Hey guys I wanted to make clear something from another forum post so its clear on the 100 variations. -Thanks to Galeon
Thanks Galeon. I totally agree with you on the quality over quantity. However on this specific case, I found it was rather “hard” for a non-cascade user to make bigger instances of the muzzle flashes. I know that my level designer said the same thing. “Can’t I just scale it up?”, and the answer was not really. One of the things I really dislike with Cascade and hopefully Niagara doesn’t have the issue is the sprite orientation process.
The most believable look is to use use the sprite velocity for alignment and have it rotate along that velocity vector for facing the camera. Then ontop of that you should scale the size at the same rate it is moving out of the barrel. Finally, I put a drag over life to slow the sprite down after the initial “blast”. When I tried to size up the effect, it was a balancing of the velocity vector math, size over life, & drag variables. To make my long explanation short, I figured it was a little too difficult for a non-cascade user. Plus my level designer didn’t want to learn the particle system in that depth for modifications. =)
You are right that there are 13-14 base muzzle flashes with 8 different size variations. I hope that explains the pack a little more. I’ll make sure to make that clear to people!