How do I connect Particle Systems with timelines in Blueprints in Ue4? (Ocarina of Time spoilers)

[Tehmora]

So I’m trying to recreate the seal that happens in the very last boss in Ocarina of Time. However, one of the problems that arise is at the very beginning. The small orbs in my seal are using the Particle System, since for some reason a regular orb mesh didn’t work, and it has a better effect. My problem is that the material I used had alpha parameters that I wanted to change so that I could fade in and out by changing the values in the timeline using Blueprints. What I didn’t know was that you apparently can’t connect timeline nodes with particle parameters. Is there a way around this? Is it possible to make the entire sequence using something other than Blueprints? Help please!

The reference video I used was this btw: https://youtu.be/O_3mFZsYX0Q?t=421
From 7:01 to 7:20.

P.S. Does anyone know how to make the outer disc part fade towards the edges so that it doesn’t look so rigid/stiff?

Many thanks in advance!

[TobiasTobasco]

So i think you have multiple problems here? I assume you are using Cascade and not Niagara.
You can definitely drive particle parameters with a timeline.
If you create a new Float track in your timeline, for example, you can use it to drive a particle parameter.
If i look at your refrence though, you should be able to do all of this inside the particle system without the need of ‘animating’ it with a timeline.
The growing, glowing spheres are quite simple to create, and after this it’s just ribbon particles with a source emitter, which has a certain velocity (which is your curvy, flowery line movement).

To fade out your disc, you can either use a sphere mask node in your material, or paint vertex colors in your mesh and fade out the alpha by multiplying with said vertex color inside your material.