There is a phenomenal tutorial that describes very well how use the “Initialise Mesh Reproduction Sprite” and “Update Mesh Reproduction Sprite” Niagara modules to create a particle system whose particles form the shape of a mesh, in the case of this tutorial, the effect is applied to the skeletal mesh of a character.
There is a very simple Material skinning the character in the tutorial, Crunch.
This is ideal, considering the material graph node “Niagara_MeshReproductionSpriteUVs,”
- which is seemingly essential to correctly format the material/texture information to be read by the particles in the niagara system (like the colour or normal of the mesh at a given UV) - assumes that “the mesh’s uvs are square and not scaled to fit non-uniform textures.” [pictured]
The material in the default UE5 Mannequin, Quinn, is set up with some differences
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The actor’s skeletal mesh uses TWO materials, unlike Crunch’s skeletal mesh, which uses a single material instance.
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The material graph used by Crunch has texture sample parameters, with the exposed node to input UV co-ordinates; Quinn’s material graph has texture sample parameters already separated into different channels, hiding the node to input UV co-ordinates into the texture samples [pictured] , which I believe I need to connect the “Niagara_MeshReproductionSpriteUVs”
My question, is there a way to perform this same effect to the more complex Quinn? If so, how would I go about it? Quinn’s two materials are two instances of the same parent Mannequin material, for the Niagara System, would I have to make 2 more materials, one for the head textures and one for the body textures? How would I be able to communicate the difference to the Niagara System so that the particles have the correct information?
(link to the original tutorial: Building advanced effects in Niagara | Unreal Engine - YouTube)