For all of my particles I tried to use the Vertex Color node in ways other than intended. For the smoke, R and G are used to offset the animations (sort of redundant using both) B is being used to drive the color (would have had more control using two channels here instead). For some reason Initial Color and Color Over Life seem to try to overwrite each other, so even though I'm using A normally, I wasn't able to animate Alpha Over Life like I planned. (fixed, smoke fades out nicely at the top now)
For the bright, round specks in the smoke I'm using R and G for color, B to give them varying shapes, and A for brightness. (these were all pretty much pointless because color could have just gone higher than 1 to control brightness and the specs are so small that the varying shapes are undetectable). It should also be noted that the material for the specks uses zero textures.
For the lava splash, there's no need for transparency so I'm using the Alpha as a way to animate the splash with IF.
I had a few more ideas of alternative uses for the Vertex Color node but didn't have a reason to use them for these particles.
Here's video of my mushroom particles.
I started work on the lava splash but didn't finish.
I worked on the post-processing, made a scene depth mask and created a color shift, just haven't tweaked it to look nice yet. The distortion was just a Dolly Zoom, I don't know why I thought it was post-processing.
