Niagara Distance Field Sampling is Different from UE4 to UE5 (Content Example Asset).

Development Rendering
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1

Hello, I’m seeing different, much less accurate results in the Distance Field Traversal example of level Niagara_Advanced_Particles in UE5 compared to UE4. Instead of the bug particles moving on the surface of the floor, they are crawling around under the floor. Some of them are on the head mesh and some are crawling around inside. I haven’t been able to find any differences in the Distance Field generation settings.

2

Steps to Reproduce

  1. Load the Content Example project in Unreal 4.27 and open the Niagara_Advanced level
  2. Go to the 1.6 Distance Field Traversal section and observe that the beetle particles are properly on the surface of the floor and head mesh.
  3. Load the Content Example project in Unreal 5.0 through 5.5 and open the Niagara_Advanced_Particles level
  4. Go to the Distance Field Traversal section and observe that the beetle particles are under the floor and a lot of the particles are inside of the head mesh.
3

Thanks for flagging this. I’m seeing the issue you’re reporting in the latest version of the engine as well. From what I can tell, there were some changes to related assets (like the demo station mesh in the scene and some Niagara-adjacent items as well). I don’t have a quick answer for this, but I wanted to get back to you sooner rather than later. I’ve created a ticket for digging into this issue in the Content Example project, and I’ve marked the ticket as public (so if approved, you’ll be able to see its status): https://issues.unrealengine.com/issue/UE-295459.