Getting Started with Unreal Engine Particle System Frameworks
Unreal Engine’s particle system, called Niagara, is a powerful tool for creating stunning, realistic special effects in games and other interactive applications. It allows developers to create and manipulate a wide range of particle effects, such as fire, smoke, rain, snow, and more. The particle system is highly customizable, with a wide range of settings that can be adjusted to create unique effects. It is optimized for real-time performance, making it a popular choice for game developers who want to add eye-catching visual effects to their games.
Niagara replaced Cascade as Unreal Engine’s particle system because it offered several significant improvements over its predecessor. Niagara was designed to be more flexible, scalable, and performance-friendly, making it a better fit for the demands of modern game development.
Some of the key features that set Niagara apart from Cascade include a more modern and user-friendly interface, improved particle simulation capabilities, and better performance and scalability. Niagara also allows developers to create and manage particle effects using either a visual interface or code, making it a versatile tool for a wide range of use cases.
In addition, Niagara was designed to be more flexible and extensible, making it easier for developers to create custom particle effects and incorporate them into their projects. This has helped make Niagara one of the most popular and widely used particle systems in the game development industry today.
We will begin our journey into Unreal particle systems with an overview of the particle system modules in Unreal Engine. There have been major changes in the particle system workflow in Unreal as we’ve moved from the older Cascade particle system to the Niagara particle system over the last few versions. Unreal Engine 5 continues to support the Cascade particle system, and though we do not expect to create new assets in Cascade, we will familiarize ourselves with Cascade in this chapter in case we need to support older projects made with Cascade.
We will discuss the changes Niagara brings and learn about the features expected in the future. We will also dive into the reasons behind Niagara’s development and end the chapter with some interesting use cases for Niagara.
This chapter will cover the following topics:
- Particle systems in Unreal
- The Cascade particle system
- The reasons behind Niagara’s development
- Use cases for Niagara
