Is it possible to manually set Niagara ribbon renderer points?

Development Rendering
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1

Hello,

I’d like to set the points for a ribbon renderer manually if possible. Until now I’ve only been able to find that the points are set on Tick but ideally I would be able to initialize the ribbon with multiple points and then either ignore the Tick or optionally append the list with the location on Tick. Is this possible?

Thanks

2

Hi - If you’re able to share a bit more, what is it that you’re aiming to accomplish, or what concern is this aiming to address? (Is this for effect aesthetics, a gameplay/tech reason, an optimization concern, etc?) As an initial suggestion, you could pause the Niagara system via Blueprint.

3

Given the context you’ve outlined here, you could potentially skip using Niagara ribbons. Instead, you could create the visual by using a spline with a mesh/material applied. A spline would let you set the points as needed. Within the frame where an ‘important’ location is received, you could update the spline to go from the previous frame’s position to the important point and then to the current position.

4

Hi Camille.

My main use case would be to draw the trail for a hitscan projectile. Once the projectile is created, I need to set a start and an end point instantly. As it is I have to wait for at least one frame to set the end point in the next tick which means the trail now looks like the shot was inaccurate as the target has moved.

The second use case would be to follow a projectile path that ticks in the Network Prediction Plugin. As the tick is not tied to the game tick it is possible to miss important points on the trail. For example, the NPP projectile hits a target and bounces back in a single tick. The game tick would only see the new location of the projectile which is the location after the bounce which means the trail will not reach the target. I can add an “important” location so that the trail location is set to the target first and then catches up to the projectile next tick but that’s also adding some delay into the trail render.

5

Hi Camille. Shame there’s not a way to do it in Niagara but I think that solution should work for me in this case.

Thanks for the help!