I have an alembic cache dragon animation and I want to know if there’s a way to parent a niagara effect to it. I want to make fire come from its mouth but can’t find any good resources on if/how I can do it.
To my knowledge, Alembic Cache does not have any bones to attach the Niagara system to. You might have to manually key frame the Niagara FX in Sequencer so it is in the dragon’s mouth.
Thank you for replying! It’s a niagara effect asset I got from marketplace. I can’t use the attach to in the sequencer for it? I got that reply on reddit but it’s not working.
Niagara can be attached in Sequencer. However, the limitation I see is not Niagara, but the implementation a Alembic Cache.
To my knowledge, Alembic Cache is a cluster of animated verts, it does not have anything like a bone to attach to. An Alembic Cache has a pivot set at 0,0,0. and it does not move. So there is nothing to attach the Niagara to.
You will find success, if you hand animate the position of the Niagara FX to every proper moment where the dragon fire needs to be seen in the dragon’s mouth. When the dragon fire does not need to be seen, you can use a “Hide actor in Game.”
Hope that helps,
If you can export the dragon as an FBX, then you can attach the Niagara to the dragon’s
head bone. You can apply an invisible material to the dragon FBX, so only the Alembic will be seen. And turn of cast shadows on the FBX geometry. Then the Niagara will follow the dragon bone animation and you can use the “Attach” Niagara in Sequencer.
This would be a work around to the alembic cache implementation. The FBX would be invisible. And the Alembic Cache will be visible.
Not ideal, but niagara can sample a texture and use IT to fire off particles.
So in theory, you could make a texture where the mouth piece of the dragon which you wish to spawn the fire particle effect from is white, and then code a niagara system up to spawn from that point.
Realistically, since you have a geometry cache, it would be better to define the spawn point using a flow map or some other sort of vertex driven system.
Re attaching the particle, you wouldnt need to. You can attqch it to the actor itself…
@MostHost_LA how you can generate particles with a Alembic cache?
I wanted to use an alembic character to generate smoke from some parts of the body. But when I configure the Niagara system, for emitter I have only static or skeletal meshes.
Must be some recent engine “feature” im not aware of.
You can add the particle without linking it, and still have it generate from textures. Its just a lot more work…
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