Hey! I want to create a simple sword slash VFX in unreal 5.4, and I’m having a bit of trouble. I can’t figure out how to get my Niagara Emitter System to render in - engine. Here’s a gif of my animation (i made a placeholder polygon to resemble what I want for the slash FX.)
I set up a rough approximation of my vfx in Niagara
And I set a simple montage notify on my animation, because I want to make the swipe play when the notify is activated, though I haven’t made much headway in this department.
Imagine a bunch of swipe VFX appearing on each swipe of his sword, that’s what I’m going for. something simple and uncomplicated…unless otherwise LOL!
Thanks for the help!
Hi @YermanShalt!
You’re on the right track with setting up a notify in your animation montage. (Here is a video explanation to make sure you set it up correctly)
https://youtu.be/ZBjZDRYkDJs?si=nInZDiLwgCt2GZ9B
As far as creating the VX goes, you have two main options. You can either create a slash VFX particle through the use of a mesh or flipbook, or you can use a ribbon emitter.
If you wish to have the exact same effect as the one shown above in your blockout, you can add this mesh into your attached Niagara system. Add a shader, give it some velocity and scaling effect, and this could look good.
If you want a similar effect but with more motion, you’re probably going to want to use a flipbook texture on a sprite. There’s a lot of ways to create a flipbook, but here’s a good tutorial for After Effects:
Now, if you want the VFX to actually follow the sword, you’ll want to use a ribbon trail. Here is a simple tutorial on how to set that up to work with your weapon:
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Thanks, sorry for getting back so late. I went on a trip and just remembered to check this forum again! This guy has amazing tutorials, so quick and concise! Turned out I just missed the notify specifically for Niagara VFX.
As for the following the sword problem…I’d actually prefer the vfx to render on top of a mesh that I can position and rotate to my own taste, since the animations I’m making are really snappy and quick.
What could I do to mask off part of this “donut” shaped sword slash vfx I made? I followed another tutorial which was great but he left out how to mask off part of the texture…? to produce the crescent shape. Any ideas on how to do this? Thanks for your help so far!
this is what I’m trying to achieve.
@YermanShalt Glad to hear it’s working!
Hm, the answer to your question isn’t quite straightforward, since I don’t know the logic behind the shader or the mesh you’re using. Likely though, you’ll want to either use an opacity mask in the UV space, or create a custom texture mask if this doesn’t give you the desired look.
The first few minutes of this video https://youtu.be/yj7-h_X_eu4?si=JKQJD8UmyDa7Uy6h&t=109 talks briefly about what I mean. If your mesh is a disc, you can use a UV mask to mask off half of it (this may require some altering through add, pow, mult, and 1- nodes).
If this isn’t giving you the results you’re looking for, I would suggest creating a custom texture as a mask.
If you feel comfortable with it, I would also recommend cutting down the shape of your slice to not have as much empty space. Not a huge deal, but transparency is expensive and it’s an easy way to save some extra calculations.
Thanks! Will update as soon as I get the time. Appreciate the resources as well. Will take a look 
