If you explorer Unrealnaut that likes messing around with Work in Progress features of engine and look how day unfold, like people recently do with UMG you gonna like this one
I wanted to check out state of Niagara, new particle editor successor of Cascade (in roadmap is named Cascade 2.0) and how will it generally work, since this is something my team is looking forward to. After sniffing around a little in source code i find way how to enable it, you just need to add this to Engine.ini of your project directory/Saves/Windows/:
[Niagara]
EnableNiagara=true
UPDATE: Since 4.18 Niagara is a plugin, just enable it to get Niagara, no ini chances needed anymore, they don’t work anymore anyway
Now when you right click content browser you will have option to make “Miscellaneous->Niagara Script”. For now it seams unusable (similar state to 4.2 UMG maybe even more premature), it generates this graph by default:
Which kind of reminds material editor, not sure how to apply it to use (if there is any way). I enable it in 4.3 not sure if you can in older, but definitely will be even more premature. Someone can check 4.4 state of things… my PC is too old for to handle 2 engine installs
Nice! I’ve been wondering about this for a while. Looks good.
I’ve been looking for a way to get deeper control of particle systems, a lot of particle system settings can’t be controlled by parameters. Fingers crossed this eventually helps, I may check it out in 4.4.
People on stream was asking how to turn on Niagara so a bamping this thread. Screenshot here is quite outdated I still don’t understand how exacly Niagara works and didn’t able to produce any particules
So here new screens from 4.9, currently nigara consists of 2 assets Script and Effect and Effect is particule it self and script is acript which you can use in particules
If you ask me for now what i seen it looks like harder to grasp then Cascade. I think good solution here would be makeing it generate default particules so you can see it works, same as Cascade doing
From screenshots, it looks like Niagara system is a node graph of math which is then converted to compute shader, each emitter is one script.
It allows full flexibility but need math competence, which is harder than affector based system.
It seems that last major development on Niagara was done in August’15 (/EpicGames/UnrealEngine/commit/f7ffe5c68e7c5d0532306f4edc465c76959ed7d5). From then on, only API-compatibility changes were done.
Unless the real development is happening in some separate perforce branch not pushed to master, it seems that Niagara’s development is on halt.
Are there any updates for Niagara? I have been excited for this new particle editor for years now, and keep getting more so as I become more competent with blueprints and the new Sequencer system. Cascade has been a great system, but I cannot wait for a particle editor that gives me more freedom and accessibility through blueprints.
Last I heard (on a stream, I forget which) is that it’s being worked on, but isn’t ready yet. They put it on the back burner in order to create sequencer, but now I think the people behind that are working on Niagara again.
Since everyone here is most certainly, and understandably, hankering for an update, I figured I should drop a line. We’re back at work full steam on Niagara after a slew of other things had to take priority, and after a huge amount of foundational rewrites, we’re making progress on a daily basis. We’re in a good feedback loop with several of our artists and are in the process of cleanly and deliberately implementing the fundamental feature set and workflows.
There’ll be more info trickling in, and of course I can’t make any firm commitments as to timelines or specifics - but I’m already building some pretty nifty test effects every time a new feature comes online. Thanks all, for being so patient - it’s certainly been a long time coming!
Tried to use it, on master branch. Crashed when tried to assign material in emitter.
Beyond that I couldn’t figure out what to do by simply clicking around ;d.
What are the main features you anticipate for release? Will it be free within UE4? This would be a welcome feature and a large improvement over my current materialize effects.
I keep delaying trying to become an expert at Cascade in case this new system is released soon.
Should we just go ahead and commit to the old system for now? Our team could spend time on other things instead if it’s worth the wait, but it’s also a bit hard to see the fruits of our labor without pretty particle effects when guns are fired and other such things.
