How do I reference my particle system in code?

Development Pipeline & Plugins Editor Scripting
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1

In the tutorial for Variables, timers and, events near the end, you are shown how to create a particle emitter via Blueprint. I was curious about how to achieve this through code as opposed to Blueprints. I have checked out the Particle systems documentation but am unsure of how to reference the starter content “P_Explosion” in my code. Any direction would be much appreciated.

2

Hi.

Direct references to assets in C++ code should be avoided. It’s better to declare particle system component in your header file like this:

UPROPERTY(VisibleAnywhere)
class UParticleSystemComponent* PSC;

Then create it in your constructor:

PSC = CreateDefaultSubobject<UParticleSystemComponent>(TEXT("MyPSC"));

And then set it’s template in editor.

If you still need a reference to particle system, you can get it like this:

static ConstructorHelpers::FObjectFinder<UParticleSystem> PS(TEXT("ParticleSystem'/Game/StarterContent/Particles/P_Explosion.P_Explosion'"));
PSC = CreateDefaultSubobject<UParticleSystemComponent>(TEXT("MyPSC"));
PSC->SetTemplate(PS.Object);

Hope this helps.

2 Likes
3

Thanks, that answered it.

4

Hey Epic Games, you know what would be great? If when someone like me goes to your documentation for the particle system component I see these code snips at the top of the page. You guys should take a look at the documentation for SFML, it’s so much better…

5

For some reason I get an EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION on the line of the FObjectFinder. Any idea how this could happen?

6

Funny… I was hoping to do exactly what OP wanted to do… load the particle system with c++ only. I can confirm your advice worked for me in UE5.1.