PopcornFX Plugin BETA

[Jo_PkFX]

Just announcing the
PopcornFX Answer Hub now available for any questions about PopcornFX (Editor, UE4 Plugin, Runtime etc ...).

[Pr0t0Ss12]

Thank for reply! It is really help me! I want to ask about shadow inside the hole, it looks very ugly and smoke too, why they square?

[SeedmanJ]

Thank for reply! It is really help me! I want to ask about shadow inside the hole, it looks very ugly and smoke too, why they square?

Hi Pr0t0Ss12,

It looks like a few of the textures you decompressed from the .dds format weren't correctly saved.

The pictures you provided are not in good quality but I believe the "corrupt" textures are:

• Shadow_01 (this one really seems to be corrupt)
• Lightning_01
• Lightning_03

Please try saving the original .dds ones in another format such as .png because unreal engine doesn't seem to handle some compressed .dds format really well.
After saving the original textures into a .png format, you have two options:

• Replace all the previous .dds textures by your new .png ones (in the different CParticleRenderer_Billboard of your FX), then reimport your FX.
• Inside UE4, Remove the corrupt textures that were imported in the content browser, and import the new ones. Then you will be able to link them inside the effect directly in UE.

By fixing these texture issues, the black billboards should disappear.
It seems that a lot of the sample pack textures are not supported by UE4, we are looking for a solution to fix these texture issues on all sample packs.

Regarding the smoke, I missed that in the spawner script of the "Smoke" layer in your FX:

Velocity = float3(rand(-1,1), 0, rand(-1,1)) * Scale;

which is why the smoke goes verticaly. It should be replaced by :

Velocity = float3(rand(-1,1), rand(-1,1), 0) * Scale;

When the PopcornFX-Editor 1.8.2 will be released, it will be possible to use

Velocity = float3suf(rand(-1,1), 0, rand(-1,1)) * Scale;

which basically mean that depending on the pack's axis system, values will swizzled automatically in PopcornFX for better axis system compatibility (float3SideUpForward).

Hope this helps !

[Jo_PkFX]

Hey,

Here I made a batch script to uncompress all dds in the current folder to u8888 (RGBA 8bit) using the NVIDIA DDS Utilities, so they should be compatible for UE4.

Here is how to:

• Install the NVIDIA DDS Utilities: https://developer.nvidia.com/gamewor...utilities-8-31
• Right-click "Save Link As" on http://www.popcornfx.com/downloads/U...s_here.bat.txt
• Rename "uncompress_all_dds_here.bat.txt" to "uncompress_all_dds_here.bat"
• Copy paste this .bat in any folder with dds textures inside
• Double click on it to convert all dds of the current folder to uncompressed RGBA8 format

You can now (re-) import them in UE4, they should all work, without any change to the pkfx

It'll put this script in the next Plugin version.

[Pr0t0Ss12]

Yes! It is help now it looks like that:

[Jo_PkFX]

Great !

Well, texture compression loss is taking its toll, and Color intensity might be a little too high for UE, but you got it.

Also, I see the ParticleDeformBlur_01 thumbnail should be blueish (not greenish), it's because UE has not recognized it as a normal texture. I added a troubleshooting about that here: http://wiki.popcornfx.com/index.php/...rish_artifacts

[_cDub]

Are you going to put it on the market place now that they support plugins?

[Jo_PkFX]

@_cDub, We got in contact with the Unreal Engine 4 team about the Market Place, but (for now ?!) only disclosed sources Plugins are handled.

For now, we distribute our closed source "pre-built" Plugin on our own. In the future, maybe the Market Place will welcome closed source Plugins, or maybe we will disclosed our sources...

That's where This Form will help us decide what to do.

[Pr0t0Ss12]

But it's look like there is some problem about order of the texture, because in UE4 it looks deffer then in SDK. Distort effect shoud be over black hole texture. Any idea?

[SeedmanJ]

Hi Pr0t0Ss12,

It seems that you are talking about the billboards draw order ?

The PopcornFX runtime sorts billboards depending on their bounds and this determines the draw order.
Ideally, distortion billboards should be a post-process, hence they should always be drawn on top of every other billboard materials.

We thought about having a dedicated render target for the distortion billboards, and then apply a post-process on the scene texture, like in the PopcornFX Editor, but this would be too heavy to setup in UE4 and its rendering system doesn't prone doing this kind of things.

However, we could in later versions of the plugin, draw every distortion billboards on top of every other PopcornFX geometry.

For now, a really simple thing you can do to ensure your distortion billboards are drawn on top of everything is setting your CParticleRenderer_Billboard's DrawOrder to a higher value than the other ones (as in ZOrder in the UMG, this is like a "sort override").

See "DrawOrder" for more information : http://wiki.popcornfx.com/index.php/...ode_properties

Please don't hesitate to use the PopcornFX Answer Hub to have a dedicated thread about these issues.

[Jo_PkFX]

Hey,

Here is the release PopcornFX Plugin v0.5.3 built for UE 4.8.1 and UE 4.7.6.

[SlipperyBrick]

This is free? Or is it coming to the UE4 Marketplace for a certain price? Either way I am sold haha, it looks brilliant!

[Metathias]

Possible to get a status update on a plugin for UE4.9? 4.9 Is kind of a priority because it fixs some significant physics bugs.

[Jo_PkFX]

We are working on getting the 0.5.4 on UE 4.9 with a few fixes. Should come around next week.

We are currently working hard on getting the Plugin next big version ready, with a lot of new improvements (performances and features) and with the future PopcornFX 1.9.0. Possibly Market Place too \o/. We hope to get everything ready (Plugin v0.6.0 and PopcornFX 1.9.0) by the end of September.

[Oolahk]

Sweet!! Looking forward to them.