swift code.
Here’s what I’m trying to achieve: 1. Is it possible to trigger a particle emitter with a tap gesture, directly inside Reality Composer Pro? 2. Can I add a particle emitter to a timeline, so that it emits at a specific time during an animation or behavior sequence? 3. Most importantly, is there a way to precisely control emission behavior — such as when particles start or stop — using visual and intuitive controls, without scripting?
My goal is to set up particle effects that are interactive and timeline-controlled, but managed entirely through Reality Composer Pro’s GUI, not through code. Any suggestions, tips, or examples would be very helpful. Thanks in advance!
Hello @Ian_Chen thank you for your question!
Much of what you want to do will require code.
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In order to trigger any behavior in response to a tap gesture you must first setup an entity with a collision component, an input target component, and if you are triggering a timeline animation, a behaviors component configured to start the timeline animation when a tap is applied. Then, you call
applyTapForBehaviors()when a tap occurs in order to propagate the tap event to your entity. -
You can disable and enable an entity in the timeline, and if this entity has a particle emitter component, the particles will also be disabled or enabled.
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There is not a way to control this precisely with only Reality Composer Pro, you will need to use the particle emitter component API to manage this.
I recommend taking a look at the new sample Petite Asteroids released for WWDC25. The intro sequence contains a particle system that is controlled in code. Additionally, see Compose interactive 3D content in Reality Composer Pro for more information on working with the timeline.
