Niagara Tutorial: Dynamic Beams | UE Content Examples Reconstruction

1. Preparation

This is the effect we are going to make in this tutorial.

Note: The main content of this tutorial comes from the Content Examples that come with Unreal Engine

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Full Tutorials:

1. UE Niagara: Simple Sprite Emitter
2. UE Niagara: Simple Mesh Emitter
3. UE Niagara: Simple GPU Emitter
4. UE Niagara: Sprite Facing
5. UE Niagara: Blend Attributes By Value
6. UE Niagara: Static Beams
7. UE Niagara: Dynamic Beams
8. UE Niagara: Multiple Renderers
9. UE Niagara: Location Events
10. UE Niagara: Expressions

3. Introduction

Dynamic Beams have endpoints and tangents which are recalculated every frame.

4. Let's start the reconstruction

Right click and select FX => Niagara System to create.

5. Create Niagara System

Select Empty template, click + and Finish

6. Create Niagara System

As a result, we get a Niagara System asset, click to open it.

7. Empty Niagara System

You can see that we have an empty Niagara system.

8. Beam Emitter Setup

Add Beam Emitter Setup module to the Emitter Update section.

9. Beam Emitter Setup

1. Set the value of Beam End to (8350, -1500, 100).
2. Turn on Absolute Beam End.
3. Turn on Use Beam Tangents
4. Set the value type of Beam Start Tangent to Multiply Vector by Float.

10. Beam Emitter Setup

Set the Vector of Beam Start Tangent to SystemXAxis.

11. Beam Emitter Setup

1. Set the Float of Beam Start Tangent to 0.5.
2. Set the value type of Beam End Tangent to Multiply Vector by Float.

12. Beam Emitter Setup

Set the Vector of Beam End Tangent to SystemXAxis.

13. Beam Emitter Setup

Set the Float of Beam End Tangent to 0.5.

14. Spawn Burst Instantaneous

Click on the + sign to the right of the Emitter Update to add the Spawn Burst Instantaneous module

15. Spawn Burst Instantaneous

Set Spawn Count to 100.0

16. Remove Initialize Particles

Delete Initialize Particles module.

17. Spawn Beam

Add Spawn Beam module to the Particle Spawn section.

18. Initialize Ribbon

Add Initialize Ribbon module to the Particle Spawn section.

19. Initialize Ribbon

1. Set Lifetime to 10.0
2. Turn off Mass and Color3. Set Ribbon Width to 4.0

20. Update Beam

Add Update Beam module to the Particle Update section.

21. Rotate Around Point

Add Rotate Around Point module to the Particle Update section.

22. Rotate Around Point

Set the value type of Rotation Phase to Multiply Float

23. Rotate Around Point

Rotation Phase is an offset to the accumulated rotation value. This can be used to randomize or manually control each particle's rotation value.

Set the value of A to RibbonLinkOrder

24. Rotate Around Point

1. Set the value of B to 5
2. Set the value of Rotation Rate to -1.
3. Set the value type of Radius to New Expression.

25. Rotate Around Point

1. Set the value of Radius to (1.0f-(abs((Particles.RibbonLinkOrder)-0.5f)*2.0f))*500.0f
2. Set the value of Rotation Center to Particles.Position