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

Creating an Emitter

Now that we understand the interface of the Niagara Editor, let us create an emitter step by step from existing templates and modify its properties so that it looks similar to Figure 4.18, the target effect that we want to achieve. This emitter consists of a stream of streaky particles that glow yellow when emitted and turn red as they age. The particles also emit light and are stretched in the direction of their motion. They will randomly change their movement path as if affected by turbulent wind.

Figure 4.18: Let’s create an emitter that looks like this

Let’s start by creating a new emitter and call it FireSparks. Follow the instructions given in the previous section to create an emitter and then choose the fountain template.

You will end up with an emitter overview node similar to Figure 4.19 with the white-colored particle fountain.

Figure 4.19: Our FireSparks emitter node

We are going...