I was wondering something. What profession in the gaming industry makes particle effects? The animator? The graphics artist? or is it a combined effort equally distributed amongst a group? I did some searches and was only running into descriptions of particle effects etc. Thanks for any help.

Well I would assume the artist(s) actually make the particle textures. One of the programmers would probably be responsible for the particle engine, which for a pro shouldn't be a big deal.

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What profession in the gaming industry makes particle effects?

This totally depends on what the team wants to achieve and to what extent. It is usually a good idea to leave the creativity to the Artists and build tools to assist them with these processes. Look at the unreal 3.0 engine and the engine from project offset.

What both of these teams have done is extraordinary and really gives the artist total control of effects within their engines. From Unreal 3.0 they have given the arists the ability to paint detail unto a normal map and thus giving artists the freedom to express their high detailed characters in a low polygon level. Also they have created a system where as the artist author's the materials and none of the materials are hard coded. Just look at the features in the link provided.

Project offset have gone a similar route by providing the artists with shader authoring tools with no need for programming.

It is always good to look at how the proffesionals handle certain scenarios and looking at these 2 fabulous engines you can see that it makes sense.

I hope this helps.
Take care.