visual-fx

[zenith ledge]

I created a particle effect, which just works fine when I drag and drop it into the scene view, however when I spawn the actor, that has the particle effect, via BP, it just runs once and does not loop.

the classic one, not niagara.

Also when I drag and drop the effect into the view, during play mode it just runs once and then stops...

(Emitter Loops is set to zero)

[fossil swan]

sounds like the loops are set to 1, and/or things are only set up as a burst.

[zenith ledge]

hm, if so, the loop would not happen even if it's not in play mode, right?

[fossil swan]

how is the blueprint set up?

[zenith ledge]

sorry, I checked again, seems like a BP issue

So basically I just created an empty actor BP, opened it, added a sphere as a trigger and two particles, one, the "cutter", loops the other one, just spawns on collision. This works by drag and dropping it directly into the scene, but not when I use SpawnActor by Class.

[zenith ledge]

I found out: it is only visible when I move the particle object

Ok, silly me, looks like they just got culled by the player's camera frustum, sorry didn't know that.

Is it possible to disable that "culling particles by player view" thing?

Ok, I finally found the solution, maybe somebody else will have the same issue, the LOD1 was set wrong and did not loop. I just removed the LOD1 and now it works, because now it always uses LOD0.

[zenith ledge]

Thanks for replying anyway, it's rare to get feedback so quickly!

[fossil swan]

happen to be around, was kinda afk afterwards. apologies.

[reef flame]

Hey there! I am working on a group project at uni and I am assigned to do the fx for the game we are making, but I have very limited knowledge on how to do some stuff. We are doing simple things apparently but for a first timer they do not look that easy. If anyone knows how to do in the simplest way possible one of the following, I'd appreciate some guidance :)
-Make character load with a different material upon loading a level (fx will be attached to the character as well upon transition)
-make seamless transition between two levels (the character goes through a portal and my team director wants the character to look like they are really being transformed while going through the gate)
-make niagara sprite particle spawn not to rotate in the level (the player can only see the portal from the front of it)
If anyone knows how to approach any of these I'd be grateful. Thank you 😊

[harsh warren]

Hey everyone! I'm back with more foliage issues....anyone come across anything like this.....it's removing shadows from foliage at a certain distance, and i def don't what. I've turned off all LODS so it's not that.....

https://gyazo.com/0faab8a39849e91bfbd10f392f75ef24

[ivory iris]

Uhm... Is this normal or am I doing something I shouldn't? This Cascade particle emitter has a light and this is how light complexity looks like this because of it. Should I just use a normal point light with some light function instead of the particle light? Should I "never" use large particle lights?

[ivory iris]

Depends on the foliage and lighting settings. For lights, check shadow distance/far shadows if you're using dynamic lighting. In the foliage, check culling settings. And btw, this question is better suited for #graphics. Definitely not visualfx. You might even get a faster answer there.

[cold sorrel]

Cascade lights, basically never.

Niagara lights, sometimes

[harsh warren]

Thanks Duke, I honestly didn't know which channel, thought foliage might fight into vfx. Thanks for the reply, I checked all the usual suspects...not sure what is going on. Thanks for the reply.

[ivory iris]

@harsh warrenjust ask in graphics and someone will get u fixed, gl 🙂

[harsh warren]

np, i did last night as well:) no real answers

makes me wonder if I shoudl have picked UE to do this....i know there is some freaking flag somewhere, but i've been working on the issue for 12 hours and no progress at all

[ivory iris]

@cold sorrelWe're talking large radius/constant lights I take it - right? Otherwise, - in most cases - you are left without particle vfx for impacts/spells etc without a bit of light 🤷‍♂️

[harsh warren]

i've tried forums, colleagues etc.

[ivory iris]

@harsh warrenhow did u place it?

by hand/with the foliage tool?

[cold sorrel]

Quick flashes might be fine in Cascade, but in general you'll pay for it. Just something to keep in mind.

[harsh warren]

@ivory iris - by hand, couldn't get proc. spawner to work

i've tried all the cmd lines associated with this issue

r.Shadow.FadeResolution=16
r.Shadow.MinResolution=16
r.Shadow.TexelsPerPixel=3
r.Shadow.RadiusThreshold=0.01

tried all of that, nothing

[ivory iris]

and what are the cull settings for ur foliage?

[harsh warren]

set to 0 0

[ivory iris]

First off, it's weird you didn't get the procedural foliage spawner to work... Maybe project settings 🤷‍♂️ I've worked with all foliage tools so far, they all worked just fine

[harsh warren]

I couldn't get the proper density with the spawner

the foliage works fine, it just when it's at a very long distance this happens

this is a big ass field:)

[sour oxide]

who knows how to connect Ue4 to Houdini

[harsh warren]

@sour oxide - It's pretty easy, you'll need a indie version of Houdini if you want to make your own tools/HDA's

@ivory iris -

that seemed to fix it, really weird.

Thanks for the help man!

[sour oxide]

thanks, but what i mean is like houdini to maya, i want to have my changes in Ue4 when i change it in houdini automatically

[harsh warren]

yea, you can do that with LiveLink

[harsh warren]

Spoke to soon, still there, this is driving me nuts.!

madness!

[ivory iris]

@harsh warrenJust check far shadows man & watch the stream on dynamic lighting

[harsh warren]

@ivory iris - just so i'm not missing anything, can you explain what check far shadows means exactly. Like where should i be checking it?

[ivory iris]

@harsh warren

[harsh warren]

anything weird?

https://gyazo.com/e466478726e80e69a95cce9a8a011af0

might shed some more light

[modest cosmos]

hi guys. anyone know if is possible to change substance material parameters in realtime?

[clever apex]

How do I stop an exr/hdr importing as a cubemap? It's not a cubemap

All google results come up as how to import them as a cubemap

Why is UE4 deciding its a cubemap

I think its because UE4 exports without alpha channel (which it should be exporting since it has one)

In other words, asset is lost in later engines

[split hawk]

hi everyone, i asked this in the UI section but figured works here too: im trying to add a text glow border. cant seem to find much on google about it. anyone have an idea how to do this?

i've been messing around a bit with text outlines and right now im trying to make a material for the outline that imitates a glow but not really sure if this will work

so far it hasn't

[fading hamlet]

Hi, FX people. I am having weird behavior with a niagara particle. When aimed at empty air it fires properly, but if aimed at a wall or floor the effect becomes completely reversed, aiming away from the wall. The provided rotation/normal are already verified. Is there something within the particle system that's doing this

[clever prawn]

Hello,

Is there a way to make parts of a "Translucent" shader not being computed in a rendered scene ?

I have a very complex shader, that cover a very large mesh (it doubles it and overlap it).
I use vertex painting, to "show" the shader, it adds opacity over it.

I don't know which part of this mesh will be used in the production so I need to keep it large (I mean, the solution of - do not cover all the mesh or cut it, is not a solution).

It seems that, when opacity is at 0, the shader is still entirely computed (Even if I did Put "if" functions inside the shader, to force the rest of the operations to do not be computed if opacity is at 0, seems to be non-working).

the issue is that I have a loss of 10/20 fps. (Yes I know, but this translucent shader is also put at "forward shading translucency").

[fossil swan]

you might wanna look into vertex collapsing

[clever prawn]

Do you have a reference so I can understand what does it implies on unreal ?

[fossil swan]

it basically collapses a vert to one point so there is no overdraw/cant be drawn.

which is handy for anything invissi in transparency

[clever prawn]

It mean manipulating the world position offset ?

[fossil swan]

basically

[clever prawn]

Huh 😦

I found a way to force other vertex to shring towards a position

I lose more fps 😄

A no, you're right, thx a lot, I won over 15fps !

[fossil swan]

yay

[solid palm]

hi quick question, I cant find absolut world position object in 4.26, have they disable it ?

[cold sorrel]

Nope. It's there.

[solid palm]

oh ok then

it wont show, dont know why

what should i type ?

checking it now

oh yeah

nice

lol that's weird

thanks @grim briar

[devout portal]

Is Rotation/Life works in cascade? I've tried and it seems like spinning the particle like mad

[fossil swan]

it multiplies with regular rotation iirc. so need low values.

or multiplies with life.

either way

its been a while

[devout portal]

yep, i though so. so i've set the initial rotation to 0.25, and rotation /life to 0.1...and it spinned the particle like crazy...

and if i set it to any value w/o decimal digits it just does nothing

1.0, 10.0, 100000.0

[fossil swan]

ive only used it in a very few specific occasions, so cant help much.

[devout portal]

Ok. value 0.17 does very weird thing...it stays w/o the spin for some time, then flips quickly and stays like that until next flip

[unreal thorn]

That would be decals, or mesh render target, or a simple local space gradient map.
The third one is the simplest and easy on performance, but may not be the most physically accurate. If physical accuracy isn't a big concern, it could be even simpler as mixing together two textures.

[wooden acorn]

anyone else having low CPU GPU usage and low FPS in there nDisplay setups

[fervent cloud]

im trying to make a muzzle flash that is just one frame

i know barely anything about particle systems and cant find a tutorial that is doing what im trying to do

how do i make it just one frame?

[fossil swan]

spawn > burst of one.
lifetime > 0.005 (if I remember right)

[dull schooner]

hi there

Noob question, How do I set the particle system to have a specific runtine

for example just 6 seconds

after that the emitter will turn off

[amber isle]

Anybody familiar with Spherical Masks? If a Spherical Mask is in the Opacity channel on a material and that material is on a static mesh, the spherical mask affects the shadow casted by the static mesh. Does anybody know how to disable this?

[analog onyx]

@amber isleUse shadow pass switch material expression

[amber isle]

@analog onyx Cannot thank you enough! I completely ignored that expression out of pure ignorance and belief that it wasn't what I was looking for, super appreciate you

[scenic ice]

Is there a way to get a material to ignore a post process that has properties that change via a time line?

I have a scene that will fade to black and white when I press a button. This is controlled by a quick and dirty timeline.
But I want the blue grid to remain unaffected.
Would anyone know how to do this?

[fervent cloud]

My muzzle flash keeps playing for some reason even when im not firing (I only fired twice in this video) also the rotation isnt right, how do i fix this?

[unreal thorn]

Please see #instructions on how to post on the jobs channel. Thanks for understanding.

[stiff sigil]

sorry

[digital patrol]

How could I go about separating my particle alpha and color over life? because from what I am seeing, the color is tied to the alpha. so I cant have a red particle fade to nothing, it has to have a beginning color of red, then end in black. like if i want a random color changing particle to fade out, i dont see it being possible with how the alpha and color seem to be tied together like this with the color over life node. any suggestions?

in cascade^

[fossil swan]

if your material is properly set up color and alpha are already be separated

[digital patrol]

Thats another thing, I am not sure if my material is set up properly. I have seen a few different possible set ups and I am not sure which one is best for this situation. Currently, this is my material https://puu.sh/IlCB1/022f091c97.png

[fossil swan]

one sec

[digital patrol]

no problem

[fossil swan]

particle color RGB (top white) multiplies with texture > emissive
multiply the alpha of particle color (bottom white output) with (probably in this case) the red output of the texture sample > the opacity

[digital patrol]

ah that sounds right. let me try it

haha wow. that was all it was. makes sense though. thank you for the help!

[fossil swan]

np hehe

[halcyon tiger]

i need some help creating volumetric clouds

I have opened a new project, added a volumetric cloud, and also added BP_CloudMask_Object and BP_CloudMaskGenerator

like this, very basic

my log:

I am following this guide:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yolGEIrhu0s&t=527s

Any ideas why there is some scaling issue?

[devout canopy]

I'm trying to extend the fog effect higher but am having issues no matter what I adjust, any ideas?

[dusty gate]

why does my particle emitter look different in my object than in the world?

I'm trying to make a smoke trail but its really hard cause no matter what i do it doesn't seem to change in the actual world, only in the object

[dusty gate]

it even looks normal until i hit play

then it just stops working the way i set ity

[spice quartz]

is there a way to call an event dispatcher when a particle gets to some point from any of the life modifiers

[clear pawn]

I'm not sure where exactly to ask this, but does anyone know how to make postprocess gaussian blur? I tried bunch of custom nodes from forums but I always get syntax errors on them no matter what (I dont know anything about hsls)

[quiet kraken]

Hello

Can someone help me please?

I wanna attach Niagara particle to my landscape but I can't find how..

I searched on google so much..

[fossil swan]

7. No spam. This includes phishing, scams, unsolicited Discord invites, unsolicited direct messages asking for help, cross-posting in multiple channels, and use of excessive mentions, emoji, or repeated messages.

#rules

[cold sorrel]

To snap particles: Make new scratch. Add Landscape input. Get Height. Then replace your transformed worldspace Z to that and transform back to simulationspace. Done.

[quiet kraken]

Thanks a lot guys !

@cold sorrel can you explain me a little bit more please ?

I can't find out how to "add landscape input"

[cold sorrel]

Click the plus on the map?

Like any other input

[quiet kraken]

in Landscape editor ?

or you mean I add another landscape material ?

because I can snap niagara system to static mesh but not to landscape.. :/

[cold sorrel]

Oh...

Yeah, if that's the level I'm afraid I don't have time to explain it.

You need to learn the basics of Niagara first.

[quiet kraken]

ok I will search thanks anyway !^^

[oblique thicket]

Hi all! I would like to use (Houdini) CSV data tables with GPU sim in Niagara but it doesn't seem to work. I have 3k+ particles to deal with so CPU just can't do the trick. Any idea why Houdini Point Cache Data is buggy with GPU and are there any fixes / other solutions other than Houdini? Thank you.

[primal parrot]

anywhere to see these outside of Fornite? https://www.epicgames.com/fortnite/en-US/news/enter-the-theater-fortnitemares-2021-brings-you-shortnitemares

[civic trench]

I've seen people combining Time and Sine function and applying it to the World Position Offset to create continuous waves on a mesh, but does anyone have any idea how I produce just one wave that starts at some point on a mesh and travels some distance then disappears?

[eager mirage]

Hey for those using a Dynamic TOD setups with physically based lighting. 120,000 lux for day time to under 1 lux for night time. How are you controlling your emissive values to work correctly? Are you just using the eye adaptation to lerp between a high and low value? If I take everything that goes into emissive and divide by eye adaptation then it just forces the emissive to stay equally as bright regardless of the how bright or dark the scene would be. Not making light sabers so that's out. 😛 Lit particles seem to work fine when using the default unreal lighting setups but once you move into a physically based light setup you have to crank things to have a high emissive value to be even seen during the day and then at night its just blows out the entire scene since its too bright. -Cheers

[olive sail]

Is it just me, or is it really freaking weird how if I want to achieve a blood-mist effect on bullet impacts, it's more performant spawning 10000 tiny particles with a masked material than it is to spawn 1 translucent material that animates said mist?

[cold sorrel]

It depends.

10000 particles that cover a pixel each is a lot faster to render than 100000 pixels on a quad.

But you'll get a higher simulation cost and more memory.

So if you are fillrate bound, of course it's faster.

[olive sail]

Is it possible to have translucent particles cast shadows with forward shading? I think I ticked all checkboxes as far as documentation goes but to no avail

[eternal kernel]

hey! still kinda new to the vfx side of UE4 but i was wondering if anyone had some magical trick for making things look like a cartoon (possibly cell shading with outlines) i'll send a screenshot of an object that i'm trying to get everything to kinda match

the cell shading i have now works, but it's the outlines and such that i can't quite get to look right

and i was hoping i could get it to run through post processing, but i understand if this isn't possible

[steel sentinel]

I got a radial burst emitter. for each particle, I am trying to rotate said particle on the x/y plane over time. what kind of modifier am I looking for? this is for an old cascade emitter

as in, rotate them from the center of the emitter, not on their own axis

[fossil swan]

not really a decent way to do that besides vector fields or rotate the entire emitter.
alternatively have the particles as one mesh and rotate that.

[steel sentinel]

I'll take a look, thanks

I assume the rotation in this case has to be applied externally?

[fossil swan]

unless its a mesh or vector-field, yes.

[unreal thorn]

Super late answer, but at the cost of doubling the poly count, you could use the inverted hull trick for outlines.

[eternal kernel]

can you explain in words that would make sense to someone with an iq of 2

[timid jay]

https://youtu.be/EDenvaizlP4

essentially you create a slightly larger copy of the mesh

but the faces are all flipped

so only the backside "hull" of their outline shows up

very common technique

[eternal kernel]

how do i invert the faces? do i do so in the engine or in blender?

@timid jay

[tired bobcat]

Hi All, hoping someone can help, when in simulate mode my cloth flags blow fine enough like this but when I play in editor they'll more often than not start doing this, but occasionally seemingly randomly work

[unreal thorn]

Both are option, though inverting it in Blender can help reduce poly count on parts that won't be outlined, or dealing with sharper corners.

[eternal kernel]

how would i do so, like im near brand new to 3d modeling

like the most i can do is model characters and basic objects like clouds, coins, chests, barrels

[tired bobcat]

Sorry to reply to an older question, would you mind pointing me in the right direction please? I've created a scratch module with this logic, but I'm definitely not fully getting something. Is the scratch logic correct & how would I go about applying the new location? I'm hoping to evenly distribute them within a box spawn, along the landscape

[indigo jolt]

Anim trails or ribbons.

[main urchin]

Hi! can a static mesh be "unaffected by Fog" ?

[opal topaz]

Hi! I have a problem with a Cascade particle system. The problem is that I spawn an actor under the particle system. Now the Actor is visible before the particle system. I want the particle system to hide the actor spawning underneath it. I can't find any options (there are so many of them) to do what I want. So could anybody point me in the right direction? I already tried moving the particle system but it the actor is still rendered in front of it.

[fossil swan]

need more info.
what kind of actor are you using, show us a gif/video of the problem, and what is it exactly you want to achieve :)

[whole nova]

hi guys

maybe somebody haved expierence with making tank\ wheel trails for vehicles? i managed make tank leave planes with alpha when it move but its look so much weird when its drive in any direction except straight left\right

looks like decals getting rotated not enough or maybe its just a problem with a way i am doing it?

i saw few videos on youtube, everywhere mostly use ribbon for it instead of decals but in my case its looks really bad when i trying to do it in cascade, and i cant find any suitable tutorial for making anything like it in niagara

[stark wraith]

Did you find a solve for the particle blur when camera moves. I',m having the same problem at the moment

[celest birch]

nope

[minor cargo]

Can someone help me out to make this kinda water material?
I'm trying to make a waterball that has density, like when it gets affected by light, you can see how dense the water is.
I figured out how texture and normal map works, but I'm not sure how you set opacity to be like this

This is my progress so far, it's set as opaque rn

[unreal thorn]

Typically it's "faked" by subsurface scattering.

[minor cargo]

Thanks! I'll try playing around with it (:

[heady kernel]

I would apply some noise and fresnel on base color to fake it. There is also a node called bumpoffset that can fake the parallax.

[uneven jetty]

Any VFX artists living in the Portland, Or area???

[eternal kernel]

i was wondering if anyone here knew how to make a waving flag/ banner effect

NOT a CLOTH SIM

but just a mat that will move a plane up and down in like waves

[cold sorrel]

sine wave wpo

[valid forge]

Hey guys, I have seen a couple posts about this, but no answers have come around. Is GTAO broken in 4.27? I get no AO at all when switching the ambient occlusion method.

[eternal kernel]

do you think you can elaborate a bit? i understand what sine waves are and world displacement, but I’m not sure how to use either

[cold sorrel]

Plug a sine wave into a rotation around axis node and then plug that into WPO and you have the basis.

Add some noodle waves and you ware done

[eternal kernel]

aight, i’ll look into it, thanks

[unreal thorn]

The search result I get was Grand Theft Auto Online instead 🤔

[valid forge]

@grim briar its not a mobile feature. It's a different type of ao that apparently is superior to the default ssao. you can enable it by typing "r.AmbientOcclusion.Method 1" in the console

[verbal folio]

I made this to use on a plane to make a waterfall

I need to imitate this , any tips ?

[unreal thorn]

Is your scene going to be static?

[verbal folio]

like this so far

I have the look of water flowing from up to down

but it isn't very similar

[solar remnant]

splash textures that are orientated upwards, splash textures for the base that radially expand, drip textures, sheeting textures, mist/fog textures. Water is very time consuming to nail.

[strong linden]

hey, im facing a problem where i want my character to have some particle effect coming from its mouth in an animation, but the particle effect isnt visible if the origin of the emitter was occluded by the character model itself. can anyone help me with that?

[strong linden]

nvm

[main urchin]

I there!
Not sure if it's the right place.

I'm adding box Instances to a Static Mesh vertices of StaticMeshComponent.
When i scale the static Mesh, it scale all instances too.
I want all instances to not be scale.
Is it possible?

[toxic wigeon]

Hey everyone, don't know if this is the best place to post this but has anyone dove into better volumetric lighting here? I've been trying to find a better system to use than the default UE volumetrics, something that would support 300+ lights with volumetric shadows and light functions (gobos). I know it can be done/faked because there is specific software that does this, check this out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3jzAqVUjLk and this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyX8e4MJE2c
Hoping that someone might know of a technique to try or some sort of guidance down the right path, thanks

[celest birch]

What could be the reason for this? My FX is not fully displayed in game, while it's fully displayed in animation editor(like some parts of the emitter are missing)

in game FX is only partially displayed

[unreal thorn]

❓ Is there any drawbacks to store USF shaders directly in project level (Project\Shaders\), versus storing them in plugin level (Project\Plugin\ShaderPlugin\Shaders\)? Aside from reusability, that is.

[celest birch]

Hello, how to make scenetexture lag one frame behind??

or freeze every second frame

[unreal thorn]

If you're trying to make frame buffer/multipass effect, I guess going through Render Target first is one way to do it.
Though it would also doable in Niagara, or even some USF/HLSL work.

[celest birch]

can't this be done using the "time" or "delta time" nodes?

i want to do this effect:

[unreal thorn]

What are you going to do with the Time? You'd start with drawing current scene texture into a Render Target, manipulate it, mix it on top of the next scene texture. Do it again every frame. It's not timing dependant per se, just accumulating buffers back and forth every new frame is drawn.
And yes, the example you gave is a multipass effect.

[celest birch]

okay, thank u

[primal parrot]

https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/en-US/product/custom-motion-blur

[unreal thorn]

I think that's more of an interlaced effect as opposed to motion blur.

[primal parrot]

yeah just suggesting a method

[quiet kraken]

Hi all

I have a problem with Cascade particle emitter

I have an error when I add "Skel Vert/Surf Location"

it's "No async tick"

someone had this error before ?

[quiet kraken]

Does anyone know how to get "Skel vert/Surface location" on Niagara please ?

[quiet kraken]

Hi all

Why in Niagara my sprite renderer is a plane ?

How can I change it ?

Because it's a plane when I rotate around it disappears at some angles..

[hybrid schooner]

pretty sure sprite renderer is always a plane i think you want either a mesh renderer or put the material you have on your plane on two sided so it doesnt dissapears

[quiet kraken]

I think to make 3D Clouds I need to use Volumetric Clouds new module

I can't with particle only

to get this result

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKD7X_y7K1M

thank you!

[unreal thorn]

Post process?

[cedar forge]

yeh

[mellow fractal]

Has anyone seen info on radial blur? Epic has an example that's mostly for a spinning in place object, I'm after nice blur for weapon swings though.

E,ample - https://www.reddit.com/r/Unity3D/comments/qco1h7/spin_blur_because_more_games_should_have_this/

[midnight stag]

Hi, besides trial and error, how can i know if my graphics card can display particles light?

Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070

[fossil swan]

if I understand the question correctly; as long as they arent casting shadows and such, you should be able to display them.

[midnight stag]

Im asking coz i have tried the same project with 2 different computers with different fx cards, one displays correctly light particles and the other doesnt

So i wanted to know if somewhere it is said GTX 1070 wont work to display light particles or smthing like that, or what i have to setup to display them

[echo knot]

hello everyone. i've been able to find plenty of tutorials for a wide variety of things related to the entire game development pipeline, but for some reason i'm having a lot of trouble finding start to finish tutorials for visual fx. does anyone have any content creators or courses they can recommend? i'd gladly pay for good content. thanks

[mellow fractal]

Thanks for the pointer, unfortunately it's the example I'm referring to! IIRC it's an in-place motion blur, independent of if/ how much the object is spinning. Mostly for wheels and the likes

[mellow fractal]

@celest birch would that apply to the entire bounding box though?

Hmm fair enough, I want a toggleable material that would fire at the same time as the weapon trail. Might have to jig up a custom solution

[slender pine]

Hello friends
the fireparticles i am trying to work with (which are awesome) are only cascade...

which are not rtx supported for reflections...

any suggestions for some good and/or free fire effects that are dx12?

https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/en-US/product/m5-vfx-vol2-fire-and-flames

the dev mentions that it needs to be upconverted to niagara (which the plugin gives me way too many errors)

and i found some blogs discussing adjusting the material, tho that did not work

https://answers.unrealengine.com/questions/975882/particles-invisible-with-ray-tracing.html
"I found a solution that seems to work without problems. Change the Particle Material, Material Domain to Deferred Decal instead of Surface or whatever else you might have it as. "

"Hi, a little late but I was having the same problem. one solution I found is to set in the particle material blend mode to masked and shading model to default lit, and added an opacity mask to anything that needs to be opaque; that way ray trace won't affect it as translucent. the results are not as pretty looking but it worked for me."

[snow steeple]

i love vfx 🙂

[slender pine]

Ok ... i feel defeated at converting cascade to niagara to get raytraced particle reflections for this flame series. the dev has no intent at updating it and the conversion is kicking my butt.....

anyone have any suggestions for high quality fire that also works with reflection?

i may just have to generate a vdb but i wanted to use an asset

[slender pine]

HOW THE HECK DO PROFESSIONALS DO THIS AHHHHH LOL

https://youtu.be/BC3uiXatQ6g

[coral vector]

thats why they are called pros

[slender pine]

,

yes

[cold sorrel]

We dont convert marketplace crap :p

We build the effects needed.

[unreal thorn]

Whoops, wrong reply.

[unreal thorn]

If you know how, you can make functional fire flipbook from Blender, and off to the blazing business in UE

Though marketplace is good for reference.

[cold sorrel]

These days, barely even that.

It's all CGHow stuff that's unusable.

[unreal thorn]

Ah yeah, I found his stuff are just impractical.
(Not to mention his video delivery sucks, but that's another story)

[cold sorrel]

Some of the stuff is cool, it's just not usable in a game, which is probably the main audience for the marketplace.

[mellow fractal]

Oh god thought it was just me that didn't like his stuff. He pumps out like 5 tutorials for everything you would look for, all of them incomplete, inefficient, and honestly lame looking. Normally hard to follow or understand too...

I'm finding it a struggle to find Niagara resources, maybe it's too early on for the quality stuff to come around? There's a cool French dude that seems to really know his shit, but the tutorials are in French. Does post helpful key subtitles though.

[unreal thorn]

Well, for resources, @cold sorrel deserve the shoutout.
His video on Grid2D helped me get up to speed with the system in one sitting.

[cold sorrel]

I also collect quality stuff here and try to organize them in a sort of curriculum way https://realtimevfx.fandom.com/wiki/Tutorials

[mellow fractal]

Thanks @cold sorrel and @unreal thorn ! Need to learn more about this whole scene pretty soon.

For a noob question, where does Houdini factor into this? Can you render and bake an entire VFX sequence, with some parameters/ variations, and play them back in Unreal with less performance impact? Or is this just working on the same effect in a different place?

[cold sorrel]

Houdini is for making textures and meshes.

There are cases where a larger bake is viable, but outside cutscenes that's very rare.

[mellow fractal]

Ohk, so things like Vellum and Pyro are not really used from within Unreal?

[cold sorrel]

Nope

You could bake a Vellum sim to VAT, but it's likely cheaper to recreate the movement with Sine noodles.

Pyro would require volume rendering and we are 5 - 10 years too early for that.

So we render it to flipbooks instead.

[mellow fractal]

Ah fair enough, thank you! Need to learn a lot more Niagara then 🙂

One of my upcoming priorities is going to be judicious blood sprays for a gritty, brutal game, though not quite as extreme as the screenshot. I guess Niagara would be the go-to then?

Screenshot from trailer for Project M (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpE7WE9yc6w)

[cold sorrel]

That's VATs

And Sprites combined

[mellow fractal]

I don't know how you can tell from the most blurry screenshot ever, but thank you so much! Will look into tutes for that in UE, cheers 🙂

[cold sorrel]

Video showed it

[analog onyx]

Jittery timewarp on VATS ><

[cold sorrel]

Yarp

Still better handled motion blur than when I last used em

[granite dune]

I'd like to learn more about material setup for particle effects, opacity fading functions (depth/camera) shading models? Any good low level resource for this with an artistic focus?

[cold sorrel]

Low level?

[granite dune]

like material level how to get most out of my particle effects

as like a technical article, something I can read

[cold sorrel]

Ah, I thought you meant actual low level stuff which is basically not accessible in Unreal.

As for articles, read the docs.

There are a bunch of good video series about it, but I can't think of any written articles that cover more than very small areas.

[granite dune]

it's things like common material functions you'll not find docs on

camera fade

but yeah I guess I should read the depth fade doc again because that's still a bit of a mystery to me

[slender pine]

Good Morning! is this your collection? ? awesome!!!!!

[cold sorrel]

Depth fade has nothing to do with camera fade though 😛

It is

[granite dune]

depth fade is a node

[cold sorrel]

Well, anyone can contribute.

[granite dune]

camera fade is in a lot of examples a a meterial function, I know that much

[slender pine]

i appreciate the discussion while i was asleep! cheers

[granite dune]

I been using realtimevfx, it's been helpful

[cold sorrel]

Depth fade is pixeldepth -scenedepth.
Camerafade is pixel pos - campos, remapped

[slender pine]

Basically, from what i understand from the discussion is that Houdni is where vfx is at.. so i gotta figure out how to get houdini

[granite dune]

so you would never need camera fade for a first person viewed effect?

[cold sorrel]

sure, that's great for avoiding camera clip

It's just not very related to depthfade

[granite dune]

oh, if it got too close?

[cold sorrel]

yes

[granite dune]

I need to practise

[cold sorrel]

It's easier to learn if you have a usecase

Rather than trying to learn everything first

[granite dune]

I understand the particle emitter parts well enough, I think I need to understand the materials behind them better

it's also for technical reasons I'm trying to consolidate materials

[cold sorrel]

If you already have the materials, you should be able to just mix and match the things that does what you want, right?

[granite dune]

I want to reduce them for things like muzzle flash, keep things simple

something like that can get heavy quick and consume many master materials

[cold sorrel]

Sure can

[granite dune]

I don't like that

[cold sorrel]

But yeah, no idea about finding written stuff about it. Most people use videos to show things because it's much easier.

[granite dune]

I think I just need to poke at opacity channel more

but some things are very confusing now, I notice you can change shading model in instances etc

so I could probably go too deep into weeds on master materials, I do want to reduce my files though

when adding material functions it makes things more manageable, get into editing a ton of fiiles

things like that have started biting me

[slender pine]

i highly recommend looking into Joe Garth's Brushify mutli-biome auto material to help understand materials.

his has so many funtional features that can help tune materials (not sure if they are applicable to particle emitters but it really helped me get to know materials, let me find a video (if i am not beating a dead horse)

[granite dune]

tbh, my resource right now is paragon

but I think the materials have too much redundancy

for my needs

I'm not just importing the murdock folder

that stuff is cray

I'm grabbing some textures and material work

[slender pine]

i may have missed the context earlier, what is the murdock folder?

[granite dune]

a lot is repetition, many characters have tons of vfx , right?

I'm making a shooter, so Murdock, Twinblast, Revenant, all have stuff I've been learning from

[slender pine]

oooooh gotcha!!

cheers!

[granite dune]

there's so much crazy scifi/fatansy stuff though that it needs consolidation and comprehension

ideally, over just copy paste

anyway, proving a fantastic resource, I've bought marketplace assets but keep coming back to it just for the vfx stuff

[slender pine]

coming back to "murdock folder"
that is the resource you are referencing?

[granite dune]

all of the vfx from PAragon asssets

many are copies of the same files on different characters though

you have to download them all 😄

I currently working with muzzle flashes from Murdock character

[slender pine]

the paragon assets lmao
omg sorry i am clearly not thinking right

[granite dune]

it's a typical muzzle flash, unusually they packaged the shell ejection particle into the flash system as well

it's got some nice sparks out the muzzle and smoke subuv tex

all a growing boy needs

I say unusually, it makes a lot of sense though

I used to just call a separate particle, it's all happening so fast anyway, nevertheless, I like these Niagara systems

more power, better composition

[slender pine]

I have only used niagara for an engine particle system. so trying to use a deprecated set of assets (cascade only m5 vfx pack in permanent free collection)

[granite dune]

yeah I got those

I converted them to niagara

there's a plugin for that

I've converted all my particles to niagara now in 5.0EA

[slender pine]

you did the conversion??

does it work well in reflections?

[granite dune]

not just trying to delete the ones I don't need lol

it's a solid tool

it's worked on the particles I needed, after there might be some errors, but I was able to fix them

[slender pine]

my conversion was all messed up and maybe my brain was just not working yesterday but i couldn't get the niagara system working correctly

[granite dune]

I'm pretty sure I did all those explosions

[slender pine]

fascinating

i purely need fire

trying to do this
https://youtu.be/N0SrDN74ChM

[granite dune]

this is the asset with the exploding building right?

maybe try again, look at each emitter, make sure there's not errors or warningss

[slender pine]

i was just using the fire emitters that are standalone

[granite dune]

I convert the system and go through each emitter

[slender pine]

so basically i am a noob and i need to figure it out

[granite dune]

dunno, that is a complex asset

but try that process

[slender pine]

true.
if i had the extra funds i would purchase pixellabs' fire vdb pack 😦

[cold sorrel]

Why?

[granite dune]

if I had the funds I buy Houdini

[cold sorrel]

What are you going to use the VDB for that circumvents your issue?

[slender pine]

https://youtu.be/kWP_YOq9JPE

[cold sorrel]

Yes?

[slender pine]

i can use this instead of a particle system

[cold sorrel]

Seeing as Unreal doesn't support VDB I fail to see how that helps you

[slender pine]

what?!?!?

[cold sorrel]

lol

No engine does

[granite dune]

is that like alembic?

[cold sorrel]

Welcome to realtime

[slender pine]

OMG WHY NOT

[cold sorrel]

Because it's a volume that takes a lot of time to render.

Have you ever rendered a VDB?

[slender pine]

ooooo i can use octane for vdb support

[cold sorrel]

...

[slender pine]

yes i use in blender and c4d

[cold sorrel]

Film people..

Right, so how fast is it to render volumes there?

Not talking about simple fog here.

You showed pyro with scattering etc.

We are talking minutes per frame, at least.

[slender pine]

which is fine lol

[cold sorrel]

Quite a leap from Realtime.

Unreal is a game engine.

It's built around rendering in milliseconds.

[slender pine]

unreal is a game engine yes, but also a virtual production tool

[cold sorrel]

No.

VP has adopted it

It was never built for that

[granite dune]

have you tried FluidNinja? @slender pine

[cold sorrel]

It also doesn't support scientific fluid solvers, as it wasn't built for that.

Everything in game engines are hacks meant for speed.

If it's too slow, it's not supported.

[slender pine]

i actually own it and was going to use the new fire pack that was released lastweek if i cant get my particles working

[cold sorrel]

There are pseudovolumes that can raymarch etc. But those are hacked in ontop of the engine.

[granite dune]

that's prob your best option

[cold sorrel]

Fluid Ninja for example is 2.5d raymarched.

[slender pine]

for sure i will stear towards that\

[cold sorrel]

That means no detailed shading or scattering.

[granite dune]

even that can get quite heavy in my tests

[cold sorrel]

Then there are the volumetrics plugin that's running pseudovolumes.

[granite dune]

for a game situation

[cold sorrel]

Those are fully 3d, but again shading is fully up to the user to build using HLSL which is not particularly suited for volumetric shading.

[slender pine]

this may be solid option

[granite dune]

I like the idea of influencing particles from baked fluid sim most

really the live version with the interactive flow was the most interesting to me

next level effect

I got the demo but I'll stick to my subuvs for now

[quiet kraken]

Hi all

I made clouds with particles

how can I make to have my Directional Light affect my particles ?

when I move light my clouds are not affected by the light

should I make fake shadows on my clouds shader or there is a simple solution ?

My shader is translucent so I can't have normal maps

I found it !

in Material under tab "Translucency" there is "Lighting mode" I set it to "Volume Directional" and now I have the "Normal" pin ! thanks all!

[slender pine]

https://visualfxpro.com/products/forest-fire-vol-1

these are for compositing, correct?

[cold sorrel]

Or for making flipbooks

[slender pine]

fascinating ok thank you

[slender pine]

I found an easy fix with the cascade fire particles, I havent tried reconverting those particles yet but i tried something else

change reflection type to screenspace in post processing. I sacrifice the crispness and deep reflections of raytracing, but the reflections are infact there and look fairly good to be honest

https://youtu.be/2FtsKg2Yhvo

https://youtu.be/06fPaU9Eids

[quiet kraken]

How to increase space between each particle please ?

[cold sorrel]

What are you trying to do?

[quiet kraken]

I have a particle system that spawns 10 burst

locked in Z axis

and when I spawn them some of these planes are overlapping

each other

so when I move camera it's flickering

they got translucent material

[cold sorrel]

Spawn them on a grid then.

[quiet kraken]

how ?

[cold sorrel]

there's a grid module

[quiet kraken]

in particle system ?

[cold sorrel]

Yes

Or are you in cascade?

[quiet kraken]

i'm in cascade

[cold sorrel]

Then you can't

Sorry

[quiet kraken]

maybe with bounds I can do something ?

[cold sorrel]

nope

[quiet kraken]

so I have to convert my cascade to niagara right?

[cold sorrel]

You can spread things out more, but you can't ensure they won't spawn near eachother

[quiet kraken]

hm I see

I'll convert it

and with Niagara how can I do that please ?

[cold sorrel]

to some degree

[quiet kraken]

Grid location?

[marble epoch]

Hello, anyone has any tips on how to render a particle in front of a mesh? (practical example would be an impact VFX) I'm guessing its something related to custom depths but I'd welcome more tips.

[cold sorrel]

Camera offset

[marble epoch]

ooooooooh just started reading the doc

thank you

[slender pine]

https://youtu.be/qES3DhcS1fM

Screen space reflections and planar reflection capture is where it is at
rendering out quick (crappy cam) sequence to make sure motion blur looks good

[slender pine]

Sigh.... solve one thing, create 2 more problems :/

any idea why the particles freeze in those two areas? but is functioning at the start the the closeup?

[slender pine]

fire unfrozen

thoughts?
@desert comet what was that method with WPO to turn the cash burnt?

[desert comet]

those are all individual meshes?

[slender pine]

yes

i used the physical layout tool to instance and place them

2848 individual bundles lol

[desert comet]

what im thinking might be overkill regarding wpo

but aside from that, it was a noise mask lerp blending the money texture to a burnt version

could throw in a color ramp to the grayscale noise as it dissolves so the edge burn glows as it animates the dissolve

[slender pine]

my computer can handle overkill lol

[desert comet]

the wpo idea was because they are individual meshes and it wouldn't make sense to affect them locally (vertex pos) but by world, that would need a param reference

technically its both, but the world pose of a specific location would shrink them aesthetically

wait, is it one mesh of these cash monies? or is it indiv meshes in engine?

[slender pine]

the giant pile is litearlly a pile of 2848 meshes that should be instanced

[desert comet]

hmm, i think in either case the burn/dissolve, with or w/o the wpo would need to be varied otherwise each will animate the same

suppose a dirty alternative is to animate the alpha of some burn decals

[slender pine]

ok il do that for sure when i get the chance

going to work on some other things tonight

[desert comet]

i expect it on my desk by 11

[slender pine]

fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiine

thoughhts?
https://youtu.be/3pqqAWX7zlQ

[desert comet]

i tihnk theres a lot of mileage out of the triplanar portion for your needs, but otherwise a lot of good stuff, may need some tailoring

[untold gull]

Hey guys is there a good tutorial to add cracks to glass material when it's hit?

Decals won't show if I spawn them on the mesh section with the glass material

[crude rain]

Hi I am new to ue4
Any one knows static light render in Mobile
or
moveable light for mobile with no limits

[slender pine]

i swear i saw a tut about this a few days ago....

[raven sage]

Hey all, how can I display the whole linear color curve on the base color of a material?

Right now Curve Atlas needs curve time so it's only snapshotting a point on the curve

but i just want to display the whole gradient i created

[analog onyx]

Supply something as curve time

for example texture coordinate.

[untold gull]

@slender pine if you see it again, i'd appreciate if you shot me the link 👍

[slender pine]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WgvzL3w8vk&t=17s

so this is not it. but i have used these in the past and they are great, can provide ue5 example shortly

but i just had the idea you may be able to trigger the shattered glass on contact or sequence trigger and have a small niagara system with the shatter

or are you trying to get slomotion?

this was it

https://youtu.be/ZSnswE2T470

idk if you are interested in Chaos destruction, but thats available too

[untold gull]

I wasnt going to do breakable glass, otherwise id have to make a heap of custom window meshes for all the vehicles. Really i just want impact effects. A spray triggers, but i cant get a decal to show on a masked or translucent material, so was looking to see if it could be added to the material procedurally by taking impact vectors

But thanks man - ill check that breakable glass link out =)@slender pine

[devout canopy]

Can you take 1 particle effect and give it different LOD for different characters? For example I would like my fire effect to disappear by 20k units, but I want my helicopter to see if from further away, say 40k units

[sturdy sage]

hi all can i ask how to make an object fade away

[cold sorrel]

Not out of the box

[cold sorrel]

Dither it

[sturdy sage]

ok thx

[devout canopy]

Thank you Partikel

[sturdy sage]

so im not sure on how to do dithering. i dont know if anyone knows what a TARDIS is from Doctor who. when it takes off it sort of fades in and out of reality but im not really sure on how to do this 🙂

[primal parrot]

I am so willing to bet, like at least £1000 that every single person here knows what a TARDIS is 😉 and google Dither Transparency Shaders Unreal - https://youtu.be/ieHpTG_P8Q0?t=288

[sturdy sage]

so when i change my blend mode to translucent my model goes a bit funky

can see through things that you shouldnt be able to

[sturdy sage]

can also see it through rocks??

[fervent quest]

change mode to masked, a whole thing about DitherAA is to not use transluent material couse masked one is way cheaper in render

[sturdy sage]

@fervent quest does this still allow me to use the opacity value?

[fervent quest]

yeah function DitherAA dosent work like normal opacity. Put your alpha in this function and output into OpacityMask value in material

[sturdy sage]

and also can i use it in a sequence for lets say a trigger box

[fervent quest]

wait I will post a screen of a setup that you should do, just let me open engine

[sturdy sage]

ok thank you 🙂 im still pretty new to this XD

[fervent quest]

so yeah basicly, green one is a normal transluency, and red one is a masked DitherAA. You can see in a Shader Complexity mode (when everything turns green and stuff) that red ball is much cheaper in render. Setup is at the end of a video. If you want to animate this in sequencer you need to put it in BP and animate Scalar Atribiute (here its Alpha Scalar) via Sequencer or Timeline inside BP

https://streamable.com/y9d8sb

heres another one with function

[sturdy sage]

ok ill give this a try thank you

[fervent quest]

https://streamable.com/vwik7f

[sturdy sage]

does this work with texture samples of my own because ive put my textures on and i cant see them?

sorry im a mega noob

[fervent quest]

you can put in Base and Emissive color whatever you want, you only modify OpacityMask Channel, and if you can put whatever you want as a texture mask, you can put a simple gradient aswell if you want

[sturdy sage]

ahh well this model has Base , Specular and Normal maps ive got textures like windows missing cause i think they are on the normal map

[fervent quest]

one model can have multiple materials and you can adjust them individualy if you want

[sturdy sage]

one second let me grab a screenshot

thats the material layout

this is for the default model btw

this is how it should look

oh wait a second

@fervent quest ive just put this together whether it will work or not thats another question

it looks like this now in engine

[celest birch]

Add a bit of specular

[fervent quest]

Dude no, put textures as it was at a 1st screenshot and put some random texture (some random noises are already in engine by default), not a color texture. Texture that you put in MaskedOpacity is a tex that drives a Mask

But yeah put some values in specular and roughness as oracl said it will look a bit better

I saw that XD pink one

[sturdy sage]

ok what do i change it too

[fervent quest]

Search for noise texture or generate it in photoshop or download it from google smth

[celest birch]

Tbh a imperfection normal would look good too

[sturdy sage]

and whats that when its at home XD

thanks for the help @fervent quest and also having the patience with me

could i add one of these effects to the dither?

[fossil swan]

of course.

[haughty blaze]

idk if this is the right place to ask but if made this auto-landscape material but once I assign it to target layers in the paint mode it only comes out checkered (If I just put the auto-landscape material on the landscape it works fine) I think its because of my normal maps (I unplugged everything until the base color and saw that it only came up

after normal maps were conected

anybody knows why it comes out checkered

I use a set of material function that lerp into each other using a world alignedblend node that goes into the landscapelayerblend nodes

[fossil swan]

did you enable "shared" in the texture samples?

[haughty blaze]

let me see

thanks

it fixed it

[haughty blaze]

is it possible to evaluate world position offset (which resolves a lighting issue with a couple fiolage assets when I use ray tracing) in landscape grass type. I would do this through a Blueprint actor and at it there put that into a fiolage actor but I need to use a landscape grass type in my automatic landscape material

[slate forum]

This is aimed at anyone really, but I also got these free animations but when I apply them to something the material loops and I dunno how to make it just run onces from beginning to end. (I'm new! :D) Can someone direct me to a tutorial? I'm not super sure what I even need to google xD

[unreal thorn]

#graphics

[solar remnant]

Using Cascade for this quick thing. Does anyone know if you can use an attractor with ribbons? Would like to pull some ribbons into the core of this effect

[unreal thorn]

Even Cascade is good enough for your described particle scenarios.

[unreal thorn]

Well, no. It's more of precursor to Niagara.

[fossil swan]

for LoL stuff cascade is more than fine. but for longevity, niagara would be better to learn.

[cold sorrel]

Yeah, there really is no reason to pick Cascade now.

[drifting prairie]

Does anyone know if there's a way to get smooth anim trail arcs during fast sword swings? Even at 60 FPS they often look rather angular for me during fast animations.

[median agate]

hey guys i have one quite of a noobie question for you:

i have an helicopter and i need to put particles on the ground for when i fly low. Is it better if i spawn lets say 10 times per second an emitter or if i attach it to the pawn? The reason why i'm asking is that if I attach it to the pawn then as soon as the raycast stops finding a terrain it suddenly shuts the emitter off

any workaround that might work? thank you 🙂

[solar remnant]

The way I've always set this up is using a master emitter that shoots particles your desired distance down, if those particles collide then you spawn your rotor wash effect at the impact site. You have to tweak spawn rate to the movement of the helicopter. Works consistently when designers aren't always as consistent as I'd like. You can also go fancier and do spawn by distance for perfect spread but that does add a lil overhead and I usually find it unnecessary.

[median agate]

that's pretty cool dude thank you 🙂

[tardy siren]

How do you create a bullet tracer round that can be seen, regardless of distance from the actor? Similar to how you can see Bullets flying across the map, and from the barrel of your gun in any modern fps game, like battlefield, cod, etc.

The material will always fade drastically or disappear completely when it reaches an unknown distance, and I've never been able to figure out how to fix that.

[analog onyx]

@tardy sirenYou scale the thing based on distance, projected screen area or something like that

tracer needs to cover at least a dozen of pixels as seen from few meters and likewise, kilometers away

[tardy siren]

hmmm, ok. So for instance, increase the size of the static mesh based on the distance from the player. The further away the bullet, the larger the scaling factor?

[analog onyx]

[torpid palm]

:triangular_flag_on_post: Maj#0231 received strike 1. As a result, they were muted for 10 minutes.

[tardy siren]

I've tried to import to custom fonts. Both have a correct preview, but the character viewer has invalid characters shown:

Additionally, when trying to use the font as a material, it just shows up white

Found the problem. Compression must be set to this value

[marble ridge]

Hey, I'm trying to create a Niagara system module that can turn off certain emitters based on a variable. Does anyone know if this is possible? Think of it as quality levels, but used on a system level so it doesn't run certain emitters if conditions are met.

[cold sorrel]

Nope. Not possible

[spare forge]

Is there there a node that returns everything after the decimal point inside material?

[unreal thorn]

Subtract the number with truncated number. Not a "single node" but a simple arithmetic hack.

And you can make it a Material Function if you want to 🙂

[spare forge]

I thought there already was one perhaps that was just a old project of mine,

[cold sorrel]

Frac?

[spare forge]

I know it returns decimals but not like that?

[cold sorrel]

Alright

[spare forge]

Maybe your right

[spare forge]

Seems to work that way with positive numbers only. Which is fine for my case
Ty

[modest fog]

No you can't do that.. as the post process is applied after everything has been displayed. If really you want to dim lights then you have to do some logic in blueprint and set the lights intensity manually when the camera is inside a specific volume, but honestly this is tedious. Personally i wouldn't rely on overall picture brightness with post process. That should come from your lighting, and use the post process to do final balancing/tweaking

[surreal pivot]

Cool seeing UE used for VFX on MrBeast's new Squid Game video!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQcO_PYVx3o

[thorny shale]

Facts, I knew they had used vfx but it was a pleasant surprise to see them using unreal engine there.

[merry rose]

Hey guys I need help with my particles in UE4. I want that my particles fade out. Thats why I changed "Alpha Over Life"(As you can see in the GIF) But my particles still dont fade out https://gyazo.com/6d8d31d08fb974f440a32282589c8cee

[unreal thorn]

Make sure your material's Blend Mode is Translucent, and the Particle Color's alpha out is hooked into the Opacity attribute.

[merry rose]

Thats my material. But Alpha Overlife still doesnt change anything. Even when I put a 0 in each field

[unreal thorn]

Give it Particle Color node.

[merry rose]

U mean like this?

[unreal thorn]

From Particle Color, RGB (first pin) goes directly to Base Color. Alpha (last pin) multiplied by the texture's alpha out, then hooked to Opacity.

The constant float3 node is not needed there.

[merry rose]

ITS WORKING! Thank you!

[sly sable]

post process effect in certain area

anyone knows how to make the area mask ?

[sly sable]

Same question with no answer https://answers.unrealengine.com/questions/937021/can-i-use-the-area-of-my-procedural-mesh-instead-o.html

[fast raptor]

ok im kinda stuck here

i need need a way to change the fov where there is a high base like a audio reactive fov

is that possable

[tranquil slate]

How do I animate the material on a skeletal mesh without using sequencer? I set up several materials on parts of a skeletal mesh that animate and I want them to fade out at different times.

[fossil swan]

play with time nodes and offset them, use material parameter collections, control variables trough blueprints.

[chrome violet]

Is it possible to write a custom HLSL shader for Unreal? Are there any good resources for learning?

Or is there any reason to at all? I've had an urge to try writing a custom grass shader

Maybe I could simply do this in the current material system?

[fossil swan]

there is a custom node in the material editor for hlsl

(you can also write hlsl in niagara)

[chrome violet]

Do you think something like this would be suitable for prototyping out an idea? https://shadered.org/template

[fossil swan]

im no hlsl-writer so cant give a decent answer to that. I assume so, but.. well.. yea

[chrome violet]

Hah, no worries

[unreal thorn]

Yes. If you want to go step further, you can also write USF shaders (which is basically HLSL but not limited to Custom node limitations) in your C++ project.

[chrome violet]

Interesting. The project is all C++ except for assets - do you have any pointers on where I could get started with something like this?

It is hard to find a place to start with HLSL. So much is about Unity.

[unreal thorn]

There's a few share of tuts and resources on how to do HLSL in Unreal Engine, actually. To name a few from my bookmarks:
https://github.com/Temaran/UE4ShaderPluginDemo/tree/4.27/
https://www.froyok.fr/blog/2021-09-ue4-custom-lens-flare
https://github.com/nfgrep/CustomComputeExample

[chrome violet]

Great stuff, thank you! Also, another question I have been trying to google my way to an answer on: HLSL is the language Unreal uses to interact with DX11/DX12 correct? So, if I wanted to write a mesh shader in DX12, I would still use HLSL?

[unreal thorn]

Well, the graphics API specific stuff is (in most part) irrelevant when you're writing shaders, as Unreal Engine does have it's own abstraction layer, RHI (Rendering Hardware Interface). It basically a C++ interface doing all the even lower level stuff for you.

https://docs.unrealengine.com/4.27/en-US/API/Runtime/RHI

[chrome violet]

Got it. This is very helpful trying to orient myself. Thank you again 🙂

Is this the appropriate place to ask questions if I get stuck in working on this?

[unreal thorn]

This specific channel? Yeah.
(Though I personally also still learning through the whole rendering magic myself :P)

[chrome violet]

Nice. I have been working in C++ for a year now and have had some ideas about a lightweight grass shader for some time. Starting to think I might have enough knowledge to at least attempt it...maybe mot successfully complete it, but worth a shot 😄

[pseudo vortex]

Is there something special about placing a Trail Particle into a BP (attached to a Mesh) instead of an Anim? Does that even work?

[unreal thorn]

Cascade? I don't think Cascade's animtrail could work on static meshes or non anim sequence/montages. Though I wager Niagara could do it, as it's ribbon emitter doesn't necessarily work the same as animtrails.

[pseudo vortex]

I've seen images on AnswerHub that just have it parented to the skeletalmesh

[unreal thorn]

Yeah, FWIW Cascade animtrails is very tied to skelmesh.

[pseudo vortex]

Yeah that's fine, it's still not showing up sadly

Hm, it doens't show up in the anim either. Weird. the preview anim worked.
Will have a look at that, maybe something else is broken

[unreal thorn]

Hmm, I don't think it ignore world space... Probably the sockets for the trail width?

[pseudo vortex]

Ah wait, the anim doesn't work cause there are no sockets

Maybe it's because the sword isn't actively moved

Some strange UE4 "bug" where attached Actors aren't considered moving for Trails?

Preview on the Anim shows fine if I give the Character the Sockets. But that's not really what I want

[unreal thorn]

Not really sure if it's engine bug, but last time I did it (two years ago, before Niagara getting stable) it still emits anim trails even moving in world space. The setup was pretty usual.

Though I should mention that I did the anim trails on the character, not on the sword.

[pseudo vortex]

Yeah so Anim on Character with sockets located on the Char Mesh produces the Trail

But if the Trail is on the Weapon, with proper Sockets on the Weapon Mesh, it's not

.......

Also not sure what else to call

Ah

BeginTrails is a thing

AH that seems to work

Obviously no one on AnswerHub used that node

At least not on the posts I found

Thanks for your time though, appreciated!

[unreal thorn]

No probsies ^^

[inland iris]

If I use vectoral parameter for color in the material, the material wont fade out with scale color
If I use particle color node, it will react to scale color curve but won't react to color itself(stays black)
Am I missing something?

[pseudo coral]

Hey

I'm not that good with decals

How to fix the decals reflecting on the character? I only want it to be on the ground

[unreal thorn]

On the character's skelmesh component, disable Receive Decals

[pseudo coral]

Thank you.

[celest birch]

https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/en-US/product/painterly-cel-toon-outline-post-process-material

will this work for creating visual effects for horror?

using box trigger to activate it

[lapis kettle]

How do most people handle the downgrading of particles based on a user's "video" settings - For example; I want particles effects to have a "low" / "med" / "high" settings.. and depending on that setting have less particles produced, maybe swap the particles for a downgraded version, etc.. - Can this be automated in UE4? I.e. have the L/H/W value passed to the particle system to modify itself?

[cold sorrel]

Set up the scalability settings in the Effect Type and on the emitters.

Automating it makes no sense.

[sharp jacinth]

Best way to create thick-smoke?

[torpid palm]

:triangular_flag_on_post: f4x#2550 received strike 1. As a result, they were muted for 10 minutes.

[copper cedar]

damn

i've got a big issue with RVT, if anyone is familliar with runtime virtual texturing please take a look in #graphics channel, i am struggling to find why its flickering

[delicate creek]

Hey folks,
I'm trying to setup a macro, but instead of using the particle system I'm using Niagara, does anyone know the equal node for Niagara to this one?

[unreal thorn]

How about setting the Niagara System? 🤔

[delicate creek]

I think this is what I was looking for

[proven matrix]

why does exponential height fog only work when possessing a character? it's making it infuriating to edit

nevermind, found alt-F

[finite frigate]

If I have a noise texture and I want to recolor it based on value ranges, what is the approach for that? Such as values 0 - 0.33 dark color, 0.33 - 0.66 normal color and 0.66 - 1 light color?

[fossil swan]

multiply by 3, 0-1 is value 1, 1-2 is value 2, 2-3 is value 3

[finite frigate]

Thanks @fossil swan, I was able to get what I needed with a 3ColorBlend node

[vocal timber]

Is there any ways to render 2 levels separately and mix them in a postprocess shader?

Either levels or level streaming sublevels, I'd suspect it's impossible with proper levels

(or at least very obtuse)

[unreal thorn]

Not without scene captures, I'm afraid.
I've been figuring out how to do similar thing (comic book style insets), and I have yet to see a way to get reliable result.

[vocal timber]

Aye, that's what I was afraid of

I've been thinking of making a level transition postprocessing effect

but I suppose using scene captures wouldn't be an issue 🤔

[unreal thorn]

Well, performance is one issue. Scene captures are heavy on performance, even with C++ tick updating it.

[vocal timber]

yea, but considering it's only going to happen during a level transition, I'm thinking I could optimize it somehow

optimize here meaning minimizing the amount of stuff that has to be drawn / updated

[tacit loom]

not sure if this is the correct place for this question, but in my UI, I have a progress bar. I want the fill color to be solid. but it is giving me this weird tiled thing. Here is what I mean

these are my styling options

[unreal thorn]

Set the image to a blank white texture.

[tacit loom]

so create a new image?

using like photoshop

and then put that there?

[unreal thorn]

Even with Paint, all you need is at least 1x1 texture of plain white.

[tacit loom]

yep

thanks, that worked

[gloomy geyser]

Hey guys,
I've searching online quite a bit but without any luck. I'd like to increase the max size of my ribbons in niagara. Right now it deletes itself at the end to allow further construction. There's no performance issue yet so I'm sure I could push a little further. If anyone has any idea, thanks !

[modest fog]

just increase the lifetime of the particles?

[gloomy geyser]

It's already multiple hours long.

It only deletes itself at the end when the emitter moves to allow new construction

[modest fog]

?? multiple hours long particles lifetime?? that doesn't sound right 🙂

[gloomy geyser]

Why not ? I simply have 1 particle that stays persistent and draws the emitter movements

Well if there's a better way I'll take it

[modest fog]

mmm sry i thought i could help but i'm not sure what you're trying to achieve:)

[gloomy geyser]

I have 1 particle that's moving around, and a ribbon that's attached to it. I simply would like that ribbon to keep drawing from its start the current particle position

For now after some length, the ribbon would destroy itself at the beginning to keep drawing at the particle

And I'm not sure how to increase that limitation

[zenith coral]

I made a post process for the character to do night vision but I want to have it drop off after a certain distance, so the sky doesnt become blinding. Is a post process the right way to do this or is there a better option?

[desert comet]

you'd have better control of the effect using a ppm. you can access scene depth, color, etc and therefore limit distance rigorously

[zenith coral]

Thats what Im looking into now, just trying to figure out how to use the scene depth with the material to get what I want

[desert comet]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQw1CL0xYBE If you dont mind a bit of, what seems like unrelated learning, the explanation of how pp works for material design is well done in this video. They explain clearly how the nodes work, though achieve something different.

[zenith coral]

Ill take a look at it, never hurts to learn stuff

[ivory iris]

Is there a way to force a cascade particle system to "finish" sooner? I'm calling functions based on the event dispatcher but in some cases, after the particles have played (the systems shows as completed), it waits for more than a second to call the event. Any ideas on how to prevent this delay? When is a particle system "finished" and how do I make sure it finishes closer to when it "completes"?

[unborn drift]

is this the channel to ask fog of war questions?

[modest fog]

This event "on system finished" fires off when the system has stopped spawning particles, and all the particles have finished their lifetime. So you might want to do it the other way around, by setting up another event to force the system to stop, rather than the system being the instigator.

[unborn drift]

perhaps someone can tell me what i am doing wrong with applying the fog of war (works perfectly until i attach it to the character. i assume i am attaching it wrong but not sure why
it initializes but does not seem to update it

[modest fog]

Not sure, but it looks like you update it on the construction script? this kind of effect should be updated on event tick.

[unborn drift]

I tried disconnecting it from the construction script (Capture2 has it connected but I did try with it disconnected), when disconnected in the construction script it has no effect

[modest fog]

capture 2 is too low res to tell... i recon if you call the event initialize ISM on event tick, it will work (instead of calling it in the construction script or on event begin)... but i'm not sure 🙂

[unborn drift]

reply gave it a go no luck, also here are the updated blueprints

[modest fog]

mmm maybe try reverting when it was working (in editor), and force the location of BP_Sightline (set actor world location to the player character world location) on event tick, but in another blueprint (for example, on the level blueprint), instead of attaching it to the root component of your character.

[ivory iris]

Thanks, I still however don't understand how none of my particles exceed 1.8 secs in life & the display in the particle's preview window displays "complete" accordingly - after ~1.8 secs, yet the event triggers way after 3 secs...
I can't/it's not the point having something else trigger the event, I need the event to be triggered once the particles are "complete". But no such ED exists. Having something else trigger the event would make other things unstable/look weird.

[low mason]

"light function material" for flickering lights, better than how the youtube people are doing it with "oh just change it on event tick with random values"? im 80% sure the LFM would be the more performant way, yet i can't find a good example of it on youtube :/

[fervent cloud]

How do i use these in a particle system

[unreal thorn]

I think you should look on the sample particles first, study how they were built.

[lime nexus]

How can I make particles move from one position to another, like in this GIF? Is this possible using Cascade?

I also need to handle if the target position moves. Like in this example, if the camera moves while the particles are coming towards the screen their target position would also move.

[fossil swan]

i dont know the gist of it, but its def easier in niag than in cascade.
you could use a curved spline with X and Y for begin and end-point and move the particles along it.

[cold sorrel]

Yeah, in Cascade that would probably require a custom vector field

[lime nexus]

how would it be done in Niagara? Or is that the curved spline thing?

[cold sorrel]

You could lerp it, animate a point force, follow an array etc.

Niagara has a lot more options.

[fossil swan]

we used point attractors --with varied results-- for this, until I replaced it with a spline that had an animation curve from 0-1. So for each particle a spline was spawned to the UI.
It worked decently, but it was also one of the more frustrating things I had to do.

(luckily the amount of things moving towards the UI was limited)

it also made me hate point attractors for things that need to be identical each time XD
because its like opening a box of chaos.

[fringe belfry]

are blueprints needed to make a succesfull game?

[unreal thorn]

Depends on what you mean by "successful"

[fringe belfry]

Being able to make a living of it

[fossil swan]

blueprint has little to do with that, but the quality of the game and your ability to market it.

[unreal thorn]

That's not something exclusive to UE or its Blueprint visual scripting.

[fringe belfry]

What?

[unreal thorn]

You read that right. It's the matter of the quality of your game and the marketing, not something that BPs (or even C++) can define

[fossil swan]

but to answer the underlying question of your question, blueprints are probably needed, either with or without cpp

[fringe belfry]

Can i make a TRIPLE A game with only C++ no bleuprints

[cold sorrel]

No.

But it's not because of bp or C++

You can't make a AAA game.

[fringe belfry]

wdym i cant

[cold sorrel]

A team of 100+ people, sure.

[unreal thorn]

Unless you commandeer a 100+ people team across disciplines, no, you're not AAA developer making AAA game.

[cold sorrel]

And at that point, you are guaranteed to have people who knows both c++ and bp

So no need to worry.

[lime nexus]

@fringe belfry Unreal works best when you combine C++ and Blueprint. Many things can be done in both and you can just choose where you do those based on your own preferences and requirements. But some things are much easier in C++ and others much easier in Blueprint. Some more obscure things even require one or the other. So you get the best results if you can combine Blueprint and C++.

[unreal thorn]

Actually I'm going to move that to #ue4-general

[crimson bough]

Say I'm casting a healing spell on myself. How to make a modular character glow with a fresnel-like effect and particles orbiting around it? Dynamic materials or Niagara or both?

[unreal thorn]

Could be simpler, adding fresnel in emissive attribute, directly in the materials.

[vale rock]

He all, I am looking for an effect, that first spreads particles in a curtained radius and then merges it into a mesh, I know how to do the later, but how would I spawn the particles wide, then merge the same particles into a mesh

I am able to do it from mesh to mesh but not from no mesh to mesh

What would I use to achieve this

[unreal thorn]

If you're in Niagara, it would be as easy as mesh to mesh.

[vale rock]

I know

thats not what i want

Instead of disolving I want it to merge into the mesh i am disolving?

Disolving effect is easy just want the exact opposite

have particles be wide and form into something

imagine the directional burst being reversed, that basically

[crimson bough]

Should I multiply the fresnel output by a scalar parameter set to 0 by default then change the value to 1 when I want to enable the effect?

[unreal thorn]

Yep, and with modular character setup, you could propagate it to the dynamic material instance params, using same param names in BP

[crimson bough]

Thanks

[storm sage]

hi friends, I'm trying to add a post processing pass using FSceneViewExtensionBase, and I'm bumping into an issue with handling scene color as both an input and an output to my shader. looking at the post processing code in the engine, it seems like the pattern is for a pass to create a new render target, pass scene color to the shader as an input, and then just assign SceneColor = Output. when I try to do that (inside PrePostProcessPass_RenderThread), my pass doesn't get executed at all - it seems like the render graph is optimizing it out (i guess because as far as it's concerned, my render target isn't used?).

The engine plugin ColorCorrectRegionsSceneViewExtension, on the other hand, which also extends FSceneViewExtensionBase, seems to be copying the scene color into a fresh buffer to be used as a shader input, and then using the scene color directly as the render target. This solution works for me, but it seems a little rough to add a pass just to copy the scene color. is there some kind of setup I'm missing, or is this just the way of things?

[unreal thorn]

I don't know how you set it up, but in my case, I used delegate "drilled" in the engine code to get the scene colour pass.

For reference: https://www.froyok.fr/blog/2021-09-ue4-custom-lens-flare/

[storm sage]

ah yeah, I've been working off of froyok a bit but my hope was to accomplish this without engine modification. view extensions work as an entry point for that, but it seems like the abstraction means i have less direct access to the gbuffer

[dapper dawn]

Hello. I have a problem with my particle system. When the particle is spawned at a distance (not very far even) the particles are not created / visible. They only properly spawn nearby in like a 20 meter radius around the camera. Anything further and particles are not spawned. What could be the cause of this?

They are inside a blueprint which gets spawned

Weird thing is that once they are spawned I can move away from them and even at insane distance they don't despawn or become invisible. It's only the spawning that malfunctions when they are spawned far away

[cold sorrel]

What is the effect type and emitter scalability set to?

[dapper dawn]

The emitter is a CPU particle. What do you mean with scalability?

[cold sorrel]

Yes, but the Effect Type? What's the culling response in there?

[dapper dawn]

Not sure what you mean with effect type. Can't find that anywhere and google doesn't give any info on that either 🤔

[cold sorrel]

Ach, I keep forgetting none of this is documented much.

[dapper dawn]

Yeah haha 😅

[cold sorrel]

Effect type is a file you add in the system that contains cullsettings like distances etc.

[dapper dawn]

Oh ok, let me check

[cold sorrel]

But if you haven't manually added it, that's not it.

[dapper dawn]

Yeah no haven't added anything like that

Most of the particle emitter is pretty default

[storm sage]

does anyone know how unreal shaders handle this black bar at the right and bottom of the gbuffer?

i'm trying to just copy the scene color into a frame buffer and it seems like i'm sampling that black bar, in addition to it adding the black bar on its own

[mellow fractal]

Any feedback on what to change with the trails? They're kinda blending into the environment, but I don't want the anime style glowing stuff either. Idk if it's the fact that it is oriented to the weapon swing? Maybe if it fanned out

[pastel tide]

Hi! I want to make an effect when spawning an actor, like an explosion, something similar to the rifts in Fortnite. How can I achieve this?

[unreal thorn]

Play the effect at the same time you set the character mesh visibility

[pastel tide]

Thanks

[sharp wind]

How would you guys go for a laser burning trail on the wall?

Like it stays hot for a few seconds before cooling down. Rendering to a world-aligned virtual texture or something?

[celest birch]

Could someone help me? I have this auto landscape material from UE4 that uses roughness channel, mega scans in ue5 are built different come in ORD. Multiple layers, G should be roughness. I'm not good with materials, and I'm confused on how to fix it to isolate that channel properly. Let me know if anyone could help. I could send pictures or share screen too.

[safe dagger]

Fading decal?

Idk

[sharp wind]

I've had that idea, but making it smooth would probably require lots of decals

[safe dagger]

Yeah… idk

[desert comet]

they look kinda wet and the mix of colors makes it busier. I like the idea of distorting the air but something is off with it. Pretty sure you dont something simple like a basic kind of motion trail where its just a white faded gradient, but it would simplify the environment appearance on it. It doesnt have to be pure white either. Maybe its the animations as well + camera angle that does show the effect too well. Seems like its coming just from the head, so maybe the handle too unless it is already.

[weak jewel]

Anyone knows if I can adjust motion blur strength somewhere? :o Just wanna reduce it a bit

[unreal thorn]

Post Process Volume or in your Camera Component

[fossil swan]

either a decal, or rendertarget stuff.

[sharp wind]

The master! I'm thinking it'd be a lot of decals to have a smooth line, so I'd rather not use them

Or maybe a combination, a big decal which renders a virtual texture

one decal per surface or something

[quartz kindle]

Niagara isn’t bad for that stuff, but don’t know that there’s anything you could do for non flat walls

[cold sorrel]

spawn meshparticles that are fake decals.

[quartz kindle]

Mhm

That’s a great idea

[spring flint]

Hello guys, I'm starting with the particule system. I'm making a flare smoke. I want it infinite. As you can see in the video, after a few seconds, there is not much smoke. I can't find the setting to spawn the smoke infinitely.
https://streamable.com/s0u7p6

[tropic wolf]

Hi, is there a way to only render certain meshes or actors to a scene capture and not the main camera?

the scene capture would include the mesh or actor of choice and exclude everything else, and the main camera would exclude the objects being rendered by the scene capture and include everything else

[sharp wind]

How do fake particles work? Is there any docs on that?

[cold sorrel]

fake decals

https://realtimevfx.com/t/niagara-4-25-particle-decals-mini-tutorial/13177/23

[winter yoke]

is projecting a widget onto the surface of a mesh a possibility?

[sharp wind]

Ohh I see! Thanks, really cool! How performant are these materials? I imagine the shader complexity of these to be a bit higher

[manic kernel]

if you want my opinion, I think subtly is the best option and what you have is pretty good, I'd just make that material less metallic and maybe a bit more transparent, but trust your gut when it comes to visuals

[celest birch]

Anyone have a tutorial/info on RVT with world partition?

[unreal thorn]

#ue5-general

[drowsy vale]

hello, is there a proper plasma ball vfx (or like the terminator spawning sphere with electricity interacting with the walls) ? i only find the bad versions like a fountain/hose like trail that doesn't resemble a plasma ball at all

[celest birch]

Have you tried the free asset from infinity blade on the marketplace?

Theres a pretty good electric thing there that could work or be modified pretty easily

https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/en-US/product/infinity-blade-effects

This

[drowsy vale]

don't see anything that resembles what i am looking for in that pack, was looking for something like this

[smoky oracle]

any clue why my skysphere is orange? the default skysphere shows up like this as well and when I bring it in the sky goes orange

[fossil swan]

there is a plasma ball in the Particle Toolkit Vol 1, but it literally works like Dio's image.

[nova lintel]

Hello every one! I have a question about Niagara and I appreciate your help, I want to know how can I create a 10 sec loop, since I'm going to pre-render these particles and I need them to be loop, to create something like a 10 sec snow loop.

[tropic wolf]

Is it possible to have a scene capture render to the rgb channels of a render target and then custom bake a material to the alpha channel?

[tropic wolf]

Because the default skysphere has the sun setting, you need to change the light vector to get a different time of day

[stiff vale]

Is there any way to make sure the smoke particles only come out through the hole? Currently they are going through the mesh. I am using Niagara

[primal parrot]

https://twitter.com/vuthric/status/1295773219186606081

Asher Zhu (@Vuthric)

tip of the day:
you can generate a simple pizza-mask using math and occlude your smoke effects with it, so that the smoke wouldn't penetrate walls

#gamedev #techart #vfx #realtimevfx #UE4 https://t.co/Hp2ouS982w

Retweets

227

Likes

1283

▶ Play video

Twitter · Aug 18, 2020, 5:23 PM

[stiff vale]

thank you

[pseudo jolt]

Hi there, guys!

Does anyone knows the way to get a DYNAMIC shadowOnly effect on a surface? Simple Invisible plane that shows shadows from other (dynamic) objects. Animated cache in particular.

Was trying to google that but with no luck (

[unreal thorn]

Please do not crosspost unless redirected.

[young storm]

Hello, i have two overlapping post process volumes. The bigger one has a color effect while the smaller one is basically empty. Ive read through the docs and learned that for overlapping actors, the post process with the bigger priority takes precedence (in my case, the smaller one had bigger prio). I also noticed through tests, that these overlapping volumes where additive. (Q) How do I isolate overlapping post processing volumes such that when youre inside the smaller post processing volume, the bigger one is totally cancelled out?

[sleek heart]

Anyone know why Radial Gradient Exponential node can't have negative UVs?

Every time I plug in negative UVs things get weird

[sleek heart]

nvm I good

[drowsy shadow]

Hey guys!
I just wanted to scale my particle system in the world, but it gets very weird.
Did not find anything helpful. I thought that would be very simple.

little help here?

[fossil swan]

yea, anything velocity/force related does not get scaled, so making a copy and rescaling every value would be needed. (in cascade)

with the right nodes it should take care of that.

¯_(ツ)_/¯

multiply bounds with X, or whatever. (havent touched niagara for a long time)

im sure someone will correct me :p

[cold sorrel]

No

You can build a custom setup that takes in a scale value and adjust all related values based on that. But unless it's an extremely simple effect, it will be more involved than just scaling.

Hell, even adding drag will make it more complex.

Do you scale down the mass to ket the drag have more influence? That will screw the initial velocity. What about setting velocity based on position. If you scale the location sphere, what dovyou exoect the velocity to do? Scale eith the same msgnitude? That could easily make the effect explode.

And then we haven't even begun ralking about how a larger effect should behave differently from a small one.

Nor touched on a combination of forces that are worldspace sized.

Or even how various space transformations are treated with regards to scale.

[fossil swan]

yea, I was assuming a simple effect like the one above

[cold sorrel]

The velocity over life would fuck it up

[proud hedge]

Need some help!
Is there a way to render out an alpha that includes the shadow and the object included?
So I can output a final image that has only the object and the shadow in the alpha.

[limber finch]

I know the old apex destructible mesh plugin is a little antiquated at this point, but I'm running into an issue where my destructible component on a blueprint won't break when I try to apply damage to it. I've tried applying a radial impulse, applying radial damage, and anything else I can think of, but it doesn't move. Does anyone know why? It's the child of a static mesh and I'm curious if that may have something to do with the problem

update: fixed the issue by making a new blueprint with just the destructible and apply the radial impulse. Seems to work just fine there, not sure why

[twin sonnet]

quick question, how do you have trails for every burst particle? i've got a ribbon emitter in my particle system with a source module, but it's only on one particle out of like 20

Edit nvm i learned how to read, it's in ribbon data OTL

[devout canopy]

If I wanted a smoke particle effect constantly generating on my players view, is a particle effect in the widget (if it can be done) or in front of the pawn camera best?

[desert comet]

You could do a full screen smokey material overlay via umg or a local space particle in front of the camera

[devout canopy]

My current method is local particle in front of the camera, but when the camera pans super fast there is a disruption in the effect. Like 1 frame where the particles respawn, and it causes a flash

I try to make the already spawned particle move with the camera, attach it, etc, but it still hangs in space relative to the actor, not the camera, or spawns in world space

I'm looking at the overlay since I can't get the particles to move exactly the way I want with the camera

[unreal thorn]

If you want to, you can use the Niagara UI plugin and put a screen space Niagara system in the fullscreen widget

[devout canopy]

cool thanks, I played with Niagra when it was released but went back to cascade cause there is so much I don't know being self taught

I will look into that

[hearty totem]

Found a solution?

[coral ferry]

Hi. Could anyone tell me how to make visual effects? Like, explosions, neon things, force fields...Like, is that done inside unreal or in other programs please? thanks

[unreal thorn]

Typically the stuff that make up the particles (e.g. meshes, flipbooks, textures) are made elsewhere, in software like Houdini or Blender. Once you have it, you would assemble it in Unreal using Niagara (or Cascade)

[cold sorrel]

90% of the work is in unreal though.

[coral ferry]

and how do I make it in Blender please? Do you know any tutorial or something please?

[cold sorrel]

What have you tried so far?

[coral ferry]

Nothing

I'm 99% new

[cold sorrel]

Step 1: Google tutorials for the effect you want to create.

[coral ferry]

All I've tried is moving a cube and adding some default effects like the explosion and the fire, but I don't even know how to turn off the fire after some seconds so the FPS don't die

[cold sorrel]

Your initial question is waaaaay to broad. It's basically: "How do I art?"

[coral ferry]

Yeah that's true...

I'm just wondering if there's a general tutorial that covers the basics of visual effects in unreal

[cold sorrel]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEWWIVM3Vns&list=PLHjQE2fLIZu97z7Iwf-PjV2e1Y4_k2GKL

[coral ferry]

Also, whenever I try to follow a tutorial unreal crashes after like 15 minutes or so

[coral ferry]

thanks

[coral ferry]

I always get this error and it closes unreal 😦

[indigo remnant]

Greetings, has anyone implemented optical flow / motion vector calculation using GLSL in UE4? I'm wondering if it is possible to compare 2 frames in a render target then from that compute the flow.

Would be nice to be able to implement this for some fancy VFX

[cold sorrel]

HLSL, but yeah

I just implemented the Uncharted method.

Then stole Deathreys improvements 😄

[analog onyx]

There.. my slow typing

[cold sorrel]

😄

[drowsy aurora]

Is this a good place to discuss ray tracing?

[cold sorrel]

Not really no

Graphics if it's about using it. CPP if it's about modifying it I guess.

[drowsy aurora]

Ty

[coral ferry]

Hi. Does anyone know how to make a sphere with the outline glowing please?

[fossil swan]

fresnel?

[coral ferry]

Yeah I've searched fresnel and I think it is just what I needed. Thanks!

I'm just a complete beginner, so I didn't even know that existed. I've just seen in a video and I thought it was cool sry

[cinder fiber]

Hi guys, I made a cel-shader post process material by following this tutorial https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkFwe7JI8R8, the problem is when it is implemented, the lighting and fog becomes problamatic! Please help me

Without cel shader

with cel shader

[analog onyx]

@cinder fiber cel shading is a matter of rewriting shading model. Cant do it as post process properly.

[cinder fiber]

So, How to fix it?

I mean can we?

[analog onyx]

Fix? Nope. You need to make it properly from ground up.

[unreal thorn]

You can use the custom build that implement cel shading as shading model here
https://github.com/kusogaki77/UnrealEngine

It does involve building UE from source code, but the shading model does not disrupt UE's post FX pipeline, and doesn't mess with lighting and fogs. So I think the hassle is worth it.

[cinder fiber]

https://tenor.com/view/bunnies-what-confused-meh-gif-13712192

Ok I got to understand it reading about 7 times thanks btw

I will try to implement it

It says error 404

[worthy sphinx]

You need to link your epic account and accept the invite

Oh wait that’s not the actual unreal engine git nvm

[unreal thorn]

https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/ue4-on-github

[unreal thorn]

It's a fork of official UE repo

[worthy sphinx]

I see, that requires same permissions?

[unreal thorn]

Yup.

[unreal thorn]

Also the code base is huge (talking about 5GB upwards), you should download/clone it from your computer, with GitHub Desktop or any other Git client

[cinder fiber]

Ok

Thanks btw

[soft sorrel]

What does it mean to rewrite shading model?\

[safe dagger]

Oh hey I watch you, thanks for your contributions to the community!

[cinder fiber]

https://tenor.com/view/bunnies-what-confused-meh-gif-13712192

When? I am a noob to game dev still! Lol 😂

[safe dagger]

Oh I thought you were the guy from that channel 😳

[cinder fiber]

Which channel?

[safe dagger]

The 5 minute material guy

[cinder fiber]

Lol

[unreal thorn]

PrismaticaDev?

[safe dagger]

That’s embarrassing

[safe dagger]

Yeah

[cinder fiber]

No it isnt

He is @hollow coral

[safe dagger]

Probably shouldn’t ping him though

[cinder fiber]

And I too am grateful for his contributions

[cinder fiber]

He is friendly

He dosent mind

[safe dagger]

Aight

[cinder fiber]

Not like those strict mods or admins of the gdl server lol

[safe dagger]

Lol

[torpid lark]

hey guys, i have a weird problem its on UE5, so im working on a car model raytracing works perfectly, but when i raytracing for Translucency, all the reflections in the scene disappeared including decals, any idea how to solve this?

[soft sorrel]

Does anyone know?

[analog onyx]

It is a bit on the intermediate side of things, and if you have to ask this question, unfortunately no answer here would be of any help for you.

[soft sorrel]

Yeah I was just interested in what it meant, I won't ever be able to understand it if I don't know what it is in broad terms or what it entails

I didnt mean to ask how to do it specifically

Sorry if that was unclear

I am curious about toon shaders for my own art style eventually

[cold sorrel]

It's literal. Unreal uses a shading model. Cel shading uses another.

[soft sorrel]

So then a game like borderlands would have written their own shading model in C++ (I assume) for their toon shader?

Instead of using the shaders in unreal

[wet gull]

hi, is this channel for asking any questions regarding fx?

[fossil swan]

either this one of the #niagara one.

[junior nimbus]

Hey guys, any idea how to fix the light bounce flickering?