Niagara Data channels - not able to cast shadows

Development Rendering
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1

Hi, I’m facing an issue where I want to spawn mesh particles from a Niagara data channel using the islands mode, but I want to have those mesh particles cast shadows. The problem I’m facing is that in order to cast shadows, you have to enable cast shadow on the Niagara instance ( in the level or the BP component etc.)

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But since the Niagara system is being spawned by the Niagara data channel, you don’t actually have access to the Niagara component itself, thus you can’t set these settings.

It would be great if you could either set this in the Data channel itself..

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Or be able to access the Niagara component when you write to the datachannel from BP and have the option to turn it on there?

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Either way, this feels like a missing feature right now, that could add a lot of quality to the effects being spawned by data channels.

Many thanks,

Niels

2

Steps to Reproduce

  • Create a Niagara data channel using Islands mode.
  • Add a new niagara system to it, which spawns mesh particles from the data channel.

-> As the Niagara system is being created dynamically by the Data channel islands, you have no access to the Niagara instance to turn on “cast shadows” like you usually would if you want to cast shadows from a Niagara systems.

3

Hey,

Does setting this inside the Niagara system work?

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These should be used as the defaults for any spawned component, or when placed in the world.

Thanks,

Stu

4

Hey Stu,

Thanks for the quick reply. That is perfect! I can’t believe I missed that, I was mostly looking at the emitter settings.

Many thanks,

Niels

5

Pleased it worked out, there are a lot of hidden features in Niagara, finding them is the hard part :slight_smile: