I’ve worked in Niagara for a while but am still confused by how looping works. (I’m using 5.7). In the Niagara effect I’m working on right now, I want the effect to last for 4 seconds and loop infinitely. There’s an emitter that lasts for 1 second at the beginning of the timeline, so it’s noticeable when it loops at the right time. When I set the Loop behavior to Infinite, the cutoff/loop doesn’t happen at the 4 second mark either in the Niagara timeline or in-game. Same thing with the Loop behavior set to Multiple. The only way I got the effect to play the way I wanted in the Niagara editor was to set the Loop behavior to Once, and the Loop duration to 4.0. But this obviously doesn’t loop infinitely in-game. So how can I make it loop at the 4 second mark?
From your description, it sounds like there’s a conflict between parameters in your Niagara system, most likely Loop Behavior, Loop Duration, and Life Cycle.
On paper, the system should look like this:
Loop Behavior: Infinite
Loop Duration: Fixed, and set to 4.0
Life Cycle: either set to “System” or “Self”, depending on your setup
Also, make sure that “Recalculate Duration Each Loop” in System State is disabled, or Niagara will re-arrange your effect after each cycle.
Now, checking across the community, even with these settings, sometimes Niagara just refuses to properly loop forever. The thread below proposes a different approach, please give it a look:
From your description, it sounds like the emitter’s own lifetime may be overriding the system loop settings.
A couple of things I’d check:
Make sure the Emitter State module is configured to loop the way you expect. Sometimes the emitter’s loop behavior can take precedence over the system settings.
Verify that none of your particle lifetime values or spawn modules are causing the emitter to finish before the 4-second system duration.
If your emitter is only intended to fire once at the beginning of each cycle, try using a burst spawn tied to the start of the emitter and let the system handle the repeating cycle.
Also check whether any modules are using Emitter Age, Normalized Age, or custom timing values, as these can sometimes make it appear that the loop duration is being ignored.
Since you mentioned that Loop Behavior = Once with a Loop Duration of 4.0 behaves correctly in the Niagara editor, it suggests the timing itself is fine, but the infinite looping configuration isn’t resetting the emitter the way you expect.
Could you share:
Whether this is a System or Emitter setting you’re changing?
A screenshot of the Emitter State module and the System Overview?
Whether the effect contains a single emitter or multiple emitters?
That would make it much easier to identify whether it’s a configuration issue or a possible behavior change in 5.7.