Niagara Ribbon Renderer — Driving V-axis curvature across chain/whip bones

Hi everyone,

I’m working on a chain/whip-type weapon effect and want to attach a ribbon trail that follows the weapon’s bone chain (roughly 5–7 bones in a line).

The goal is to have the material’s V-axis curve naturally along the bones rather than stretching linearly — so it follows the arc/curvature of the weapon’s pose at any given frame.

Is there a way to drive this inside a Niagara system? For example:

  • Sampling bone positions each frame and spawning ribbon particles along them
  • Controlling the V coordinate per particle to reflect the actual curve length or bone arc
  • Any Scratch Pad / custom HLSL approaches worth considering?

I’ve been using the Ribbon Renderer in Niagara and so far the V mapping feels like it’s just doing a straight linear stretch across the spline, not accounting for the curvature of the bone chain itself.

Any advice or examples would be really appreciated. Thanks!

Likely not possible with ribbon renderer (at least not without significant issues)

I recommend looking at dynamic mesh di instead, it’s technically experimental, but if you’re willing to support it, it might be fine.

Ghislain Girardot’s video on the subject is probably the best source if info for now, but you’ll need to play around with it.