Flipbook Animation Looks Choppy
Smoke and fire jump between frames
Also known as: Flipbook choppy · SubUV blending · Flipbook frame blending · Smoke flipbook stepping · Texture sheet animation choppy · Flipbook looks jerky
Quick answer
A flipbook looks choppy when the particle jumps from one frame of the sprite sheet to the next. Turn on frame blending, which fades between neighbouring frames, so the animation looks smooth even at a low frame count. In Unreal Engine use the SubUV animation with blending, and in Unity use Flip-Book Blending in the particle shader along with the Texture Sheet Animation module. A higher frame count and a lower playback speed also help.
How to fix it
Check that the sheet is laid out in the order and size the system expects, and that the animation plays across the particle's whole lifetime, not faster than the frames allow. Frame blending is more expensive, since it samples the texture twice, so for small or fast effects it may not be needed. Use more frames only where the effect is large and close, as sheets are memory-heavy.
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See also
Flipbook (Sprite Sheet)
Animated texture made of a grid of frames
Niagara
UE5 particle and VFX system
Texture Atlas
Multiple assets, one texture
Texture Memory Budget
How much memory textures use
Particle System
Spawns and animates many small elements
Additive vs Alpha Blending
Two ways particles combine with the scene