I’m familiar with creating effects in Niagara systems, but I’m totally in the dark about the actual implementation of them in a game, particularly with player abilities. Something like a missile is pretty straightforward (spawn projectile, add velocity, spawn impact and delete projectile at actor hit), but currently I am working on implementing the VFX for a trap-type spell, and I’m not sure how to go about doing it.
The idea is pretty simple. The trap spawns in and arms itself, once armed the VFX loops until a box collider detects an overlap with an enemy, and then the trap will activate and fade away once the enemy is out of the trap.
The first idea I had was the simplest way of creating 4 Niagara systems for each stage (arming, inactive loop, activation, and fade away), but since I’m using particle systems and scrolling textures, there wouldn’t be any consistency. My next idea was to expose parameters that I could then adjust with a Timeline from the Blueprint. However, I can’t imagine this being a good practice when thinking about scalability. I’d much rather keep as much animation work as I can contained within the Niagara system itself, especially when thinking about all of the elements I have to fade-in/fade-out.
Any ideas as to how to correctly approach this while keeping it as art directable and scalable as possible would be much appreciated!