Andurlekar Build Stunning Real-time VFX with Unreal Engine 5

Start your journey into Unreal particle systems to create realistic visual effects using Niagara
1. Auflage 2023
ISBN: 978-1-80107-872-6
Verlag: De Gruyter
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 312 Seiten

While no game would be complete without visual effects, the ever-evolving VFX industry churns out stellar digital environments that can make your games stand out from the crowd. Build Stunning Real-time VFX with Unreal Engine 5 is here to help you boost your creativity using Niagara to make jaw-dropping particle systems backed by the power of Unreal Engine 5-without a line of code.
This handy guide for VFX artists takes you through the principles and concepts of designing particle systems and design workflows, along with the architecture of Niagara, Unreal Engine 5's VFX system. Throughout the book, you'll build a series of mini projects that will put your particle system knowledge to the test. As you advance, you'll cover topics such as creating your own custom modules, debugging workflows, and controlling particles with blueprints, and conclude by working on two projects that will bring everything together into a neat package.
By the end of this VFX book, you'll have a deeper understanding of particle systems, improving your skills, portfolio, and the chances of being employed by studios using Unreal Engine 5.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Andurlekar, Hrishikesh

Fachgebiete

• Mathematik | Informatik EDV | Informatik Professionelle Anwendung
• Mathematik | Informatik EDV | Informatik Programmierung | Softwareentwicklung Spiele-Programmierung, Rendering, Animation

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Table of Contents - Getting Started with Unreal Engine Particle System Frameworks
- Understanding Particle System Concepts
- Exploring Niagara Concepts and Architecture
- Building Our First Niagara System
- Diving into Emitter-System Overrides
- Exploring Dynamic Inputs
- Creating Custom Niagara Modules
- Local Modules and Versioning
- Events and Event Handlers
- Debugging workflow in Niagara
- Controlling Niagara Particles using Blueprints

Leseproben

2

Understanding Particle System Concepts

Particle systems are a technique used in computer graphics to simulate a variety of phenomena, such as fire, smoke, rain, and explosions. In a game engine, particle systems are used to add realism and visual interest to scenes. The three main functions of particle systems are emission, simulation, and rendering.

Emission is the process of creating and releasing particles from a specific location or object. This is controlled through properties such as emission rate, velocity, and direction. Emission can also be triggered by events, such as collisions or user input.

Simulation refers to the movement and behavior of the particles over time. This can include properties such as gravity, wind, and turbulence, which can be used to create realistic movement patterns. Particles can also be affected by other forces, such as collisions and user-defined behaviors.

Rendering is the process of displaying the particles on the screen. This can be done using sprites or 3D models and can include techniques such as billboard rendering and alpha blending to create realistic effects.

In this chapter, we will see how these apply to Niagara. We will also learn a few concepts of vector mathematics, which we will apply to our particle systems in the later chapters. Finally, we will learn about other particle system tools available on the market.

This chapter will cover the following topics:

• Exploring key particle concepts
• Vector mathematics and matrices and their representation in Niagara
• Understanding particle system tools

Technical requirements

You can find the project we worked on in this book here:

https://github.com/PacktPublishing/Build-Stunning-Real-time-VFX-with-Unreal-Engine-5

Exploring key particle concepts

In this chapter, we will understand the key functional concepts of particle systems and how they are implemented in the particle systems in Unreal. All particle systems will invariably have some variation of the following functionalities built into them:

• Emission
• Simulation
• Rendering

Each one of these functionalities will have some variables that will be exposed to enable the user to tweak the behavior of the particle system. Most software has this functionality built in a monolithic element with limited ability to customize it. In Unreal, it is built into modules that are stacked on top of each other. The modules have exposed variables, which can be used to tweak the module’s effect on the behavior of the particle system. These modules are roughly grouped into three broad functionality groups: Emission, Simulation, and Rendering.

Figure 2.1: The Niagara Emitter node grouped into three functionalities

So, let’s take a look at these functionalities.

Functionality

Now, we will delve deeper into the individual functionalities – emission, simulation, and rendering.

Emission

This part of the system handles the spawning of the emitters, as well as their behavior throughout their lifetime. In Niagara, emitters and systems exist as independent entities. Emitters need not always be a part of a particle system. The emitters can be called into any particle system as a reference. This structure allows us to work on the emitters and systems independently, making the workflow modular and scalable.

Multiple emitters can be called in a system to create the required effects. For example, for a fire system, we may have an emitter for flames, another emitter for embers, and another one for smoke. All three emitters will come together in a fire system to create the overall effect of fire. Emitters can also be affected by the behavior of other emitters in the system using event handlers, which allow users to create event-based effects.

Emitters determine how particles are emitted – for example, from a point space, volume, the surface of a geometry, or from the surface of an animated skeletal mesh. This is how the emitter section looks in Niagara:

Figure 2.2: Emission-related functionality grouped together

Simulation

This is where the majority of a particle system’s behavior is determined. Once the particles have been emitted, the simulation take over and determine things such as the movement, the change in scale or color, or the animation of sprites in the particle system. Each module will affect a specific aspect of the particle system’s behavior. These modules use mathematical formulas, randomized values, and cached data to affect the behavior of the particles. The modules are usually stacked, and the order of stacking affects the final outcome of the particle behavior. The efficiency of the simulation modules matters and various methods such as using GPU acceleration are used to enable particle systems to handle a large number of stimulated particles. This is what a typical simulation section looks like in a Niagara Emitter node:

Figure 2.3: Simulation-related functionality grouped under Particle Update

Rendering

While all the simulation calculations are done by the modules that handle simulation, the particles won’t be visible unless they are rendered by the particle system. This is handled by the rendering module. The fact that the rendering module is independent of the simulation module makes it possible to render the simulated particles in different forms such as sprites, meshes, or ribbons. The same simulation can create different images based on the rendering module chosen. For example, the rendering module, depending on its type, could render a set of simulated particles as two-dimensional sprites, as a three-dimensional geometry mesh, or maybe as ribbons. The simulation remains the same; only the rendering module changes. You can also choose to simultaneously use multiple rendering modules in the same particle simulation. This is how the rendering section looks in Niagara:

Figure 2.4: Rendering-related functionality grouped together

In Niagara, the three functionality groups discussed here manifest themselves as . These stages have names ending with Update and Spawn; for example, Particle Update and Particle Spawn. We also have advanced stages such as Event, or Simulation, about which we will learn in the later chapters.

Next, let’s talk about module groups.

Module groups

Unreal takes a modular approach where the particle system starts out as a simple entity with a few essential properties. These properties and the additional properties required to add functionality to the particle system are made available as modules. Users can add and remove these modules from their particle system as required to achieve the desired behavioral effect. Each module will influence a specific aspect of the particle behavior. Certain modules can alter the color of particles throughout their lifetime, for example, transitioning from being yellow at birth to red at death. Other modules simulate forces such as wind and gravity on the particle system. Since the user only adds the modules that they need, the particle system is lean and efficient.

The particle simulation data flows from top to bottom of a Niagara module stack. These modules can be assigned to a group. The group determines where the module will be executed. A module in a Particle group, for example, would be executed on particles only and not on emitters. The groups are associated with namespaces that determine what data the module can affect.

There are three module groups which are as follows:

• System
• Emitter
• Particle

Niagara has many namespaces. Some of the important ones are System, Emitter, Particle, Engine, and User.

Namespaces may seem a bit confusing for a beginner, so think of them as an additional qualifier to help segregate similarly named variables.

For example, SYSTEM LoopCount is different from EMITTER LoopCount due to them being in separate namespaces, that is, SYSTEM and EMITTER.

Figure 2.5: Namespaces in Unreal help differentiate similarly named parameters according to their mode of operation

The namespaces restrict the places from where the data can be read or written to. For example, the Engine namespace parameters are read-only values that come directly from Unreal...

Über Autor(innen)

Andurlekar Hrishikesh:

Hrishikesh Andurlekar is the founder of Tplusplus Interactive, an Unreal Authorized instructor, owner of a Unreal Authorized training center and a Mentor at Mastered UK. He has been a CG Supervisor at Prana Studios and Pixion. He has been working as a contractor/consultant in Unreal Engine for 6 years with leading companies including Reliance Jio Studios, Monk Studios, Prime Focus and True Telecom delivering Games, Simulations, Virtual Production Solutions and AR/VR experiences. He has trained companies around the world through Epic Games. More than 3200 hours of 1-2-1 training conducted for major companies like Technicolor, Yashraj studios, Infosys, Tech Mahindra, TCS, Aptech among others.