UE5.5 Niagara — How can I keep animated smoke close to a moving skeletal mesh without using Local Space?

General Discussion
1

Hello !

Hello I hope I can get some help, I’m creating a black and purple shadow aura for an animated monster in Unreal Engine 5.5.

The Niagara system is attached to the character Blueprint and contains three emitters. The particles are spawned using Skeletal Mesh Location with triangle surface sampling.

When the monster moves, the world-space smoke stays behind and creates a very long trail. Enabling Local Space keeps the effect attached, but makes the smoke movement look too rigid.

I would like the smoke to:

  • remain close to the animated body;
  • follow the character’s general movement;
  • retain some soft secondary motion;
  • create only a very short trail;
  • continue sampling the deformed skeletal mesh.

Would Mesh Reproduction Sprites be appropriate for the closest layer? For the other emitters, should I use inherited owner velocity, an attraction force, or another method to constrain particles near the animated mesh?

I used smoke design but probably this is not the best way, in my mind I imagine like fire on all the monster but in shadow style, if someone has some tips ot video maybe.

Thank you!

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2

If you want the smoke to stay close to the character without looking too weird I would say the best option would probably be to lower the smoke particle’s lifetime and raise the spawn rate, that would make it so the smoke is most of the time on character and the trail would get shorter, also using a little bit of inherited velocity doesn’t seem like a bad idea.

3

If you want to go further you can also resample the skeletal mesh deterministically each frame, and use it as an attractor or to softly blend you particles to the new bone location.

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5

Okay thank you for your advices, I will let you know if that works how I want =)

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