Nanite render in Niagara ignore particle colour

Development Rendering
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1

Hi,

I just tried to give a shot at using the experimental nanite renderer to see how usable it could be in its current shape.

I have found that it does not take particle colour into account, be it for RGB or alpha. A traditional mesh render with the same material applied does get affected by particle colour, ruling out any material error on my side.

Is that an expected behaviour?

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2

Hi Mickaëlle,

This is expected in UE 5.7. Unfortunately, Particle Color and other material-related bindings are still not available in that version (or even in the latest source build, from what I can see). Compare the standard bindings on the Details Tab of the Mesh Renderer and Nanite Renderer:

[Image Removed] [Image Removed]Note that binding Niagara attributes to Material Parameters is also not supported on any renderer (Sprite/Mesh/Nanite). The UI below allows setting constant values only:

[Image Removed]The good news is that Nanite Renderer actually does support binding Float Attributes (including Color components) to the Material’s per-primitive data (see the Public Roadmap). In the renderer’s “Bindings” category, look for “Per Instance Data Bindings”:

[Image Removed]And set up the material to use PerInstanceCustomData:

[Image Removed]Let me know if this works for you. By the way, if you find that the Nanite Renderer is still not suitable for your needs, note that some people have come up with workarounds. Here’s an interesting example.

Best regards,

Vitor

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3

Thank you, that is a functional workaround.

When you say ‘Particle Color and other material-related bindings are still not available in that version’, do I read correctly between the lines that this is planned for future releases? Do you have some approximate ETAs by chance?

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4

No that’s fine, I understand that an ETA would be difficult to give.

Thanks for looking into it anyway :slight_smile:

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5

Unfortunately I am not part of the team that owns this plugin, so I don’t have this information (sorry if I implied it). What I can say is:

  • Based on the source code activity, it seems that so far after the release of UE 5.7 there were just a few committed changes, mainly bug fixes. This indicates (but does not guarantee) that the plugin is not currently being incrementally improved for the next UE release.
  • Even if this is planned for future releases, even the devs that own the system cannot normally give ETAs because priorities can shift quickly.

That said, if you like, I can try to reach out to the correct team to see if they have any additional information. Just let me know.

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