I’m wondering if there’s a way to set up a system in UE4 to allow wind to push particles around. The way I imagine doing it would be to set up an acceleration node in my particle emitters with a “WindSpeed” particle parameter to define the acceleration value. Then I’d create a blueprint for a Wind Volume that would pass a vector to any particles within it to define the “WindSpeed” particle parameter.
The only thing I don’t know how to do would be to have the Wind Volume detect particle systems within it, and pass it’s vector value to their particle parameter. Is there some way to have a blueprint search for a variable within a volume? Or maybe a better way to do wind in UE4?
you’re basically there with your logic imo - you just either make the wind volume a blueprint and then manually link to the emitters inside it, or just make the wind global and then use a get all actors of class to affect every wind particle at once, depending if you want more global or local wind control. or you could place a few special wind arrows around and then do a get all actors of class on that and sort the distance from the effect to the nearest arrow and then use that vector, which would make them nice and easy to animate - all depends on how you want the system to work.
i did put in a request with Epic about Particle Parameter Collections (like Material Parameter Collections but for Particles) a while back but nothing came of it, but that would be perfect for this sort of thing.