visual-fx

[lavish solstice]

Ahh okay, i thought this might be the case but wanted to be sure. Thankyou!

[unreal thorn]

But even then the algo to got precisely that shape would be complicated.

[lavish parrot]

Is it possible to make a Niagara component change its particle system while it's playing?

In theory I could probably delete it and create a new one, but just changing it would be better for performance

I've tried invoking the MyNiagaraComponent->SetAsset() method, but it doesn't seem to work for some reason. No errors or anything, it's just that it doesn't change in-game.

[upbeat gate]

Does anybody know if one of the asset store freebies has lightning?

I remember using one on a job before, but not sure if it's in my library

[unreal thorn]

#fab

[upbeat gate]

nods

[fossil swan]

also @upbeat gate please check out the #rules :)

[grizzled merlin]

I've been having an issue for a long time now where all my shadows are pitch black for a few frames whenever I load up the engine, but then the shadows adjust.
I packaged my project and now the shadows are stuck in that pitch black state.
I'm using dynamic lighting

[fickle sorrel]

Hi Guys,How does this kind of region VFX create in Unreal Engine,It`s really difficult ,right?

[unreal thorn]

You could achieve this with simple planes with set textures, or fresnel the emission and opacity around a shaped plane mesh.

[fervent lily]

Hey guys, just throwing this out there incase anyone knows. I'm using BP_Goodsky as a base for my time of day sky and I'd like my moon mesh to rotate around the sky_sphere opposite to the sun. I notice in goodsky the sun is a shader, and the moon included is a texture moving along the UV's of the sphere. Is there a way I can connect the moon mesh to the coordinates of the moon or sun? Or should I do it another way?

[fickle sorrel]

Really thanks！！👍

[silver chasm]

What sort of effects would you guys do for opening an item chest?

I am going to make the inside of the chest glowing with an emissive material and then turn off the material after the player has received the item

but beyond that I don't really know what to add to make the chest opening experience 'feel' better

[lavish solstice]

How is this effect being done? initially I thought it was a sprite particle within a translucent mesh with refraction, but I can't get refraction affecting the sprite

this is from sea of thieves btw, in the order of souls tent. The smoke inside follows the camera like a sprite

[olive sail]

Is there a way I can change the size of my particle system based on its distance from the camera (without any blueprints or CPP)?

[cold sorrel]

Yes.

Use a camera query to calculate the distance between the camera and the particle/emitter/system. Use that to drive the scale in any way you like.

[olive sail]

Thank you, I'll look into it!

[cold sorrel]

Granted, that only works for Niagara. I didn't check which channel it was.

[olive sail]

Oh

I thought it's an option through the particle modules

Something here

I'm not using niagra, maybe that choice comes with limitations

[cold sorrel]

Yes

Cascade is extremely limited by comparison

You can still do something similar in the material of the sprite, but it will be harder to use.

Do the same distance calculation, but to the object pivot or something and do the scale in WPO.

[olive sail]

Awesome, thank you for the guidance <3

[fallow sundial]

Hey everyone. Not sure if this is the right channel but I have a question about post process materials. Is it possible to build a clarity filter there? (highpass) Not sure how to approach something like that. Thanks!

[unreal thorn]

Seems like a camera projection to me
Though not sure if that's the correct term, it's a projection where the texture always going to face the camera, but not bending to geometry like matcap projection did.

[lavish solstice]

yeah I've gotten closer with WorldSpaceAlignedScreenCoordinates function

but its still being distorted by my FOV even though it says its meant to take that into account

[weak jewel]

Hey guys... uhm I have a projectile and I wanna make it so if it hits a wall it spawns an expanding circle that fades out :o any ideas how to do this?

[minor shell]

Hey all. Trying to make a beam to better emphasize the hitscan of a railgun weapon. However, when setting the speed to 0 to make the beam appear instantly, then the life part of the particle does nothing.

[vernal orchid]

hello, I'm having this issue with my model- even when in shadow, if I move fast the model gets some flickering lights on it and I'm not sure why.
This issue happens when i enable dynamic shadow on the mesh

[opaque phoenix]

does anyone know what would cause a groom asset to look like this?

[faint vapor]

Super newbie question, but I saw a tutorial where someone made breezy foliage by just using a sine + panner node, and I'm trying to do the same for a simple candle flame yet I get nothing...

What am I missing?

[cold sorrel]

You are missing scale

And masking, but you will notice that once you see how it moves

Myltiply it by 100 an you will see

[faint vapor]

Ehm... well... this helps too... 😅

[primal parrot]

looks like motion blur? is the cache that you imported animated?

[earnest osprey]

I have a muzzle flash particle system. The issue is that it repeats in a continuos loop every time I spawn the emitter. I cant figure out a way to make the particle system play only once. I tried setting the Emmiter Loops to 1 instead of 0, but that did not do anything. Anybody know how I can just make the particle system play only one time?

[modest fog]

Setting the emitter loops to 1 should work, but you need to do it on every emitter in your system.

[earnest osprey]

ah ok. That worked, thanks!

[narrow plaza]

good day i am stuck on one idea i cant wrap my head around
how would you create a vanishing point shader
like when camera moves forward the environment from big one scales down with the movement to the players size

[analog onyx]

Using WPO

[narrow plaza]

thanks for tip

[flint galleon]

Is there a way to have a fog volume work without ExponentialHeightFog? Currently i have a black volume material with the extinction factor driven by a line-of-sight mask. This material is set on a single particle that follows the player and fills the viewport. My issue is that I want to use a HDRI for the environment outside windows but the ExponentialHeightFog just results in everything being white.

[primal parrot]

You can tweak the distance to fade off

[onyx whale]

Level is not going dark
Lights set to 0 here. How can I do this?

[unreal thorn]

Check your auto exposure value.

[onyx whale]

it is on maual

[primal parrot]

Skylight?

Emissive materials?

[unreal thorn]

Likely the sky light then.

[cold sorrel]

Show the material and settings

[fossil swan]

he gotten a strike, asking same question in multiple channels.

[cold sorrel]

Fair enough

[fossil swan]

still think we should put people in a time-out channel where manny roleplays a cellar.
Manny: squeek squeek, said the mouse
Manny: you hear water drips from the ceiling

[celest birch]

@cold sorrel

settings are default for the sun and sky

im using the archviz scene template

[cold sorrel]

Does it happen if you remove the depthfade?

[celest birch]

like this u mean

?

it still happens

[cold sorrel]

Ok

Exposure settings. Anything funky there?

[fossil swan]

its ue5. its nanite. and it uses opacity.

[cold sorrel]

...

Welp

[celest birch]

everything is default as i told you

i tried using sun skylight and sky atmosphere and it works perfectly

its when I use the sun and sky blueprint that it looks like this

[fossil swan]

oh sorry, mixing two people up

[celest birch]

the main project im working on I wanted to import this asset to doesnt work though

[fossil swan]

my fault

[celest birch]

and I cant just remove the sun and sky, which is why i want to get this working

maybe its something inside the sun and sky blueprint?

[cold sorrel]

Could be a sorting issue.

The fire could sort behind the sky in the blueprint version.

Haven't used it so I don't know

But yeah, if it only happens with that bp, you need to look through all the settings in there.

[celest birch]

so i went into the sun and sky blueprint

[cold sorrel]

Anything related to sorting, translucency and culling.

[celest birch]

deleted the directional light and I can see the flames

the sky atmosphere and skylight are fine if left there

i tried the same deleting them and leaving the directional light and it stiill happened

so main issue is directional light

[cold sorrel]

If you set the directional light to be black or 0

[celest birch]

wait

i got it working

i added a new direcitonal light

and deleted the old one

in the components list

so its a setting inside the direcitonal light itself then

i wonder what it could be

[cold sorrel]

Or a bug/corruption

[celest birch]

yeah that as wwell

thanks for the help partikel

i dmed u once I got banned lmao

thanks either way!

[celest birch]

@cold sorrel fixed it by lowering the directional light intensity

it was at 7000 lux

lmao

put it at 100

[cold sorrel]

That's why I asked about the exposure

I thought the whole scene got blown up by the light.

[celest birch]

yeah exposure was fine

[cold sorrel]

And setting it to 0 😛

[celest birch]

yeah

i did that 0 thing and it gave me the idea to lower it

i read back on it

[solid wing]

(sorry ahead of time if this is the wrong channel) But has anyone else had issues with the Houdini Unreal Starter Kit's tree tool not showing all the parameters?

I'm missing the parameters for customizing branches and leaves.

I've reimported the HDA and the cook logs show that there were some issues with dependencies being initialized.

[nova maple]

do you think they used a separate lighting channel for the lens flare, or is it just because the emissive is higher then the other lights? please don't tell me you think its faked with a particle system

[cold sorrel]

Seeing the matdot sparks in the background I would not expect anything complex.

[primal parrot]

why not, would be a cool system 😛

[valid pine]

I think it's some threshold settings, and yes the light might be more intense than the sparks

[shell falcon]

I had posted this in level design earlier today but received no replies. Perhaps I was in the wrong place? If this is the wrong place please let me know where things like this should be posted.

I'm running into an issue with adding a Post Process volume to a tunnel which passes through a mountain. I anticipated some light leaking in near the entrance and exit but I can't seem to get the middle of the tunnel to be any darker than either of the ends. The entire tunnel is about 200 yards. I'd think plenty long enough that at its more central areas players would need a flashlight to see.

I added the post process volume. In details I enabled infinite Extent (assumed for the scene). And then in Lens~exposure set Min EV100 and Max EV100 to 1.

The best I achieved is dim. Any help would be appreciated.

[analog onyx]

Correct place would be #graphics @shell falcon

[opaque salmon]

anyone know how to slow down clouds? the default volumetric cloud system has them rippling away unrealistically fast

[unreal thorn]

You can slow it down in the materials if you made one yourself.

[opaque salmon]

I'm just using the default material out of the box

I don't see anywhere in the parent material that indicates how that's configured

though I'm extremely new to all this, so lots of masks and textures that I have no idea what does what

[unreal thorn]

The default material is rather messy IMO
You should create your own material for the volumetric clouds.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYxvN5cs-EU

[opaque salmon]

cool thank you

[shell falcon]

@analog onyx Appreciated. Thanks

[clever apex]

What is the correct way to factor object orientation into your world position offset?

[brittle remnant]

transform your vertex offset into local space

[clever apex]

That just moves the mesh away

Its OK though, I changed to use morph targets instead

[brittle remnant]

It can work that way, just need the correct vector maths. 🙂

[cedar pecan]

Hello, I just bought a package that has some interesting fx however I have never seen the interface, my first quick question is to know if is it possible to edit within UE to increase the size of the smaller pieces that make up the fx. Using Scale increases alot the spacing between those worms. Could anyone point me to a direction to fix this? Thanks

[cold sorrel]

Is it a cascade or a niagara effect?

[cedar pecan]

Where would I check that

[cold sorrel]

Click initial size and play with the numbers.

Actually, click Size By life instead.

That's not a scale. It's poorly set up.

[cedar pecan]

These values?

[cold sorrel]

The values in these

[cedar pecan]

Got it many thanks for helping me 🙂

[clear pawn]

anyone has idea how they managed to make zooming effect like this? I'm sure its rendered once without any scene capture
(moved question from graphics in here)

[cold sorrel]

What makes you think that?

[clear pawn]

is that aimed at me?

[cold sorrel]

Yes

[clear pawn]

some dev told it, and it look like it too

[cold sorrel]

Ask the dev how it's done?

[clear pawn]

no its just some post

lol woulnt ask here if I could ask that dev. anyway point is, its sort of postprocess upscale, but keeping proper resolution, which I dont know how. I already figured out how to make inside of scope masked by lens not by just hiding parts of scope

here is quote, that they abandoned PIP rendering they used in ghosts

[cold sorrel]

Sounds like you need a renderprogrammer then.

[clear pawn]

I managed to do lens by transforming postprocess uvs, but I get ugly aliasing (looks like TAA happends before)

[cold sorrel]

But then you haven't actually zoomed in, you've just distorted the image.

That's like trying to digitally zoom on a picture on your phone, while shouting Enhance! to the officers behind you

[clear pawn]

yeah its wrong

taa can upscale even .5x res nicely so in theory there should be a way to do it correctly

[valid locust]

Is there a way to instance particle systems like HISM or foliage?

[unreal thorn]

In practice, welp...

Let's just say don't even think about it.

[clear pawn]

why not to think about it? its like saying kids at school, just memorize things and don't ask anything. or if you tell straight no, then explain why

[analog onyx]

@clear pawn the effect is simple in nature

Just reproject what is in the scope

Get distorted uvs

And upscale the image with a filter, so it does not look junk.

[clear pawn]

thx for info, so far Im already upscaling it

but not with a filter

[analog onyx]

There is more advanced way which I confirm to be useable on practice.

[clear pawn]

so far this is what I got

[analog onyx]

Take set of objects in view, then cull them to receive a subset of objects in scope. After base pass is done, have extra base pass rendering subset of objects in scope, starting with rendering a mask to early depth test out everything outside the scope.

[clear pawn]

can you elaborate on this?

right now I use just scale uvs by center

which produces additional aliasing

[analog onyx]

Extra pass would be rendered with different projection

Modify deferred passes to fetch different cam parameters depending if pixel is in scope or not.

That is non trivial engine modification and if it does not make sense from this description, you are not going to be able to pull it off.

[clear pawn]

wouldnt extra pass take performace cost?

[analog onyx]

They surely would

But not even nearly as much as rendering multiview.

[clear pawn]

yeah, I wont be able to pull it off, I need to pay as much attention to rendering stuff as anatomy and sculpting characters or drawing concept art, so

I mean I do understant exactly what you mean but actually doing it would be quite difficult

thats why Im asking about that "filter"

if I scale it 1.2times, then jaggies are visible

[clear pawn]

oh, I found it, it was setting in scene texture, now its much better

[digital nebula]

Can someone send me in the right direction on how I could get a cleaner SceneDepth Pass? The most obvious problem is that the sky (dynamic setup with DirectionalLight, SkyAtmo and Skylight) is black, but should be white, as it is the most farthest point in the scene

[random saddle]

Hey, I've got this old toon shader post processing material, and it's supposed to draw pixels around the corners of objects and such.
But when you get far away from those objects, the shader starts some lines across objects, either sideways or vertically or w/e, like the image below. How do I stop that?

[wind steppe]

Show the material

[random saddle]

@wind steppe Cool if I link a pastebin?

[wind steppe]

Screenshot of the part that makes inner outlines maybe

[random saddle]

Alright, hold on...

Here's the pastebin if you wanna take a look while I screenshot: https://blueprintue.com/blueprint/oc-ubta_/
The problem is in the part commented with "Depth Lines"

[wind steppe]

it's not pastebin, it's blueprintue, even better

[random saddle]

So it all starts with a Line Thickness parameter, which controls the, well, line thickness...

[wind steppe]

I thought you gonna paste xml

[random saddle]

Ooooh, alright. Yeah, Blueprintue is my go-to for this.

The numbers hooked into the multiply nodes are "-1, 0." "1, 0." "0, 1" and "0, -1" in order.
Not sure why they aren't displayed that way in blueprintue.

[wind steppe]

1. Disconnect NORMAL LINES part to verify that this part is causing issue
2. If so, connect it back and tweak scalar parameters at Multiply and Exponent nodes to see if you can get desired outlines and get rid of the visual artifact

[random saddle]

Unfortunately, that's what I've been trying all day, with no luck.

[wind steppe]

Hmm, maybe houses have wrong normal at sides?

[random saddle]

Oh, the lines show up over everything. Even UE4's default cubes.

[unreal thorn]

I'd rather just resort to the oldest trick on the book: inverted mesh

[spark thorn]

Any pointers on how to approach this?

I want to remove large part of interior wall when targeting it.
Wall should be made out of modular pieces (lets say 4x4).
Wall is supposed to disintegrate and player should be able to walk through it.

"Destruction" should not look realistic but more as if some disintegration device exploded inside of a wall, with most of the wall disintegrated into particles, and with some debris flying out as shockwave blast.

I would like to hear some suggestions on how to tackle this.
Anyone knows any games or movies with similar examples/visual refs?

[unreal thorn]

Battlefield games are good reference for it.

[fresh lynx]

Ok guys Im trying to find a tutorial for an effect I am wanting in a project I am working on. its going to be a spooky type but I want the fog to slowly roll in at low ground level then as my actor gets further in the fog gets thicker and higher off the ground. we have all seen the effect in spooky movies now I am looking for a tutorial on how to create something like that

would make a cool effect for a ship at sea entering into a forbidding fog as the fog would always start low to the ground light then get thicker and higher

[spark thorn]

Thanks. I am watching this and it actually seems like they replace with prefractured pieces and do use simulated destruction (Apex/Chaos equivalent) but they do remove pieces.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJULLJwKhkI&ab_channel=RandomMadness
I played BF3 and I remember there was a lot of debris left around destroyed buildings which doesnt work well for me coz its visual and collision clutter. But maybe I remember wrong..

Rainbox Six Siege also has destruction, which is a bit closer to what I am trying to do with walls, but simpler.
I want to remove walls without using Apex/Chaos coz I am not sure how to handle assembly of modular rooms that way. Let me know if anyone has some more ideas how to approach it.

[cold sorrel]

The bf destruction is simpler and faster than apex or chaos. It's also a mix of things to sell the illusion. Siege is a much more complex procedural system.

[indigo jolt]

I'd like to know who calculated the "damage" numbers on Horse Collisions

I'm no expert on horses, but I think trains do more damage to horses than horses do to trains 😛

I guess Gibbing the horse is a bit problematic for rating though

[icy heath]

How to speed up the spawn rate of a particle system?

[cold sorrel]

Set the spawnrate higher?

[icy heath]

Sorry, but which one? I want my particle spawn imediately after game start. but now it's like firefly fade in very slowly...

[cold sorrel]

That's an odd setup.

If you want it to spawn right away, use a burst instead.

[lapis mist]

What's a good way to achieve a consistent long beam like this? Should I use some sort of long mesh?

[devout portal]

@lapis mist ribbon particles

[pulsar axle]

So for someone who's never dabbled in particle FX, is there a good tutorial to watch? I won't be able to do much in engine, as that's another team members thing, but is there something I can do outside of unreal to help design a particle effect? Like do you need a jpg file if I'm trying to design a beam or is all of the color work and design all done within Unreal as well? Sorry if I'm asking any stupid stuff.

[icy heath]

@cold sorrel Thank you for your answer! 😊

[olive sail]

can anyone help me understand why my ribbons show 3 lines instead of 1? https://gfycat.com/PettyVictoriousGull

i'd also love to know why they seem to be starting from behind me rather than the source of the particle system, which is the weapon's muzzle

[cold sorrel]

90 - 100% of the work is in the engine.

Also, never use Jpgs for anything in game dev 😛

[cold sorrel]

Impossible to say without seeing the system.

[olive sail]

Yeah you're right, though it was so uncomfortable to watch that I had to delete it. Now trying to just learn the system with a test asset atm, so I can't post that atm :v

I do have a perhaps 'smaller' question, this is just a default ribbon with upwards velocity: https://gfycat.com/UnawareTallDragonfly

These are its spawn settings

I noticed that because it's not spawning a ribbon segment every frame, there is almost always a 'gap' between the source of the ribbon to the visual start of the ribbon

Is there a setting that can always draw a 'leading' ribbon segment that's always attached to the source?

[raven sage]

Anyone got any tips/tricks on localized volumetric vfx for things like smoke bombs and such in VR?

just realized volume materials are a no in VR doh

i know it's a complex topic : /

[primal parrot]

are they not usable because of the overhead to render expo height fog or something like that?

[unreal thorn]

Volumetrics are quite expensive in general. Even games in Switch rarely use volumetric effect.

[unreal thorn]

No.

Your best bet would be using generic particle emitter, but the smoke sprites have fake self shadowing.

[primal parrot]

yeah, go for backlit or 6 point lit sprites then! https://twitter.com/vuthric/status/1286808945906970624?lang=en

Asher Zhu (@Vuthric)

another juicy data to extract from the simulation - temperature https://t.co/dgZORagsUN

Likes

159

Twitter · Jul 24, 2020, 11:42 PM

[cold sorrel]

Oh damn! Has the min spec gone up enough to allow that in VR now?

It's been a few years since I shipped anything in VR, but it was quite restrictive. At the level where bloom was disabled for the project.

So rolling up with a heavy shader like 6p would have gotten me stabbed I think 😄

[unique iron]

Hello guys,
I am able to create a post process radial mask, is there any way where i can create bump(using world position offset) effect in post process material?

[olive sail]

so @clear pawn did you manage to get your scopes to render nicely in a single rendering pass? Curious as to the results you got

[clear pawn]

what I needed was filtered scene tex

@olive sail

Im still going to mask rest of inside of scope in shader, right now method that most games use is hiding everything once zoomed, which sucks a bit and sometimes is even visible that parts of scope are hidden for brief second

[olive sail]

Looks good! What is the nature of filtered scene tex that makes it work efficiently? How is it different than PIP?

[clear pawn]

what I use is take 3d position of "glass" of scope, then reproject it into 2d, and then in postprocess I scale scene texture uvs

differece is that pip uses separate camera to render scene twice, which eats up fps like crazy

also I do have PIP implemented but I dont use it since there are heavy temporal artifacts (velocity vectors are taken from scope geometry instead of world, so whole temporal aa is messed up)

[olive sail]

cool stuff 👍

[celest birch]

Hey, is there a way to use Material Parameter Collections based on an actor, I can use Material instances, but im wondering if there is a way to bound materials to an actor, as I would need 4-5 materials per player. If not material instance time

[fossil swan]

mpc's are global, change a value > anything with same mpc gets changed

[celest birch]

I'm aware

just gonna use instances instead

[golden jackal]

https://gyazo.com/b9bec488150e04bb7391edbae6e1ac95

is there a way I can fix those weird shadows that keep appearing?

[primal parrot]

looks like screen space reflections?

[earnest osprey]

So I'm spawning a particle emitter using the following C++ code below. When this gets triggered during gameplay, the particle does spawn and play the effect as per usual. However, I cannot find the particle in the world outline when it spawns during gameplay. I want to be able to see its transform so that I can verify that the particle is positioned and rotated correctly in the level.

[main obsidian]

I have this fire particle system. How can i make it faster and longer on the Z axis??

[fossil swan]

increase initial velocity/other velocity modules their z-axis values for faster
increase lifetime for longer

[main obsidian]

@fossil swan I get the lifetime and the velocity thing. But i can find anything for axis

[waxen willow]

Initial size , size by life ,size by speed

[primal parrot]

Thank you EPIC for another EPIC release!!! So much goodness, better ABC, VAT, Niagara woooooohooo! 😄 https://tenor.com/view/yes-wink-gotcha-you-tube-thanks-gif-3467082 🥂

[olive sail]

Any good way to do 'volumetric' flipbooks? Aka display a blend of several (visually compatible) flipbooks of the same based on the viewing angle, to get cheap yet still high-fidelity things such as explosions / fluid sims?

[cold sorrel]

Not really, it just obliterates the memory to do it.

But if that's not a concern, just shove an movietexture on an impostor.

[olive sail]

Memory is a concern 🤔

I don't know what a movietexture or an impostor is, but I'll look those up, thanks 👍

[pulsar axle]

Another stupid question regarding particle fx from me, if I pay someone to make a particle effect is there an easy way to bring that file from their Unreal engine to my Unreal engine file?

[fossil swan]

impossible

nahh, they can just migrate it to a folder named content, itll auto-grab all other content thats referenced. then you just place it in your project.

just needs to be the same ue4 version (or them using an older one)

[deft ivy]

Hey all im struggling to understand how i plug these textures into the ue4 material
Im only used to ue4s albedo, roughness, specular ect
individually

[celest heart]

Hello, been having trouble getting these Sword Trails by "ryanzeng" (https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/en-US/product/fxer-stylized-slash) to show up. I have the proper sockets set up the Socket where the trail will start and where the trail will end. The trails for the AdvancedMagicFX12 pack work just fine with the sockets I made, but when I use it with ryanzeng's sword trails doesn't seem to show up.

The image on the top is using the AdvancedMagicFX12 Trail, and on the bottom it's tyanzeng's "FxER Stylized Slash".

So to summarize my issue is that the FxER Slash trails aren't showing up, while the one for the AdvancedMagicFX12 is. Am I doing something wrong?

[tawdry fjord]

make sure to try to email the creator and ask on questions too

[celest heart]

This is what he said when I left a review a few days ago. "Having an issue implementing the trails, I have the sockets needed? I made the two sockets and placed the particle effect into the slot for each of the sockets but it seems to not appearing when I test it out? Did I do something wrong while trying to actually use it? Is there a specific way to do this?"

[tawdry fjord]

fyi too tired to help rn ull have to wait for someone else

[gilded gate]

Hey guys, is there any way to copy and paste modules from one cascade PCL into another?

[lapis mist]

what would be the best way to translate this to UE4? I couldn't do an animated VDB could I? https://youtu.be/UrcitW3LV2U

or anything volumetric I suppose

[cold sorrel]

No

[olive sail]

is there any way to make this mesh (not a sprite) rotate like a disk, in niagara? I can't seem to find something so seemingly simple

oh- with a randomized angle that is

[cold sorrel]

Initial mesh orientation and then update orientation

[olive sail]

What if I just need it to start in a rotated angle, but not rotate on update?

Initial mesh orientation doesnt have any setting I can see to randomize the angle

[cold sorrel]

of course it does

[cold sorrel]

All parameters can

click the little arrow on the right and set it to random range

[olive sail]

Oh? Please enlighten me-

Oh my

You just changed my world 😍

Thank you!

[ruby ermine]

I'm having a weird sorting issue in my niagara effect. It's an explosion, I have this fully transparent, default lit sprite that's supposed to be on top of all of it like so:

(I mean the distortion thing)

but when I place it on map, it seems to be behind every other sprite in the system

[cold sorrel]

It only distorts the opaque pass.

[ruby ermine]

ugh, I see

that explains it, thanks

are you sure though, I used the same thing in another system before and it seems to work - I just checked again cause I doubted

[cold sorrel]

Alright

[ruby ermine]

yeah, basically old one is getting distorted, the one I'm working on isn't. And I can't see the difference between the two. Confusing

[vocal python]

Hey guys, I have a simple question - I have this beam emitter that I simply want to "spiral" as it follows a particle. How can I do that?

I tried Orbit and Rotation/Life with no avail

[fossil swan]

there should be an example in the example content > niagara map

[vocal python]

Ok I'll check it out, thanks

[distant zephyr]

Hey ya'll, not sure if this is the right place to ask but -- is there a way to make a specific light light up some particles?

So for example, I would have 3 lights but only one of them affects my particles

[olive sail]

can textures in UE4 be single-channel, or do all of them have RGB?

[cold sorrel]

Yes

[olive sail]

Is it up to the texture's compression settings?

[cold sorrel]

Yes

[olive sail]

Thank you :)

[burnt dock]

anyone wanna get paid for a tutorial?

[fossil swan]

those kind of questions are only allowed in #hire-a-freelancer or similar job channels. read the #instructions channel on how to do so.

[burnt dock]

oops, so sorry! :(

[torpid palm]

:triangular_flag_on_post: AntonioPepe#8741 received strike 1. As a result, they were muted for 10 minutes.

[celest birch]

hello, I was wondering is it possible to rotate a tile using materials? https://i.imgur.com/ub0w8hD.gif similar to this. For example, I have a black and white checker pattern and I can make it pan using the panner node but I want to have it rotating locally(?) so that it makes a diamond shape then back to a square while moving, I was just wondering if that's possible using material nodes and if so could someone explain how to achieve that?

not sure if this is the right place to post that question, sorry it's my first time actually talking in this server

[olive sail]

Is there any way I can set this Niagara system's finish mark to be a dynamic input, like a user setting?

[cold sorrel]

Yes

Set the loop length to a user param

[olive sail]

I think I did that (unless I did it incorrectly?)

However that red line isn't budging

[cold sorrel]

Does it need to?

[olive sail]

I want it to, the system resets as soon as it hits that red line, even though my 'Lifetime' user variable suggests it should continue to live a bit longer

[cold sorrel]

In game or in the preview?

[olive sail]

In the preview

[cold sorrel]

...

Don't use the preview

ever

[olive sail]

Oh? How come?

[cold sorrel]

Because of bullshit like that.

[olive sail]

Is there some rule of thumb I don't know of

[cold sorrel]

And it has the wrong lighting

[olive sail]

Gotcha

[cold sorrel]

It's at the origin so it hides errors

it doesn't have a player camera

and so on

it's just not a functional preview

[olive sail]

Right on, that all makes sense

[cold sorrel]

Rule of thumb: Never use the preview. Always work in level.

[olive sail]

Awesome, thank you for all the help, the list is getting bigger 😃

[olive sail]

Any way to reparent a Niagara system?

I can't find anything in the documentation other than vague text speaking of inheritance and the UI is leaving me in the dark

[cold sorrel]

What are you trying to do?

[olive sail]

I think my question is outdated.. up until now I was under the impression that if, when creating a new Niagara system, I derived from a template, the engine would maintain inherited properties (emitters/parameters) from the parent. So I wanted to create a nice hierarchy of systems where each adds its own layer of functionality. I was 'doing' that, until I realized that I needed a new parent higher up in the hierarchy, and I was looking for a way to add it without having to recreate all the child systems, aka reparenting

But I realized that the engine does not infact do what it suggests (maintaining inherited properties) - and merely creates a copy of the parent (I came to this conclusion after I tried changing the parent and saw no changes on the child)

And so if my conclusion is correct, there is no point to reparenting, and I'm gonna have to rely on lots of copy and pastes with more manual work

[primal parrot]

eh? you make an emitter, you turn it into a system, you tweak anything on that emitter and the one in the system changes...

[olive sail]

Yeah, that worked for me, but I wanted the same for systems

So, in child systems, I can enjoy a shared set of user parameters specific to some parent system

[primal parrot]

ooh yeah thats a tough one. thought you could drop one sys into another and go from there but nope. yeah looks like you would need to duplicate Emitters.... maybe someone with more know how can help, maybe a way to have the systems talk to each other through BPs? ... sorry!

know you can right click and save an Emitter in a System back out as an Emitter though?

[olive sail]

I did not, but good to know 👍

[primal parrot]

I guess you need to figure out how to just make a few main emitters like little tools, and do all the other parent/children setups inside a single system. you can pass variables around but again not sure from sys to sys...

[solemn fern]

I think you need to do the parenting for the emitter, or you make the layers of functionalities each as a new system, and do the parenting using blueprints, didn't find any parenting options on niagara systems

[copper cloud]

hey would anyone know how to tackle the underside of a water plane with a single layer water material? checking two sided doesn't exactly achieve anything good nor is it enabled on epics default water material that comes with the plugin. I've seen it done like in the water plugin, sea of thieves, subnautica etc and Ive been searching all over the place. I just have no clue where to start 😵‍💫

[analog onyx]

With a shader edit.

Single layer water works fine from underwater too, but last time i checked the shader, it was unfinished, so you have to polish it yourself. @copper cloud

[solid wing]

Hey guys, so I'm trying to troubleshoot some problems with the Houdini Engine plugin. But one of the steps involves the plugins folder for the project itself, which I can't seem to find. I have show hidden items checked so it's not a hidden folder

If it effects anything, my projects are in a different drive than my engine for space reasons

[sacred nova]

if a Plugins folder does not exist in the Project folder, then you can make a folder called Plugins and put the plugin in there

[gritty pivot]

how do I get an emissive material to stop casting light onto other objects?

i want the self illumination but without casting light around it

[copper cloud]

yeah so far i am trying to create my own slw material on a custom water mesh but by polishing do you mean diving into the guts of the engine more or adding some more material nodes? what im thinking so far is creating another identical mesh but upside down and creating a second material just for the under side of the water but i cant image that being very performant. ok update: i forgot to enable the water plugin which came with a function that was designed to solve this very problem so i finally got it to work but thanks for the reply

[icy sundial]

hi, i'm trying to follow this tutorial https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbQtzQsu_mM but i get stuck at the third minute

i get this

when i try to make the material for the disk using a texture with a jpg

meanwhile the guy in the video has the same but no error

what am i doing wrong?

[cold sorrel]

In general? Following cghow 😄

But specifically, that depends on what the error says.

[icy sundial]

lol

yeah the tutorial isnt clear at all, but if you look at the result it's incredibly similar to the original, i tried to look for others but his is the closest one

this is the error

[cold sorrel]

It makes no sense to me to plug a reflection vector into UVs, but to get rid of the error add a component mask inbetween the nodes.

[icy sundial]

i tried that

but the image he gets is one single thing

if i add that, it gets split

[copper cloud]

Anyone know how to make caustic rays as a post processing material like you sea under water in sea of thieves etc? (the godrays that come from the surface) I’ve been trying and can’t figure it out

[lone wing]

plugging a reflection vector works fine if your texture is a cubemap

[icy sundial]

It isnt

Its a jpg image

[lone wing]

then dont use a reflection vector

reflection vector is used to map a cubemap into a sphere

[icy sundial]

Im trying to do what the guy did in the tutorial

Im guessing i should use a cubemap with the texture of the pic?

[lone wing]

yes hes using a cubemap

[icy sundial]

Thanks

[celest birch]

Hey Guys 🙂 how do you handle the destruction of particle systems? For example if u have a rocket with a smoke trail and the rocket gets destroyed, the smoke trail immediately vanishes. Is there a checkbox I'm missing that just leaves the remaining particles in the world for their remaining lifetime or does it need some weird trickery for it to work(delaying the destroy event etc.)?

[fossil swan]

disable first for X seconds, then destroy

[celest birch]

the X would probably be the lifetime of the longest lasting particle, right?

[fossil swan]

that could be a thing yea, depends on some variables. but if your smoke lasts 1.2 seconds, 1.3 should suffice

[celest birch]

Ah ok got it, thanks! 🙂

[austere nymph]

how can i get light shafts like this ?

[primal parrot]

expo height fog, volumetrics on a distant light, cloud actor - google, EPIC has a few vids

[fossil swan]

@austere nymph please refrain from asking the same question in multiple channels next time.
points to the #rules

[austere nymph]

didn't got answer on #graphics and i tought i would try out here

[fossil swan]

next time I wont ask nicely though :p ¯_(ツ)_/¯

[austere nymph]

that was no question tough

that was a warning ^^

[fossil swan]

no, I asked to please refrain from doing so.
my reply was the warning :)

[austere nymph]

in my langue thats not a question ... idk in english exactly

more like a command and request

[fossil swan]

same, anyways, do read the rules please. only takes a minute or so :)

[austere nymph]

... i stopped reading rules since it is almost always the same ... didn't knew it is forbidden to ask a question again

i'll remember tough

[analog onyx]

@copper cloud you need to be able to run the pass at low res for godrays, which you cant. So you need a plugin or engine mod.

Or a quad, attached to camera, with translucent matetial and reduced resolution of separate translucency.

[silver plover]

Hi. I've been working on a simplified solar system in C++ that relies on shaders and does not use lighting for distant actors (planets, moons, etc) due to the many limitation of light and shadows in UE4/UE5EA, massively improving performance and control.

This is a basic prototype, in this case of Jupiter and its four moons. All the celestial bodies share the same master material and I use a line trace to get the blocking hit which sets material parameters for Shadow Direction (from OutHit.ImpactNormal) and Shadow Radius of each moon.

https://youtu.be/EAD0CUNrhBo

This is the material as it is, link to blueprint code: https://blueprintue.com/blueprint/hklqlsrb/

This is the type of projection I would like to achieve

I am looking for a better method than using a simple Sphere Mask to create the moon shadows, which works great for phase/eclipse, but as you can see the shadow is always aligned to the normal. I need to project the shadow in world space along the light source vector so that the shadow appears natural, instead of projected by the dot product of Direction and PixelNormalWS as it is currently. I've created the 3d diagram above to help illustrate my problem.

Does anyone know how to project a Sphere Mask or Radial Gradient in world space onto an object that would world for this use case? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Please ping me if you have a suggestion.

[fossil swan]

hey @silver plover while I hope someone will answer here, this is def something that would be better suited as a forum post.
Good luck and I hope you'll get an answer :)

[silver plover]

I am about to post there as well 😉 Thought people here might be interested and/or know a solution

[fossil swan]

aaight :)

[copper cloud]

ok although i think i might just use some vertical sine waves to create some fake 'godrays' but im trying to get them to move with the camera so that they appear to be in world space and i think i need a 0 - 360 degree camera angle but anything i try only gives 0 - 180 and causes some really weird movement. thanks for the replies EDIT: got it 😅 EDIT 2: this was a bad approach and looks bad nevermind 😥

[copper cloud]

@analog onyx Ive been trying to do something like in this video which kinda looks like post processing rather than proper volumetric lighting though i could be wrong:

[analog onyx]

@silver plover pardons, I did not read the whole thing, but with limited amount of celestial bodies you can calculate shadows properly and analytically instead of raindance you are currently doing.

[olive sail]

Can particle cutouts work with flipbooks? Every time I try to set my SubUV rows/columns to non-1 values my cutout stops working, am I doing something wrong?

[fossil swan]

in cascade only if you use the subuv modules, if the flipbook is done in the shader it doesnt work properly

[olive sail]

And not in Niagara? 🤔

[fossil swan]

havent really played with the subuv's in it, they should work but no experience with them myself

[silver plover]

Beat me to it 😄

[cold sorrel]

How do you expect the particle to know what to cut out if you don't do the flipbook math on the particle?

But yeah, cutouts work fine in Niagara

[olive sail]

I am doing the SubUV index calculation and animation via Niagara modules (rather than in the material via the SubUV function), I hoped it would use the same index for generating a cutout based on the current frame - unless I misunderstood and you meant something different?

[cold sorrel]

Yep, that works

It's the other way around. Driving it with time or something in the material. That doesn't work.

[olive sail]

Yeah - so, it doesn't create a cutout for me :V It continues to be a very squarey square, even if I change the alpha threshold

Tried different channels as well with no luck

[cold sorrel]

Same texture plugged in?

[olive sail]

Yessir

[cold sorrel]

Not using the "automatic" tickbox?

[olive sail]

I tried both

[cold sorrel]

Having it ticked doesn't work I've found.

But just plugging in a texture and specifying a channel works fine my end.

[olive sail]

Perhaps it's that the texture's alpha is tight enough near the border so it happens to fill most of the frame just enough for the algorithm to give up

But that would be quite unfortunate seeing as there are definitely regions that can be cut out

[cold sorrel]

That should be fine

[primal parrot]

show your material (to see if its all correct), show your results (because "its squarey" doesnt help really) show as much as you can 😄

[cold sorrel]

*sprite renderer settings. The material has nothing to do with it

[olive sail]

Ah, yes, here we are

And to remove doubt I am using the particle SubUV node inside the material

When viewing the emitter in brush wireframe mode, it's a complete quad - that's the particularly squarey square

While this is what's actually displayed on it

[primal parrot]

sorry misread as doing in material

[cold sorrel]

And if you set the OSM Opacity method to the red channel, that does nothing?

[olive sail]

Nope

[cold sorrel]

Then that's bugged.

That's the way to do it.

[olive sail]

:(

[cold sorrel]

4.27?

[olive sail]

4.26

[cold sorrel]

Huh, any engine changes?

It works fine in my 4.26

[olive sail]

Nope

I guess I'll continue trying on different textures

And tweak with settings

[cold sorrel]

Try adding a new emitter and do thee same setup in case it's gotten corrupted or something.

The cutout settings are good.

[olive sail]

👍 Thanks, I'll do that

[cold sorrel]

New emitter, new system etc.

Something has broken 😦

[olive sail]

[cold sorrel]

What format is your texture @olive sail

Not Exr right?

[olive sail]

Uhhh

If you mean compression settings - then it's alpha

Wait no

Default, sorry

[cold sorrel]

Something is tickling my brain about an old bug with higher than 8bit textures.

[olive sail]

Oh my

[cold sorrel]

But I'm sure that's fixed.

For academic reasons you could slap a good ole tga or png in there?

[olive sail]

By png, do you mean just drag and drop a .png file into the content browser and use that?

[cold sorrel]

yer

[olive sail]

That texture was a .png

[cold sorrel]

Ah gotcha.

Cool then that's probably not the issue

[olive sail]

Its a raw embergen export if I recall correctly

[cold sorrel]

Does it do anything if you plug any random texture in?

[olive sail]

Lemme check

To the cutout, yeah?

[cold sorrel]

yeh

[olive sail]

So yes, just tried this

Buuut I had to set the sub UV values to 1, 1

[cold sorrel]

Yeah, that makes sense

[olive sail]

If I bring it up to what it's supposed to be, it gives up

[cold sorrel]

Yeah, because the cutoutt texture is a 1x1 texture.

It probably has only white or black info in any given "frame"

So something with the texture is funky

[olive sail]

Let me try and uh

Downscale that fire texture in photoshop, resave it and use that instead

with maybe increased brightness values to more resemble that test png

Yeah it won't budge

[clever timber]

Hello, I am wanting some sort of pickup/collectible that gives the player the ability to jump. I would like the collectible to be some sort of object modeled in Blender that resembles the pickup, and then have some sort of effect or particle coming around it. Do you know of any tutorials regarding this?

[olive sail]

you shouldn't look for tutorials specifically for that combination of requirements, break what you want to accomplish into several steps

There is the player ability, the 3D model, and a particle system

You're going to need to create each one separately and then link everything up with a bit of blueprints, a bit of asset managing and some particle work

[clever timber]

Ok so, so far I have the ability set up, just a simple boolean branch when the player hits spacebar. The model I can do, so is there a good tutorial for a particle system that possibly explains something similar and if not, how to make a desired effect?

[olive sail]

There are 2 systems UE4 gives you that you can use

One is Cascade, and the other is Niagara, which is newer and more powerful

Look up tutorials on those, additionally UE4 will give you templates you can study/build off from

[clever timber]

Ok will do. From what it sounds like, should I start with Niagara?

[olive sail]

Yeah, I found it had a slightly steeper learning curve as it's more involved, but it quickly becomes quite intuitive

[clever timber]

Ok. I will give it a try, thanks.

[clever timber]

I found a page on UE4 explaining how to make a particle system but cant find any more videos close to what I would like. @olive sail

[celest birch]

Quick question. For Particle System. When I apply a type data new mesh data, to change my square material into a circle/sphere. It breaks the burst animation. Is there something I'm missing or are certain things not compatible?

trying to get a impact to work on anim notify

[celest birch]

figured it out I think, was something with sphere asset I was using. Different one worked fine.

[primal fern]

Does anyone know how to make realistic rain? I can't find anything online

[vast fractal]

Hi gang,

Can someone tell me which fog i can use for our VR game we're working on? I know volumetric is a no go, i'm not sure which i should be using?

[primal parrot]

describe realistic? for a game? renders?

[primal fern]

specifically for a game, like something looks like in comes in waves.

[primal parrot]

ok so sheets of rain... off in distance? mid range? close?

[primal fern]

close and midrange

[primal parrot]

this may not cover sheeting but seems cool https://www.fxguide.com/fxfeatured/game-environments-partb/

[primal fern]

dude your a life saver, thank you 🙂

[primal parrot]

and im sure someone will chime in whos worked on in game rain or knows of ways, but for sheeting i think either sprites or polys with just a nice sheeting foggy style rain texture animated or slowly moving, layered up and diff speeds or shaded to give depth into distance... or maybe could do a volumetric fog... but for mid to far sheets never do particles... close up obvs some particles, and for sheeting just emit along a spline , cull whats not in cam, and look here or on RealtimeVFX Discord for conversations the last year for how to occlude from buildings.

https://tinyurl.com/4zp5efb3

[tranquil cliff]

Does anyone know what would cause particles (with a set upward velocity) would work correctly out of game but just ball up in game?

[cunning quest]

i have a niagara particle system attached to an actor that moved, but the particles don't move together with the actor, how come?
Solved it by ticking on Local space checkbox on the emmiter

[olive sail]

Anyone know if there's a nice way to merge Niagara particles with a volumetric texture so that overlapping a lot of them won't cause overdraw, and instead one material's volume will be 'added' to another?

[cold sorrel]

No

[olive sail]

Thought that'd be too good to be true :D Thanks 👍

[olive sail]

I gotta say I'm a bit confused... Up until now I figured if I wanted the volumetric particles, I'll have to take the sprite quad overdraw hits
But then I realized: https://gfycat.com/BronzeRequiredFruitfly

In this scenario, there is a sphere occluding these quads, meaning I'm not getting overdraw, yet I can very much see the volumetrics ontop of it, so it seems like this limitation is arbitrary

Which makes me wonder, what is preventing me from somehow hacking a good sized volume material with barely any quad size?

Unless of course, that visualization is misleading and I am infact taking the hit

[cold sorrel]

You are taking a hit.

The overdraw debug is much older than the volumetric material domain.

There is however zero reason to use that many sprites when using volumetric sprites :S

[olive sail]

Oh yeah, this was just to stress test

[primal parrot]

so if you used an oval shaped mesh with the volume texture, thats less a hit than many sprites, right?

[olive sail]

¯_(ツ)_/¯

[primal parrot]

i thought it was less of a hit when i was testing but like you, I was going off overdraw debug, and now P says its not real, so i cry 😄

[cold sorrel]

Profile it

If it works, it works

[analog onyx]

Normally, you do not use volumetric fog for effects. It is still a high cost feature, with result highly dependent on its quality.

You see a lot of vids where it us used, but there are far less opportunities to do so in actual title than in tutotial/ project.

And volumetric particles still have overdraw, it is just one dimension more

@olive sail

[olive sail]

Is there a good way to randomize the material of a particle? Googling and documentation gave me no good answers

[cold sorrel]

Multiple renderer and visibility tags

[olive sail]

will renderers with no visibility still increase CPU complexity?

[cold sorrel]

No

[olive sail]

Awesome

[cold sorrel]

It'll hit you with a bit of memory , but not as much as the alternative

[glass wasp]

Is there a place Here that I can ask for Paid help? Looking for an unreal VFX artist. Simple job for prototyping something

[fossil swan]

only place where that is allowed is the job board. check out the #instructions

[arctic lodge]

Hey, I have a post processing material for underwater "fog"(a sort of color absorption) based on depth. Well the color absorption PPM applied After Tonemapping interferes with things such as lens flare and bloom.
I'm trying before tonemapping, but the SceneTexture:PostProcessInput0 values before tonemapping arent between 0-1. Their 0-20+(virtually any number/infinite). And since these color values are virtually infinite, im unable to properly subtract colors on a 0-1 scale.

Anyone have any ideas on how to get it on a 0-1 scale? Alternatives? Or ways to make lens flare and bloom apply only after the post process material, while exposure and basic tonmapping still happens first?

[unkempt mango]

May I ask a question, I used chaos Phoenixfd to create a fluids simulation in 3d max, and exported to .abc file, but import to UE4 doesn't work, why?

[cold sorrel]

Unreal doesn't support volumes.

[devout canopy]

I would like to make a bubble of fog around my character with it being transparent close blending, towards opaque at an X amount of distance. Is there a good tutorial for this or place to get started? Thanks in advance

[nocturne trail]

Hello everyone, I'm a newbie with UE... started with some YouTube tutorials about a week ago and i'm already loving how amazing this engine is!

I have a simple question about a fire effect that I've downloaded from the store, its called M5 VFX Vol2. Fire and Flames, I've tried to use it in a project but the flames are glowing too bright just like the image I've attached to this message. I've been looking for a parameter to change... something like Glowing for emissive materials but i'm completely lost.

Do you guys know what i should look for? Thank you all.

PS: I'm using UE5

[mystic torrent]

You could check the emissive color in the material applied to the particles. If anything at all is applied, there would be some amount of glow. And the higher the values, the more glow you would see.

[nocturne trail]

Thank you ElJefe, i've managed to find this parameter within the emissive texture and it's fixed now 🙂

[meager pendant]

I'm trying to create a outline effect for object which shows up when you look at object. I want to create a material function and use it in material of each interactable object. Any ideas how i can do it? Or any better ways?(except post process)

[devout canopy]

I'm working on that wildfire smoke effect. I'll be increasing density, decreasing view radius, and more soon

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKYuSR5-Nvc

there

[sleek arrow]

hi all. I did some fx for a torch. i am happy with the smoke but how can i make the fire not drag out like this? is there some way to kill particles on movement?

[meager pendant]

You can increase spawn rate and decrease lifetime of particles

[grim kernel]

Does anyone know how I can make rain fumes or whatever they're called

So the effect im trying to get is something like this https://youtu.be/GPGbP1Q_pu4

The foggy things that show up when the rain is close to the light

[thick atlas]

is there a grid pixel size console command equivalent for volumetric clouds?
to increase the "resolution" per se

[primal parrot]

yes, play with cvars like r.Volumetric . etc....

asher explains a few, others do too, takes a lil googling http://asher.gg/?p=2600

https://80.lv/articles/a-cheat-sheet-on-volumetric-fog-in-ue4/

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/unreal-engine-high-quality-settings-cinematics-daniel-stubbington/

[thick atlas]

I couldn't find one for Volumetric Clouds in specific-- perhaps its somewhere else? Let me know if you have any thoughts!

Great resources though, thank you for sharing

[heady sandal]

Hey does anyone know how to do screen-space shaders? E.g. camera effects?

[heady sandal]

Nvm I think I figured it out. Post processing material. That's cool

[teal tundra]

Can anyone recommend a good advanced course about UE Materials - specifically for VFX or stylized materials? Not like photo-real or simulation baked stuff. More Material/Niagara focused.

[celest birch]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPy2hytwDLM

A few years old, but I love this presentation

Can anyone here recommend any videos that show off interesting or inspiring use of Niagara to create particle systems? Hoping to find some examples of particularly exotic or exciting particle system designs for inspiration to share with students

[cold sorrel]

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/28qdPA

Show that

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/OomONb

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/WKqLm3

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/q9kK0D

[primal parrot]

ahh sorry, read too fast!

[unkempt mango]

Has this tutorial?

[cold sorrel]

No

[vast fractal]

Hi gang. Does anyone know if we can use refraction with forward rendering? If not, is there a workaround? We're trying to add a black hole to our game and for the life of me I can't get refraction to work.

[umbral flint]

Hello we are currently with a strange issue

our groo; which is binded to our model work

but when playing an animation there's a latency

or the hair kind of offset from the base mesh and retrieve it's posiiton

We are working on a film project

so we just need to render everything

[hollow fossil]

Hey! Anyone have information on how to create a spherical projection decal?

[umbral flint]

Got the same issue as this person

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnLX451d_5I

Ok we've found out !
You need to set your Default Skin Cache Behavior to Inclusive here :

[analog onyx]

@hollow fossil it is kinda straighforward. Take lightvector and transform it from cartesian to polar coordinates. There is your spherical projection.

[verbal moon]

Hey everyone, I'm looking for updated engine ver tutorial to do this. Do u guys know any? This looks too cool tbh. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7DXS7X3nn8&t=1s

[leaden anchor]

Can anyone explain why I can't find particle system (sevarog_homecreen ?

@ me if responding

[reef summit]

is there a way to use world position offsets in a post process

like a sphere mask with the inside being normal and the outside vertexes all wavy

[still bay]

https://youtu.be/uxdeZQTcBMQ

[warm dew]

hey, I have a problem with exporting static mesh vertex colors with the vertex animation texture output
Warning
Export Static Mesh Vertex Colors is turned on but no vertex attribute "Cd_v" or "Alpha_v" is found on the unpacked input geometry. Vertex attributes need to be assigned before packing.
this is the warning i get but before i pack my object i have the Cd_v attribute

I have to different vertex colors which i merged together to colourise the mesh with 2 different textures in unreal (for the outside and inside of the mesh) but without the static mesh vertex color I can only use one texture

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tG7tzwNSgS0

I did it the same way the have but i cant figure it out why its not working for me
any help would be great 🙂

[still bay]

https://youtu.be/wUQzbplR8Os

[alpine dagger]

So I've been trying to learn UE4 recently. I saw Epic's video about the new-ish sky system and I want to replicate the stars in the background. I've been working on it for a few days and I can't seem to figure it out. Any resources I could go look at?

https://youtu.be/SeNM9zBPLCA?t=1164

[narrow kernel]

So I want to composite in some buildings and stuff on the sky over here, is there any way to get the sky pass or just make that part transparent (png sequence) so i can take it over to my compositing software?

[topaz thunder]

Not sure if this is the best channel, but does anyone know if you can use LUTs from Unity in Unreal? I brought one over to try out with the proper texture settings for recognizing it as a LUT and it looks all crazy compared to in Unity

Is there perhaps some additional changes I'd need to do?

[sullen charm]

Anyone know how to get the local Z component of a Decal volume in the material. Like how Texture coordinate U & V correspond to local X & Y?

Docs say to just hook up a CameraVector to get the third component, but i feel they skipped a couple of steps with that explaination.

[slow trellis]

hey guys, i have a noise material that i want to stretch sideways, any idea how to do that?

[native flax]

Anyone else encountering artifacting from SSGI when upgrading to UE54.26? All scenes are incredibly noisy. 😦

[stone iron]

Check texture settings:
Compression settings =default
sRGB=off
Mipgen = nomipmaps
Tex group = color lookup table

[still bay]

https://youtu.be/8el2ri9Do_Y

[keen wren]

heya, can someone tell me how i make my leaf particles collide with the player actor?

[sturdy burrow]

you using Niagara or Cascade?

[keen wren]

niagara

[sturdy burrow]

there is a collision module you can add to the Particle Update section

[gleaming spire]

Anyone know how to render only custom depth for an object? Turning off render in main pass turns off the depth pass as well. I'm trying to make my translucent water plane visible in fog but the scene depth node doesn't detect translucent objects

How it looks

How I want it to look (I added another plane above my water plane so the scene depth node would detect it, I just don't want it to be visible)

[copper maple]

Do anyone have a clever trick how to get the directional vector of a decal in the material? I need it to mask out stretches in the texture.

[keen wren]

i did, but it wont collide with my player, only with world

and some of them falling throu the ground

[sturdy burrow]

I'd recommend checking the collision presets on your static or skel mesh vs the environment. After that, I would check your collision settings on the Niagara system. Here's a good overview of the collision module in Niagara: https://youtu.be/QncETSkkeD8

[keen wren]

Thank you very mush!

[sturdy burrow]

best of luck @keen wren

[neat ingot]

Hello people. I was wondering how to get into VFX in unreal? Flow maps, Niagara, flipbooks. I feel so lost getting into this and when I do research I feel like I'm not finding what I'm looking for. My goal is to get simulation like fluidninja or things made by Asher Zhu or magic fx and many other things. I've seen so many cool things you can do with this I don't know where to start.

[fossil swan]

realtimevfx.com has a lot of getting started with vfx all in one thread.

then its just riding it out until you understand stuff written by asher, ryan brucks, and such

[cold sorrel]

To be fair, ashers and ryans stuff are only tangentially related to fx. Veeery little of what they show is useable.

[devout portal]

yep, most of VFX in gamedev is just LETS GO WILD AND SEE HOW IT GOES! ...and only when you understand that you can't get 60fps on 2080ti then it's the point when Ashers, Ryans stuff will be needed

That is totally fine to not be able run a game on Oculus Quest 2 standalone with all your effects.

[cold sorrel]

It's in a strange middleground. Too heavy for games, and not high enough fidelity for film.

[neat ingot]

It's honestly still amazing enough for me to see what world, environments/scenes I can even though it's not fully up to par. but it is enough to make you go like wooowww. create an experience that is just amazing.

I will have to keep that in mind though thanks guys

[analog onyx]

There is indeed a gap between showoff and practicable stuff. But very often showoff and RnD are pretty close together and might yield fruits later on.

Algo to starting with VFX is pretty simple. Pick an effect you like. Choose well and be unique, favoring path less travelled. Try to reproduce this effect in in unreal as close as possible. After you are satisfied with result, try to make the effect fast. Repeat N times for M effects. In the process,you will learn part of what you need naturally. @neat ingot

[neat ingot]

Makes a lot of sense. I'm still trying to get a good grasp oh now vfx works inj game engines vs something like blender, embergen etc.

[cold sorrel]

Sounds like this could be useful to you. It takes you through the prerequisites and then gives you an idea for furhter knowledge. https://realtimevfx.fandom.com/wiki/Tutorials

[neat ingot]

https://tenor.com/view/oh-my-god-thank-you-drew-barrymore-chloe-fineman-saturday-night-live-gif-18787732

[rotund dome]

are weapon projectiles normally particle effects or just static meshes?

[cold sorrel]

https://tenor.com/view/why-not-both-why-not-take-both-gif-11478682

[swift magnet]

they could also include animated skeletal meshes if you want/need to get fancy.

[fossil swan]

just dont do it on a minigun projectile XD

[rotund dome]

ah well

[radiant flame]

my light source doesn't seem to affect the player actor whatsoever. The light is set to a very vibrant green that does affect blueprint actors in the level but seems to do nothing to the player, as well as the foliage trees around or the landscape.

I'm sure it must be something simple that I just can't find if it's working so readily on the blueprint actors

[rotund dome]

lighting channel issues? Probably the player mesh is on channel 2 or something. Can you put some more screenshots for clarity?

[teal fjord]

Hey guys, I'm creating an icy explosion spell effect. I want to have the ground underneath be frosted and fade away. Should I do this in the particle system with an axis locked emitter or separately as a decal? Or something else?

[random saddle]

Hey, my particle emitter stops once it reaches 1000 no matter what

Even when I turn off the max drawn count

[dense trellis]

Hi everyone - i was wondering .... I have a particle effect, and, it seems my postprocess is "deluding" the effect. I have a blue portal, and, when i drop it in my scene, it just turns very dark blue and emits no light at all. I have read that all i would need to do is turn my postprocess material to "before translucency" but that doesn't seem to help at all. The PP in the level is actually causing issues with any translucent item in the scene (even my minimap displays) .... any ideas where to start to resolve? I might add, the scene is ugly AF without my PP volume haha.

[rotund dome]

there is not right way of doing it but maybe you wanna check out some niagara samples.I think a separate mesh with transparency should do well.

[teal fjord]

Gotcha, thanks! 🙂

[valid shadow]

anyone knows how i get houdini to export the hbjson from a ply file containing point cloud data,cause i am doing something wrong,i put it in unreal it is 40mb big it does have points and stuff,but when i plug it into the basic houdini template emiter with the given json on every node that accepted it,i don't get stuff on the screen,but the example ones work

[rotund dome]

do share what you made 😁

[still girder]

Hi, super beginner question. In cascade can you rotate sprite particles by a vector? I can only seem to rotate it along the front facing axis

[little turret]

Hey, I'm trying to make the Lumen Global Illumination visualizer accessible as a render target, but I am having a bit of difficulty understanding how ShowFlags work.

I found a relevant line in ShowFlagsValues.inl
SHOWFLAG_ALWAYS_ACCESSIBLE(LumenGlobalIllumination, SFG_LightingFeatures, NSLOCTEXT("UnrealEd", "LumenGlobalIlluminationSF", "Lumen Global Illumination"))

If I understand correctly, there is some other part of code that checks the ShowFlags and decides what to render. I believe this part of the code only runs in editor.
I was wondering if anyone knows where I might be able to find this?

[raw crow]

Hey all, hope this is the right channel. I am still fairly new to UE and I added some volumetric clouds to my scene, however, if I look at them and there is an object between me and the clouds they get a white outline. Does anyone know how to fix this?

[glass cipher]

Hi all, could anyone advise me on how to dynamically blend between an opaque/lit material and a translucent/unlit one for a dematerialize effect? i'm trying to use material layers and not seeing an option to set the translucent blending mode anywhere

[cold sorrel]

Without modifying the engine, I don't think you can.

[glass cipher]

oh damn

really?

[cold sorrel]

You can dither it, but changing over to translucent is not really done.

[glass cipher]

but i can fade out the opaque mesh

and fade in the translucent one

if i have two instances of the same actor

maybe?

[cold sorrel]

Fade out opaque mesh?

[glass cipher]

yeah like a particle effect transition

[cold sorrel]

Alright

[glass cipher]

i read somewhere that it was possible to combine opaque and translucent materials with material layers

i guess they were mistaken

[glass cipher]

hey @cold sorrel just wondering what you thought of this.. I have two instances of the skeletal mesh in the same exact location, one with translucent and one with the opqaue(now masked) materials. Set a button press to fade up the opacity of the translucent and the dissolve amount of the masked at the same time and it looks ok i think, do you know if its possible to generate instances of meshes like this that could mirror anything that happens to a character? like animation, ragdoll etc?

[celest birch]

hello guys, im a developer, im trying to prototype a project, i currently need to apply bruises textures onto a skeletal mesh

ive seen can be done in a couple of ways like render targets or hardcoding sphere masks onto the material, anyone can help me?

[analog onyx]

@celest birch what kind of help do you need?

[celest birch]

i was trying to do it with sphere mask

so i get the hit and pass it into a material parameter then from what i read i need to transform the location to the skeletal mesh reference pose

https://www.tomlooman.com/rendering-wounds-on-characters/
this is what im trying to do

the material need the hit location in the reference pose right? not the world location

[analog onyx]

That is correct

[celest birch]

i think im getting it thank you

[steel sentinel]

has cascade been phased out for 4.27? if so, what happens to previous cascade particles? will they eventually be converted to niagara or?

[cold sorrel]

No and no.

[steel sentinel]

so one could technically still make cascade in 4.27 by duplicating and changing existing cascade stuff yes?

whether that is morally questionable or not

[cold sorrel]

Could, yes.

Should. No.

[steel sentinel]

noted

thanks

[uncut mulch]

whoa how the hell did unreal engine do this laser search thing!? that's so cool!

[sand fox]

So Im learning that distance field stuff so i can make water foam and such but for some reason it doesn't interact with my landscape at all unless i put an arbitrary cube into the scene, is there a reason for that?

[wide hill]

Have you checked for collision?

[acoustic junco]

I have this normal map that's yellow unlike other normal maps, it doesn't appear right when I put it through the normal mode in my material, I don't know what to do : {

[gaunt coyote]

Anyone has a good tutorial how to make good local volumetric clouds?

[loud burrow]

Hi, I can't find the channel for materials so I'm just posting here for now. Can anyone tell me why the it is not coming out as a solid color and has a gradient? I just want one simple uniform color on my material. Thanks.

The color I was going for is brown

Don't worry, figured it out.

[unreal thorn]

https://youtu.be/R2RQm_Bu81I

[unreal thorn]

Not exactly local volumetric clouds, but volumetric fogs
https://youtu.be/Xd7-rTzfmCo

[gaunt coyote]

Not exactly a Tutorial I would say.

[unreal thorn]

I'd say one shouldn't disregard them if it's not exactly a step by step elaborated tuts.

[gaunt coyote]

I'm not disregrading.

It's cool but it's very difficult to comprehend.

[unreal thorn]

Sjoerd's presentation is easier to comprehend, even though his result is local volumetric fog and not true self-shadowing local volumetric clouds.

For the latter, you'd have to come up with raymarched solution, which is elaborated in Ryan Brucks' post:
https://shaderbits.com/blog/creating-volumetric-ray-marcher

[gaunt coyote]

Interesting

[dry mango]

Hi Guys, I have followed a tutorial on h ow to make x-ray vision but the issue is I want to limit the distance that can be seen by the player when they activate X-ray mode as you can see when the player goes near a wall he can see through other walls when I want him to be only able to see through 1 wall at most, Wondering if anyone can help with this please?

See through wall

As you can see the x-ray when enabled shows a sphere around the character so kind of anything overlapping in that area is what the player should be able to see so only the 2 NPC,s behind that 1 wall but not the red guy behind the further wall, I am really new to shaders so do not really have much of an idea about how to do this.

Just an idea could I use a Sphere Collision and anything it overlaps with change their stencil depth to a value not sure if this is possible though.

[tranquil stream]

Is there any pipeline that allows me to apply a post process after the UI has been rendered?

[unreal thorn]

Not without hacking the engine, no.

The UI is a separate render layer by design, and isn't affected by post process.

[tranquil stream]

Go on...

The only place I can even think where to handle that would be in the back buffer directly.

Which presents its own multi-threading issues

[celest birch]

hey guys does anyone know what is cheaper between using SmoothStep and RemapValueRange for a gradient ?

[lethal pond]

Hey, what kind of Post Process setup do you use for a realistic, modern looking game? I mean more the type of Post Process Materials. I have an unsharpen filter which looks already quite good but the looks does still not close to the post process quality of Battlefield 5 or Modern Warfare 2019.

I'm not an expert on visual effects so I don't even know exactly how all these kind of methodes are called

[unreal thorn]

It largely comes down to good surface materials, and simple adjustment to the built-in colour correction.

It's that simple, really. Not much fancy, overly sophisticated post FX materials is necessary. Having shoddy surface materials and/or inconsistent meshes is going to be futile.

https://youtu.be/0iQJkSpOoOQ

Even the Rebirth project barely make any major difference in the post FX, save for a custom brightness aware film grain.

[echo knot]

hi. i'm looking to apply some effects to characters in my scene (like showing that a character is poisoned or frozen, making their bodies green or blue respectively). however these characters all have different textures and i'm using different materials for every character.

does it make sense to make a single material for all of these characters, and then create material instances for all of them? it seems a bit limiting, and i was wondering if there's a different way to achieve this effect.

[fossil swan]

generally yes, you'd want to have one master material and then run instances.
that way adding new things saves a bleepload of time.
to give a suggestion for another way, just use a fresnel + color into emissive.

[echo knot]

I see. So I am thinking about it correctly

So I guess all of the different effects I want to apply to my characters will need to change parameters on this master material through the material instance

[fossil swan]

yea, once you set them up properly in the master, you can activate them in the instance.

[echo knot]

I appreciate the quick response, thank you. I am super intimidated by materials. I know they’re really powerful but I’m not much of an artist

[fossil swan]

you'll manage :)

[heady elk]

Hi all, I'm trying to import ocean deformation onto a mesh in UE, and was wondering what the best method for doing this would be? Currently I've got basically a spritesheet texture, do I plug this in blueprints?

Sorry, realise its probably a dumb question, very new to UE

[unreal thorn]

AFAIK, you can just pan around a couple of voronoi noise as the displacements and call it a day. No flipbook texture involved.

[lone schooner]

Hi everyone, i need some help, i was making a fire system from a tutorial and its have a animation. I did everything and call fire event in my shoot system but animation is not coming just my character is swinging
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/225448446956404738/893266346203312148/2021-10-01_01-40-02.mp4

[unreal thorn]

This is more of a #blueprint question than VFX related.

[lone schooner]

But the problem is my animation is bugging

[unreal thorn]

VFX channel is largely about visual effects and not the anim/logics

[lone schooner]

Okay thanks

[dry mango]

Hi, Can anyone recommend a good website/youtuber for post processing learning?? I simply cant understand the shaders atm and how they work like I kind of would like to recreate the xray vision from Batman Arkham Asylum but would like to understand how it's made rather than follow a tutorial if that makes sense please?

[unreal thorn]

See pinned message on this channel and #graphics

[digital patrol]

does anyone have any suggestions for real time fx courses? I want to transition from film/tv fx to game and I know there are some workflow differences that I might be unaware of so I want to be able to prepare a portfolio suited for game fx. I know there are lots and lots of courses out there, but I'm really just asking if anyone has any favorites that have helped them a lot

Mostly I've been working in Houdini and I want to know how that translates to game fx

[cold sorrel]

I always recommend this one, but I'm biased, having made it: https://realtimevfx.fandom.com/wiki/Tutorials

[digital patrol]

Haha that's awesome, I will check it out. Thanks!

[lusty wagon]

Someone has a hint how to create a shader like this? It highlights every edge (would also pay if someone got something like this) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0D9ZSzOKkI

[unreal thorn]

Well, if you're willing to pay for it, might as well bought the asset from the marketplace directly.
¯_(ツ)_/¯

[lusty wagon]

well its not available anymore 😄

[unreal thorn]

I'm very sure there are other marketplace listings that offer the same (if not better).

[lusty wagon]

I cant find anything or marketplace or youtube because

I just can find the highlighted version on the left (just the outline of what you see). But what I need is a highlighting of every edge, like in the middle.

[sharp mica]

Hello, i want to my mesh colored with vertex
alpha. whenever i export it to unreal engine, its looks just normal.
How to fix it ?

fire is flowing. there is no any alpha

[uncut mulch]

how do i do this lighting effect?

like a search laser coming out of a drone.

[fossil swan]

did you use the vertex color node in the material so it actually uses the vertex data?

[sharp mica]

no i dont know what it is. i just made paint thing inside maya then import it to unreal and expected to see the result 😄

i only select "replace " inside import settings about vertex color import options one

[fossil swan]

you'll need the "vertex color" no in the material editor.
it has rgba outputs, each corresponding to the vertex color you painted.
if you want to use the alpha vertex color to fade out the edges, you'll need to hook it up to transparency. you'll need the right blending mode as well and such.

[unreal thorn]

Decals, I guess 🤔

Or maybe light functions would be the better solution

[uncut mulch]

Ah, thank you, I'll look into it! :D

[vocal jetty]

i have added some light to a couple of particle effects and im experiencing a strange issue. it appears to darken the lighting around my particles in a weird blocky chunks pattern. it happens with or without my post process volume present. and is more visible in shadowed areas of my level, where the issue seems to complete mess up lighting in my surroundings. also on my building, it causes the windows to darken for the duration of my particle. can anyone point me in the direction of what might be causing this. increasing the "fixed bounds" to something stupid like x1000, y1000,z1000 by x-1000, y-1000,z-1000 lessens the issue but it is still there...any help would be appreciated

[rare sequoia]

I need some insight on how i could make a particle effect like this, just a flat orb that always facing camera but when moved leaves a little bit of a trail behind. Its fairly simple but i can't seem to get it right.

[unreal thorn]

It's fairy simple, that simple rapid emitter in world space should be enough.

[tranquil stream]

Is there a way that I can make Custom Stencil passes not so jittery?? This is just visualizing the Custom Stencil buffer, and it's so jittery, even with a static mesh, and a still camera. I'm not going to be able to use it for the masking that I want to do like this.

[drowsy lynx]

Finally Finished Project + Breakdown:
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/Krnwno
https://imgur.com/uZeFmh7.gif

[drowsy lynx]

Hi guys, I've moved my vfx content folder into a new project (still using the same 4.26 engine) und now all my Niagara systems are broken and I don't know what's the issue. Googling "unknown function call" doesn't five me any helping results 😦 Does anyone know the issue?

thanks for the hint, let me try again ..

[fossil swan]

I assume Simon knows this

[drowsy lynx]

i'm a bit rusty with unreal. only use it for private projects and i usually stay at the same version for a very very long time 😄 so no, i didn't know .. or maybe a i knew and forgot 😄

yes, now it works - thank you! ❤️

[fossil swan]

https://giphy.com/gifs/kimmyschmidt-unbreakable-kimmy-schmidt-uks-3oEjHKvjqt5pssL99C

me atm

welp, glad you got it working :)

[radiant flame]

Say I want to have a player spawn a swarm of bats and control where it moves. What's the least intensive way to do that? Some kind of particle system?

[unreal thorn]

Niagara can do just that, as per demonstrated in the very first UE5 demo.

[radiant flame]

is that a UE5 thing? The project is in 4 and I don't want to switch till 5 is officially released

[unreal thorn]

No. Niagara has been in UE4 for a long while, and already production ready in ±4.24

[radiant flame]

Ah alright, thanks. I'll check it out.

[wraith hound]

Hey guys is there an Way to Scale an particle Effect entirely?. not only the Emitter one, like i have an Fire and i want to scale it down, it scales each Sprite Sheet down... seperatley and not the Whole Particle Effect

[gloomy bolt]

Hey, guys sorry to bother, I actually don't know if that's the proper channel to ask about it, but anyone here know what it can be? I'm having this artefact with this Lighting bolt particle.

[acoustic junco]

Anyone know how to get rid of this weird trail effect? I'm not too sure what's causing it but I know it's the grass

[unreal thorn]

That's TAA ghosting.

Unfortinately that was the side effect of Temporal AA if enough colour contrast with plain grass textures.

How to get rid of it:

• Use FXAA, but it's ugly as f@!#
• Give your landscape material layered variations

[acoustic junco]

What exactly is FXAA?

[celest birch]

hello, i have a question. i wan't to have niagara particle effect on my animation but i wanted it to keep looping until the end of the animation is this how it works or there's a better way?

[celest birch]

also is it bad for the system performance considering it have multiple notif?

[unreal thorn]

It'll loop unless you specified it in emitter settings.

[celest birch]

what about the image i've uploaded, is it okay about performance. right now i liked the way it looks but if it's bad for performance i'll try to change it.

[unreal thorn]

Who knows? Try profiling it yourself, use the stat commands and whatnot.

[brisk trench]

Not sure this is the right channel for hair&fur questions, but anyway: did anyone try to use a hair cards mesh with 2 UV channels in a groom asset? The problem seems to be that when the cards mesh is assigned in the groom asset, the 2nd UV seems to be nonexistent, while the very same cards mesh with the same material used outside of the groom asset uses the 2nd UV properly. (The problem in that case is of course that it doesn't have any groom physics.)

[still bay]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPs0J8hU2qc

[unreal thorn]

Post in #work-in-progress

[fossil swan]

^

[vague atlas]

hello community ❤️
I'm trying to make an expanding donutshaped mesh originating from a boss that sends out "pulses" that the player needs to jump over.

the problem beeing that if I just take a donut mesh and scale it it gets an unwanted result.. I want it to maintain its thinkness and only grow on the outer radius.

How would I do that?
With niagara particles? or maybe a procedural mesh?
or is there an other simpler way to do it?

[fossil swan]

check for the bounds of the mesh inside the shader, and use vertexnormalsws to decrease accordingly? thats prolly my best bet

[fossil swan]

@vague atlas
https://i.gyazo.com/f54a96ddd17b6713ab45c0e869409daf.png
(with special thanks to @wary dragon for fixing my dumdum brain mistake)

https://i.gyazo.com/71c7efbfb1ae87bd55020994a4aedf77.gif

doesnt affect collision we just realized XD

[wary dragon]

But It doesn't affects collision.

[vague atlas]

oh my goodness. That is exactly What I'm after! 😍

oh.. lack of hitdetection is ofcause a bit of a bummer.. well. I guess I can fix that with other components that trace for hits

[fossil swan]

as a dumdum when it comes to code/blueprint, show me the results at some point.

[vague atlas]

Apparently I'm also a dumdum because I do not get your result 😦
@fossil swan @wary dragon

[fossil swan]

ah, you need an actual torus shape, not a cross-sheet one. @vague atlas

[vague atlas]

uhm, not entirely sure what you mean by that @fossil swan 😬
I used a generated torus from blender without any alterations.
This is a view with collision turned on i ue just to show the faces.
Is there an other kind of torus shape?

[fossil swan]

ah, you'll need smoothed normals as it replies on them for pushing/pulling them outwards. atm each loop has its own smoothing.

@vague atlas

[vague atlas]

aha!! that solved to disconnected faces problem.
But i still don't get your awesome result @fossil swan 😭
Now there is an inverted extra torus and when I scale the inner one (that look ok now!) shrinks and the outer inverted one grows in radius.

[fossil swan]

i'd need more details. are you using one mesh? multiple? are they the same size?

[vague atlas]

I think I'm in love with you 😛
It looks like it is starting to work. It does act up when I add too high numbers on the TorusRadius in the material.. and on too low numbers it apparently keep on growing, but I might be able to lerp that in script

The double donut was human error on my part in Blender when I was klicking around like a maniac

[fossil swan]

the normals should make the donut perfectly round, and you'll need the exact footing radius of the donut

[vague atlas]

I noticed. It is working now. and i finally understand your material.
Thank you sooooooo much! ❤️ ❤️

[fossil swan]

np :)
now unto the collision-part of it :p

[vague atlas]

haha, yes 🙂
but BPs I understand. That is the easy part. Materials are still a bit of a magic box for me

[fossil swan]

im no blueprinter, so random thought: hmm, you could probably use two cylinders, one for the outer edge, one for the inner edge.
if between outer and inner edge > act like collision.

def show me the result when you set it up :)

[left sun]

Does anyone know how I can use two directional lights with a sky atmopshere to have two suns?

[harsh warren]

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1j4-QgqSNVHa9Ys48aM9347nsQIZOsLd3/view?usp=sharing

This video shows the problem. It's like the alpha channel is slipping or something. Maybe the shadows. I honestly can't tell. Any help with this would be awesome. I know these forums are a bit "lean" on help but I really hope someone out there has seen this. I've been banging my head on this for sometime and I'm at my wits end. If I can't figure it out soon I'll have to go and render in Redshift, and (PUKE) I don't want to do that.

Thanks for any help!

[fossil swan]

dont really agree on these forums being lean, but /shrug hehe
can you show me the material for that mesh?

[harsh warren]

sorry, I copied that from the UE forum i posted to

🙂 which suck

yep one sec

[fossil swan]

just a screenshot of the material, I dont have ue4 open.

(also the first time someone copies the node instead of showing a screenshot hehe)

not that I mind, just didnt expect it

[harsh warren]

whoops, sorry, one sec

[analog onyx]

And a screenshot of the problem itself too could be useful.

[harsh warren]

hard to see issue from a still

why i posted the video

[fossil swan]

first of all, two-sided sign just outputs -1 on the back-side of the plane, and 1 on the front side. multiplying doesnt do anything proper in this case.

[harsh warren]

the issue is happening without the WPO plugged in, i thought it was a Normal thing, but i tried that fix too, with no success

ah ok, i was just following some forum post about that

it looks like the alpha channel isn't being moved by the WPO for some reason

it's like the alpha just stays and the textures move

[fossil swan]

that lerp behind the simple-windgrass could just be a multiply, not sure whats going on there tbh.

[harsh warren]

my limited experience with the Material Editor is what's going on:)

that first lerp is a mask so the whole plant doesn't wave

at least my attempt at it, seemed to work

[fossil swan]

it works, but its a very "uncommon" approach.

[harsh warren]

all this is from Quixel fyi

[fossil swan]

afaik this should throw an error even:
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/375020523240816640/897251926167658526/wind2.PNG
because afaik Alpha only takes vector1, unless that changed...
(deathrey would probably confirm my suspision)

[harsh warren]

i'm open to whatever gets me there

yea i wasn't clear on what i shoudl put into the alpha....I thought constant but didn't know if it needed actual color values

[fossil swan]

that whole setup with the noise node is basically (also) messing up the simplegrass wind setup, and makes the static switch "enablegrasswind" useless.

[harsh warren]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8e_p2fljUYA&t=510s&ab_channel=Quixel

this may give insight

in that they add the two noises together to get a wider noise in the grass

[analog onyx]

Set matetial to solid instead of masked

Check if the issue is still there

[harsh warren]

yep

[analog onyx]

How does geometry of the model look?

[fossil swan]

1. two sided sign should not be used that way. its inverting the entire normal on the backside, which will result in odd behavior.
2. I would just plug in the simple wind setup without the bottom part for movement.
3. using a noise node is generally not needed as its expensive, even in its simplest form. (unless doing really specific things)
4. the mask-texture for the simplegrasswind can just be multiplied by the aforementioned.
5. you arent using any opacity, which for two sided foliage can make it look dull.

not sure what you are doing with subsurface color.

there might be a chance one of these might ff up the dark shadows, but not sure what is causing it.

[harsh warren]

actually that may have fixed it

[fossil swan]

death is better at fixing the actual thing.

[harsh warren]

how does that work? how can it be opaque but still use a alpha mask?

[harsh warren]

Thanks for all that info Luos, all great to know. When you say i'm not using any opacity, shoudl i plug a constant into that and make it like .8 or something?

[analog onyx]

Thing with two sided sign is, that if you are using tangent space normals, unreal flips it for automatically.

So there is no need to use it.

[harsh warren]

i think i turned tangent space off

because the post said to if using two sided sign

so should i turn it back on and ditch the tss?

so turning on tanget space normals, killed the opacity masks

[analog onyx]

What happens is that wpo simply moves vertices in a such way, that reveals parts of the surface with normal, you would not normally see.

[harsh warren]

so...how do i get opacity back:)

[harsh warren]

that's interetsing....so is there a proper way to do what i'm trying to do?

[analog onyx]

There are many proper ways. But it depends on what you are actually trying to do.

[harsh warren]

trying to make a pretty large wheat field, and path tracing it with Movie Queue

so as close to photoreal as i can get with no real mind on optimization

I'm a traditional VFX guy, but I've been tasked with pushing UE to see what can be done with it. Large foliage volumes are a issue in VFX, so I'm attempting in UE:)

usually i would do this in Houdini and call it a day, but UE is a bit more material focused, less physics based, why i'm running into these issues i would imagine

[analog onyx]

Is WPO for raytracing enabled?

[harsh warren]

Um...where do i enable that?

i guess i assumed it was since the wheat was moving...but..

[analog onyx]

Without it, raytraced shadows would trace shadows from actual deformed surface position, while checking intersection against undeformed surfacex resulting in artifacts.

[harsh warren]

yea that's makes total sense, i didn't even know that was a setting

[analog onyx]

Also, simplegrasswind and photoreal wont work :)

[harsh warren]

I'm finding that out, is there a better/other way. I'm totally open to suggestions:) Where is the WPO for raytracing option at?

just wanted to check to see if i have it on or not

i typically use speedtree for this in UE, but they don't have this specfici plant bla bla bla

[analog onyx]

Existance of this option is doubtful. If it exists, it should be somewhere.

[fossil swan]

using speedtree is fine, their nodes in ue4 however :p

[analog onyx]

That is as preceise as I can tell about its whereabouts

[harsh warren]

hahahaha

yea agree luos

but i'm not good enough with C to make a new custom wind from scratch

[analog onyx]

Somewhere in project settings, rendering, raytracing section

[harsh warren]

yea i can't find it, fuck.

r.Raytracing.Geometry.InstancedStaticMeshes.EvaluateWPO 1

[analog onyx]

https://docs.unrealengine.com/4.27/en-US/RenderingAndGraphics/RayTracing/RayTracingSettings/

Down there

It is on actor in question

[harsh warren]

but if i'm using foliage tool....can i still set that?

maybe that is what the cmd line is for

Did you have any tips on a better wind?

[fossil swan]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaCQWUL0Htw I personally liked this one.

[analog onyx]

I do. A ton actually, most of it would be out of scope. But generally, you need to have some feeling of rigidness in the foliage, that is why it is better to rate grass elements around some point. Simple grass wind just wobbles things around like jelly.

For offline rendered I would obviously go for complex setup with pivot painter

[fossil swan]

https://docs.unrealengine.com/4.26/en-US/AnimatingObjects/PivotPainter/PivotPainter2/

[analog onyx]

But simply observing wheat field, you can notice, that after plant is pushed by the wind, at some point its widage decreases and it springs back. And when it does, it makes a circular motion. Shader in Epics Kite demo captures it really well and not very fancy.

[harsh warren]

yea, i don't use Max...i'm assuming thats the only way to use PP2

Awesome, all great info man! I really appreciate it.

thanks @fossil swan @analog onyx - I'll let you all know how it goes!

[fossil swan]

good luck! def show us the final result (if its not against NDA)

[analog onyx]

Just use #graphics next time. This channel is mostly for people blowing stuff up or making other kinds of pew pewables and they are not always happy to see shador discussions here.

[fossil swan]

well.. moving things with WPO is visual effects :p

pokes death

[analog onyx]

I am fearful of Glad appearing and shooing us away from here.

[fossil swan]

I do think I hear him breathing! RUN

[harsh warren]

hahaha, good to know, i'll jump in #graphics - Glad sounds scary.:)

thanks again!

[cold sorrel]

Pfft, Im with death. Tech art is more graphics :p

[fossil swan]

https://i.gyazo.com/f36576612edfb5e5a13d453eac76deef.png
for the general audience, anything above just plugging in a texture is advanced :p

[cold sorrel]

Bah. I guess Niagara is the last bastion for fx now then. More and more channels to mute

[fossil swan]

we'll probably need to re-organize all the channels at some point. especially with ue5 on its way.

[analog onyx]

No mute pl0x ;(

[proud prairie]

why does my shell ejection go in the opposite direction when i move my camera around, im doing a simple "spawn emitter at location" and nothing

[boreal cairn]

Hey guys,
Is there a way to use Material Graph Nodes to write compute shaders in UE4/UE5? Will Niagara help me with that?

[analog onyx]

No

But Niagara has some of a functionality a compute shader has.

[unreal thorn]

Niagara's Grid2D is in a sense compute shaders.

[boreal cairn]

Thanks! That means I should dive into ue4 c++ guts... again 😦

[fleet crest]

does anyone have a clue why my local fog system set up exactly on a older version of unreal

no longer works with 4.27

and im unable to remake it to get it to work

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xd7-rTzfmCo&ab_channel=UnrealEngine

identical to this video but there is simply no fog when spawning the particle system in

[spare brook]

hello guys i have a candle flame cascade that is visible only in epic scalabilty settings but not on high scalability settings.....Any ideas?

[fossil swan]

if I recall correctly
in cascade, when you click on the "name" of the particle emitter. (the one with the tiny square preview, and 3 tiny square boxes), it should show you its detail panel. in "current detailmodes" it should say "(mixed flags)
current detail mode: low, medium, high.

[final wigeon]

How would got about making a "Portal jelly like" metaball particle effect with collision? Niagara or Cascade?
I would prefer sticking to UE4.27, unless UE5 has better options.
Thanks!

This sort of stuff

[unreal thorn]

Niagara.
You can use its Grid2D and Simulation Stages functionality to build 2D metaballs or any kind of (faked) fluid dynamics.

https://youtu.be/GoD2ZC8-Wqk
https://youtu.be/-cKgZrrBJ2w

[final wigeon]

Amazing, thank you, i'll check it out.

[junior kettle]

Hey amazing artists, I'm kinda (VERY) new to Niagara, so please forgive if this has already been asked/answered.

Is there a way to get Niagara positions/velocities out to json or somesuch? So if I want to setup a particle system in Niagara as previs, and bring it over to Maya/Hou for added sexiness?

Cheers in advance

[final wigeon]

What about using this to create metaballs?
https://docs.unrealengine.com/5.0/en-US/PhysicsFeatures/ChaosVSPhysxOverview/
It mentions that Fluid Simulation is supported, but I cant seem to find any docs about it.

[unreal thorn]

Chaos isn't production ready yet, even in UE5.

[final wigeon]

Pity, thx for the info tho

[stone citrus]

guys do you know how to make this camera noise effect?

[unreal thorn]

Film grain?

[stone citrus]

yes

[unreal thorn]

It's in the post process volume settings.

[stone citrus]

how is it named in post proc vol?

[ivory iris]

This is driving me crazy and I figured it out a year ago but didn't work on vfx since then... How in the world do I have particles keep their velocity regardless of camera position? I don't want them to face the camera or care where the camera is, just respect the velocity I've set...

[cold sorrel]

Set them to be velocity aligned

[ivory iris]

@cold sorrelOh Jesus, that was it 🤦‍♂️ thanks!

[zenith ledge]

Hi, does someone has experience with the particle system of unreal?

[fossil swan]

there are two, which one do you mean?