How can I destroy a projectile, but leave it's particle trail?

Hello, I currently have effect of a fireball flying through air, leaving a trail of flames and smoke behind it. Once it hits something, it explodes with a burst particle system.

What I’m trying to do is have FireBall actor get destroyed on impact, but leave trail of smoke which will stick around long enough to fade away.

I’ve tried detaching particle system component from FireBall actor before destroying it, but trail still disappears along with actor.

How can I achieve this effect?

Thanks for reply. In what manner would you suggest having particle system follow projectile without parenting? Create a secondary blueprint for it and have it move to projectile’s location every tick?

I ask because some projectiles will have very dynamic movement and I worry that without parenting, this will become a pain to upkeep.

Not an ideal solution, but try this:

Implement fire trail as a separate BP (with a particle system component). Inside it, create an Actor varaible to hold a reference to projectile (lets call it FollowProjectile)

When you spawn a projectile, spawn an instance of FireTrail as well. Set FollowProjectile to spawned projectile. Within tick event of FireTrail, set world position to position of FollowActor.

However I believe this is not an efficient method of doing it. Ideally you should be able to do it way you tried it. Did you tinker with BP or Emitter settings to see if there is an option that will work? (not very familiar with Particle system, sorry)

I would say disconnect this effect from fireball altogether. Just have them both travel along same path and work together.

Thanks for reply. I still have a few things left I want to try before I throw in towel, but so far I haven’t had any luck finding a nicer solution. I tried a few things with particle system looping to deactivate on its own, but it all comes down to parenting/detaching problem.

You just need to pass transform of fireball to transform of your trail effect.

So whatever sets your fireball’s trajectory needs to also set it’s shadow that is carrying trail.

Definitely helpful, thank you!

Hey dbInteractive,

Check answer here and see if solution presented might work for you:

Hope that helps!

This is basically what I did. I don’t remember issue, but just deactivating particle system didn’t work for me. I created two particle components on same actor, and destroyed main one but left trail. That got effect I was looking for.