Hi everyone! Long time lurker here. I like reading all the interesting posts and seeing all the lovely effects posted here, but I’ve run into a hurdle recently.
I’m a seasoned Cascade user and have been learning Niagara to finally switch over once and for all. So far, it’s been going really well, but when it comes to LODs, I can’t seem to find a be-all end-all solution like in Cascade.
The best I’ve gotten was to manually tweak the Emitter State Scalability settings to scale down emission based on distance, but unlike Cascade, I can’t directly tweak the particle size or color depending on LODs. Once again, I have to use modules that will lerp these values based on distance.
Am I missing something or is this the only way to (currently) LOD particles? I can’t find any useful documentation on this or the Scalability Settings, which seem to only be per quality bracket. Any help would be immensely appreciated!
Yeah, I saw that too. It gives a few extra options, but it would seem there are no actual LODs per se. You can interpolate/modulate any attributes using Emitter.Scalability.DisanceFraction if you want to use the emitter’s scalability settings, or Engine.Owner.LODDistanceFraction when using the system’s scalability settings. So you can fade out alpha, emission rate or size for example, but can’t swap out the material or a mesh for a less expensive one. I think that’s just how it is now!
That seems consistent with how Niagara works in general – it’s very DIY. There’s almost nothing “under the hood” you can’t change – even basic things like how particles are spawned.
So, I guess they expect you to know what do to with the variables they provide.
Though, Niagara is evolving, so I imagine there will be more built-in modules for things as time goes on.
