Advanced Niagara Effects | Inside Unreal

This week we'll learn how to recreate several advanced effects from the Unreal Engine 5 demo. We'll walk you through the techniques and design theories behind the bats, insect swarms, and our recent position-based dynamics-driven popcorn sim: "The Kernel." This deep dive will cover spatial hashes, boid simulators, constraints, procedural generation of structural support systems, and more!

DISCUSSION

**TIMESTAMPS**
00:00 Intro
01:25 Advanced Niagara Effects Reel
04:23 World Interaction
04:31 Niagara World Interfaces
07:39 Distance Field Analysis
10:52 Debug Visualizations
13:08 Implementation
13:48 Flocks
14:18 Flocks Overview
15:40 Avoid Distance Fields Surfaces
18:14 Spatial Hash
20:23 Vision
24:18 Flight Orientation
26:07 Vertex Animation Textures
27:19 Swarms Overview
27:43 Distance Fields Traversal
29:24 Static Mesh Skeletal Animation
32:14 State Machine
34:00 PBD
34:22 Continuous Collision Detection
35:14 Position Based Dynamics
40:04 Recreating Volumes
42:45 Hierarchy
45:32 Constraints
48:57 Swept Intersections
51:53 Safe Particle Distribution
53:50 Q&A
01:32:10 Information & Outro

TRANSCRIPT

[UnrealEngine]

Documentation that might be useful which relate to the topics on the stream:


Niagara Visual Effects Documentation-

Vertex Animation Tool -

Further, Inside Unreal videos you might enjoy:


An Introduction To Niagara | Feature Highlight | Unreal Engine Livestream-

[tom.looman]

I really appreciate the number of time stamps here making it a lot easier to navigate such long-form videos.

[AL_EVOz]

This is amazing! The tech behind UE5 just looks amazing. Gaming for next gen is going to be on the next level.

[Daniel-qtib]

1:09:00 I've been stuck on an issue for 3 days, and this off-hand comment on the fact that collisions don't need to be turned on for distance fields was all I needed to solve it. I'm psyched that I finally solved it but slightly livid that it took me this long when everything "clever" that I was trying didn't work.

[sebastiandussault]

Shorter, well explained, detailed Niagara videos please. Most of us are migrating from cascade to this incredible huge VFX monster. 15 min tutorials about different Niagara topics would be great. Right now these are just dreams

[literallyjeff]

The time stamps are fantastic, thank you!

[HakaiKaien]

Play at 1.5X speed for watchable version

[UnrealTefel]

So UE4.26 is going to be out in just few weeks? That's amazing news, cannot wait!

[voidconcepts]

Ok, so I've watched about 3-5 videos on Particles and now coming back to unreal to work my first project. That reveal trailer showcasing Niagra from when I first saw it to now and everything in this opening video is WILD! It was one of those...I see where this is going! moments The bats were a really cool expansion of Niagra from the Bettles. Understanding how particles can behave.

[RaPtOr]

Yeah if someone show me this in 1999 when i was messing with UT99 editor and said this will be possible in 2020, i would not be believed.
But here it is. Future is amazing for Unreal.

[RoboticusMusic]

Can connections between particles and policies for connections represent real pathways for data to flow through, kind of like creating a neural network from particles that video and other data can enter and exit the system and also be looped back through, and each node can have information sampled from it that is incorporated into the connection policies for all nodes/particles?

[maximevigneron]

If you have to work on very small budget games, is it better to go for Niagara or Cascade?
The big question being, can you push your low budget effects to the next level because of some crazy opti Niagara would have? (I'm guessing not, since most of the cool effects are using gpu)

[lz]

Good stuff. It would be cool if we could get the demo project 🙂

[Tallacus]

Man, I am eager to start using Unreal 5 for crowd simulations

[ImANaidemoc]

any tutorials on how to make that intro sequence?

[NorbFuchs]

In the Epic forum you guys told us we'll get this example scene (corn dude) with 4.26. I still don't see it in the Epic content library...so could you make it available at last for studying? ;)

[netpeggle]

Why is it so satisfing to watch particles?

[ahmedaborady]

I was working on an automotive short video that was rigged and animated in c4d and i work on similar kinds of projects quite often and im kinda not very experienced with unreal but i know enough to build a decent looking environment using megascan assets and some content packs i was hoping theres a way with Niagra i can simulate the wheel Dust, sand and smoke that will save me literally hundreds of hours of sims some sims even i find impossible in huge scale scenes if anybody know a tutorial that can help me that would be great

[workflowinmind]

It's grreat and I undertand the logic, but can you make a video aboout the UI? I don't understand anything the graph or the pad is supposed to do... (I'm downloading the content examples now)

[SeanMaxhell]

Are you able to make a niagara where the particles are fired from a moving SKmesh and that shortly after the particles return to that same SKmesh which has moved in the meantime?