How to spawn particles without overlap or intersections in Niagara?

[Jas_Capacity (Jasveer Sidhu)]

Seems like would probably be a common task but I can’t see a straightforward result anywhere. I am using mesh particles in this instance for example:

I found a brief summary of a possible approach in the Advanced Niagara Effects livestream here at minute 52:

Advanced Niagara Effects | Inside Unreal

but I can’t really comprehend how exactly to implement it. Is it a requirement to use PBD? Is there a way to just use a particle attribute reader instead? If so what nodes need to be put in order to sort the particles so you can “kill” the nearest particle?

For context, I am also coming from an artist background and am facing difficulty finding good documentation on either. Perhaps it is extremely straightforward and I’m missing it? Any guidance on this would be greatly appreciated!

[remotevfx]

Did you ever solve it? I’m facing the same problem now and can’t believe that there’s no straight way to stop particle meshes from intersecting.

[Jas_Capacity (Jasveer Sidhu)]

Hey! No unfortunately I never arrived at a proper solve.

My workaround was just to spawn the particles in a grid(or however you like) with some gaps between them. Then I used the Jitter Position module in the Particle Spawn stage to add randomness and made sure the values were not too high.

I hope that helps somehow. One day I will understand how to implement it the proper way…