How to make particles persist after DestroyActor?

Unreal Engine Asset Creation FX
#1

Hi,
I’m facing an issue that I believe many faced before, but I cannot find any documentation about its solution.
I have missiles which make a thick smoke trail using Cascade GPU sprites.
I achieve this by attaching a ParticleSystem as component to the missile Blueprint.
It looks really good, but unfortunately when the missile hits its target, the entire trail disappears.
I know of a “hacky” method, which is to hide the actor, Deactivate the ParticleSystem and wait for it to finish with a Delay node, then DestroyActor.
But this, in combination with a missile, would generate issues with the AI (and likely many other issues). I prefer to find a better way to let the particles finish, while also destroying the actor.

How to make this trail stay alive and just complete its lifetime when the missile impact happens?

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#2

I had a similar issue and the solution is spawn the particle system, it will return the same component which can be destroyed when the effect reaches its lifetime or you can explicitly destroy it. The spawn particle function can also spawn attached for you.

The node is spawn emitter attached this should essentially be the same thing you have except you should have better control over when it gets destroyed.

#3

Hey Kaidoom15 thanks a lot, it works perfectly! :smiley:

So for the record:

  1. Have no ParticleSystem Component in your actor
  2. At BeginPlay, use SpawnEmitterAttached node and save its output as a ParticleSystem variable
  3. Where you handle the Hit of the missile, somewhere before the DestroyActor node, use the Deactivate node on the ParticleSystem
  4. Enjoy persistent missile trails! :love_you_gesture:
#4

You’re welcome, glad I could help.