Book Image

Build Stunning Real-time VFX with Unreal Engine 5

By : Hrishikesh Andurlekar
5 (1)
Book Image

Build Stunning Real-time VFX with Unreal Engine 5

5 (1)
By: Hrishikesh Andurlekar

Overview of this book

While no game would be complete without visual effects, the ever-evolving VFX industry churns out stellar digital environments that can make your games stand out from the crowd. Build Stunning Real-time VFX with Unreal Engine 5 is here to help you boost your creativity using Niagara to make jaw-dropping particle systems backed by the power of Unreal Engine 5—without a line of code. This handy guide for VFX artists takes you through the principles and concepts of designing particle systems and design workflows, along with the architecture of Niagara, Unreal Engine 5’s VFX system. Throughout the book, you’ll build a series of mini projects that will put your particle system knowledge to the test. As you advance, you’ll cover topics such as creating your own custom modules, debugging workflows, and controlling particles with blueprints, and conclude by working on two projects that will bring everything together into a neat package. By the end of this VFX book, you’ll have a deeper understanding of particle systems, improving your skills, portfolio, and the chances of being employed by studios using Unreal Engine 5.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)
1
Part 1: Introduction to Niagara and Particle Systems in Unreal Engine 5
7
Part 2: Dive Deeper into Niagara for VFX

Tutorial – modifying a Niagara System using Blueprint Actors

In this section, we will set up a blueprint containing a Niagara particle system. The Blueprint will have a texture of a logo and we will have the Niagara particle system emit fire through the shape of the logo (see Figure 11.24).

Figure 11.24: The final effect we will achieve by the end of this tutorial

To achieve a result akin to Figure 11.24, with controls built into the asset, we need to change the logo, the density of the fire, and the color of the fire. We will need the help of a blueprint like the one shown in Figure 11.25 to do this. This schematic shows the organizational structure of the Blueprint Actor containing the Niagara particle system and the names of the controls we will build into the blueprint.

Figure 11.25: A schematic representation of the blueprint we will develop in this tutorial

We will expose parameters to change the amount of fire, the...