# How do I dynamically change particle Beam width or size via Blueprint?

**URL:** <https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/how-do-i-dynamically-change-particle-beam-width-or-size-via-blueprint/317240>\
**Category:** Blueprint\
**Tags:** beam, unreal-engine, Blueprint, question\
**Created:** [May 2, 2015, 6:19pm UTC](https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/how-do-i-dynamically-change-particle-beam-width-or-size-via-blueprint/317240 "2015-05-02T18:19:28Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![TychoVII](https://d1ap1mz92jnks1.cloudfront.net/user_avatar/forums.unrealengine.com/tychovii/32/88719_2.png) [@TychoVII](https://forums.unrealengine.com/u/TychoVII)\
**Post date:** [May 2, 2015, 6:19pm UTC](https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/how-do-i-dynamically-change-particle-beam-width-or-size-via-blueprint/317240/1 "2015-05-02T18:19:28Z")

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I’m trying to get the beam that my ship is firing to shrink in width after firing it for a period of time. I can get the width to change using Taper Factor/Scale in the Beam Data as a parameter, but it only seems to work when the particle system spawns and doesn’t update with Tick. Should I even be using taper? So far the only method I can think of is to destroy and recreate the beam particle every tick that I want it to change size. Any ideas?

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**Author:** ![\_EPIC\_homeRye](https://d3kjluh73b9h9o.cloudfront.net/original/4X/2/8/5/28502927f1d97ba1051b3b47ccfe17233bf41ef0.png) [@\_EPIC\_homeRye](https://forums.unrealengine.com/u/_EPIC_homeRye)\
**Post date:** [June 5, 2015, 1:51am UTC](https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/how-do-i-dynamically-change-particle-beam-width-or-size-via-blueprint/317240/2 "2015-06-05T01:51:38Z")

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You can use a SizeByLife with your distribution set to an instanceParameter and Scalar parameter in Blueprint.

You can learn more about instance parameters here…

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**Author:** ![TychoVII](https://d1ap1mz92jnks1.cloudfront.net/user_avatar/forums.unrealengine.com/tychovii/32/88719_2.png) [@TychoVII](https://forums.unrealengine.com/u/TychoVII)\
**Post date:** [June 11, 2015, 5:51pm UTC](https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/how-do-i-dynamically-change-particle-beam-width-or-size-via-blueprint/317240/3 "2015-06-11T17:51:51Z")

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Aha! I don’t know why I thought I had to mess with the beam data to make this work. SizeByLife was exactly what I needed, thankyou!

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**Author:** ![anonymous\_user\_49a519741](https://d3kjluh73b9h9o.cloudfront.net/original/4X/2/8/5/28502927f1d97ba1051b3b47ccfe17233bf41ef0.png) [@anonymous\_user\_49a519741](https://forums.unrealengine.com/u/anonymous_user_49a519741)\
**Post date:** [December 23, 2016, 12:46pm UTC](https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/how-do-i-dynamically-change-particle-beam-width-or-size-via-blueprint/317240/4 "2016-12-23T12:46:03Z")

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Can you mark the answer as correct?