Short particle burst

Hi everyone
I was just curious to know how I could make a short little particle effect explosion for my shipyard. What I wanted was a small explosion of air as the umbilical cord detaches from my ship. So far tutorial I have looked at haven’t been useful and most important of all is I need it to be controlled in the matinee so it will happen about 45 seconds into the animation.

Many thanks
Alex

Hi Alex,

The Content Examples project has some good particle systems that you can use as a starting point for the air explosion that you want.

You can also find a great set of tutorials for creating your own particle systems here: Introduction to Cascade | v4.2 | Unreal Engine - YouTube

Here are the steps you can take to activate a particle system through matinee:

  • In the Required module of your particle system, set Emitter Loops to 1
  • Also in the Required module, set Emitter Duration to the amount of time the effect should last after becoming active

67696-emitterprops.jpg

  • Drag the particle system from the content browser into the level and position it
  • In the details panel of the editor, uncheck the Auto Activate property of the particle system

67697-deactivate.jpg

  • With the particle system still selected, open matinee
  • Right click in the Tracks panel and select Add New Particle Group

67698-add_group.jpg

  • Choose a name for the group and press enter
  • Select the particle group track and scrub the timeline to the 45 second mark
  • Press enter and select Trigger, then click OK

67699-trigger.jpg

You can actually trigger the effect multiple times in the same matinee if you so chose.

Thanks it’s working quite well now :smiley: