Hello Unreal forum, I try to speak briefly but it’s not simple discusion.
I try to implement lightsaber trail effect , it sounds like simple question - just make default trail ribbon - there are many tutorials step by step explained on Youtube.
But the problem is that I wanna get exactly lightsaber trail NOT a usual trail for swords.
And now I will try explain what the difference, I’am also attach pictures where you can visualy understand.
So the original and canon lightsaber effect in Star Wars films and Jedi Fallen Order, new Battlefront games looks as volumetric trapezoid scaled at axis depended by velocity but with restrictions - what I mean:
Even if velocity would be to much fast and strong lightsaber trail effect never leaf a trail as round disk - it would always stay volumetric triangle or trapezoid in world space - some times more scaled but still trapezoid. Here you can see:
In cinema:
Example with fastest velocity rotation:
Here examples with games FrostBite and Unreal:
Here are examples with wrong lightsaber trail:
So having studied a lot of material , I’am start to implement this FX.
And I got some results for now , here is what I’ve got after hundreds attempts:
I make simple Beam Emitter with Start and End points - rendered as many sprites along this beam. Here are setup:
It’s made with uncheked Local Space.
Here how it’s looks when velocity applied in realtime:
At side view:
As you can see - there are a lot of gaps between trail blades - and it’s a problem it’s not looking like trapezoid, it seems render can not get in time to draw sprites at every frame when velocity big and just misses spawning, or maybe I’am wrong and when velocity is big - render distributes sprites all over locations - I don’t know.
So here I’am stack and try allmost every existing modules and options in Niagara and nothing helps - Constraints , Forces, even try make owen modules with different variables and paramters. I’am using Advanced Locomotion System as a base for this project and in this system we can get slowmotion effect when press Z button. In slowmotion my FX looks like exactly what I want:
At side view:
Can someone please help to get this FX in realtime without slomotion and no matter what velocity is apllied, maybe some how spring , constrain aged sprites to force them weld to each other or it’s engine restrictions that cannot be overcome ?