Building Our First Niagara System

In this chapter, we will dive into the world of Niagara. We will begin by taking a tour of the Niagara Editor UI and exploring the various features it has to offer. After that, we will delve into the Niagara Emitter and learn how to create one from scratch. From there, we will move on to creating a Niagara System and adding it to a level and a Blueprint Actor. By the end of this chapter, you will have a solid understanding of creating a Niagara System from scratch.

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:

• Exploring the Niagara Editor UI
• The Niagara Emitter
• Creating an Emitter
• Creating a Niagara System
• Adding a Niagara System to a level
• Adding a Niagara System to a Blueprint Actor

Technical requirements

Unreal Engine 5.1 or above is required. The installation procedure was explained in Chapter 1.

You can find the project we worked on in this book here:

https://github.com/PacktPublishing/Build-Stunning-Real-time-VFX-with-Unreal-Engine-5

Exploring the Niagara Editor UI

To be able to learn Niagara, you need to be familiar with Unreal Engine 5 and have a basic to intermediate understanding of any 3D software and image editing software such as Photoshop or Affinity Photo.

In this chapter, we will get an introduction to the Niagara UI and create our first Niagara System.

Niagara is built as a plugin and is enabled by default. However, if you do not see the Niagara System option, check the Plugins panel by going to Edit | Plugins and ensure that the Niagara plugin is enabled, as shown in the following screenshot. The screenshot also shows the NiagaraFluids plugin, which adds fantastic real-time fluid features to Niagara.

Note

The NiagaraFluids plugin is still in beta mode, so exercise caution if you plan to use it in production.

Figure 4.1: Enabling the Niagara plugin

The method to create a Niagara asset has changed in Unreal Engine 5. In Unreal Engine 4 and below, we had to right-click...

The Niagara Editor

As with every asset type in Unreal, we need to double-click on the asset in the Content Browser to open the appropriate editor. This opens the Niagara Editor for that emitter, as shown in Figure 4.7.

Let us understand the various parts of the editor.

There are ten key areas in this editor:

• Toolbar
• The Preview panel
• The Parameters panel
• The System Overview panel
• The Local Modules panel
• The Selection panel
• The Timeline panel
• The Curves panel
• The User Parameters panel
• The Niagara Log panel

We will mostly be working with the Toolbar, the Preview panel, the System Overview panel, the Selection panel, and the Timeline panel at the beginning and use the other panels as we go into advanced topics throughout the book. Let us see a few of these panels in detail.

Figure 4.7: The Niagara Editor

The Preview panel

The Preview panel shows us a preview of the emitter that we are working on. It enables...

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...

Creating a Niagara System

Let’s create a Niagara System.

This can be done by right-clicking in an empty place in the Content Browser and choosing Niagara System from the menu.

Figure 4.52: Creating a Niagara System directly through the right-click menu

Optionally, you could also go to the FX submenu and choose Niagara System.

Figure 4.53: Creating the Niagara System through the FX submenu

Choosing the Niagara System option pops up a new wizard window similar to the one we had when we created a new emitter in the previous section.

Choose the first option, New system from selected emitter(s). Click the Next button to move to the next screen.

We will be choosing the Fire Sparks emitter on the next screen.

Figure 4.54: The Niagara System wizard

On the next screen, we will see a layout similar to Figure 4.5 that we saw for our emitter. This can be used to directly create a system using one of the...

Adding a Niagara System to a level

This is pretty straightforward. Just drag the Niagara System from the Content Browser into the level.

Figure 4.59: Dragging the Niagara System into the level

The Niagara System will start playing.

Figure 4.60: The final look of the Niagara System

The particle system should look like Figure 4.60.

Adding a Niagara System to a Blueprint Actor

We added a Niagara System to the level by dragging it into the level. But that is not the only way of adding a Niagara System to a level. Niagara Systems can also be added as part of a blueprint class actor. When you develop complex blueprint assets that have particle effects as a part of their creative design, it is preferable to just integrate a Niagara System into the Blueprint itself rather than keeping it as an individual asset to be dropped into a level. This will also allow us to build relationships between the behavior of a Blueprint and the behavior of a particle system. For example, we could have the particle system change color as the blueprint asset speeds up. For now, let us see how we can add a Niagara System to a blueprint class.

Let’s create a Blueprint class that incorporates a Niagara System.

Right-click in a blank area in the Content Browser to open the menu and choose the Blueprint Class option.

...

Summary

In this chapter, we created our first Niagara Particle Emitter asset as well as our first Niagara particle system asset. We also saw how the Niagara particle system asset references Emitter assets.

Finally, we learned how to add a Niagara component to a level and a blueprint class.

We will be exploring the relationship between the emitter and the system in Chapter 5, which is the next chapter.