One of the tools you talked about could be interesting for me : Embergen. Do you use it personnaly ?
Sure do! Here are some of my quick thoughts on it:
- Fairly intuitive. It uses a node-based system like what you would find in Blender or Unreal Engine. You create the nodes you want and connect them to different inputs to make different effects.
- There is a bit of a learning curve. There are tons of variables you can adjust. Yet most of the time there are only a handful that you'll be dealing with.
- I haven't done it yet, but you can also export your Embergen files to Blender and use them there.
- A huge selling point for me was that it has a bunch of pre-made templates. So if you need an explosion effect, you can find one that's close enough and then tweak it to your needs.
- There is an annual subscription, but I find it pretty reasonable ( I say this as a solo dev who doesn't have a huge gamedev budget). Initially it's like $300/yr and then every year afterwards it's only around $160/yr. There is also a free trial you can take advantage of.
- Below is an explosion I made using Embergen:
