How can I create a single, slowly pulsing particle?

[Dan.Gibson]

I’m fairly new to Unreal and am moonlighting as a particle artist.

Something that I want to do often is have a single, slowly pulsing particle - imagine a small aura or indicator under a character’s feet.

Since I want the particle to change over time (shift up and down in opacity to create the pulsing look), I have both a rate and lifetime defined. For simplicity of this example, these are both set to 1. I have both the initial and final values of opacity set to be the same, with the hope that the creation of each new particle would be seamless. Sometimes it is seamless, where sometimes there is a noticeable 1-frame pop. Any ideas on how solve this?

I made a gif of the particle example in question, thought it’s not particularly great due to the nature of gifs. You can see 1 successful seemless loop and 1 with a pop. (I’m manually deactivating the effect, so you can see the break in the gif).

Again, I’m quite new to Unreal and effects authoring in general - If there is a simpler and more effective way to do what I want, please let me know!

Attached some screens of my relevant params as well.

[nickpetersonfx]

Is there a specific reason why this needs to be done with a particle? Have you thought about using a simple mesh with a pulsing material? If not you may want to check out the below material. It doesn’t even need a texture and will allow you to zoom into the circle, soften the edge, or harden it. Procedural stuff rocks!