Hi everyone,
I recently worked through the new version of the Vertex Animation Textures tutorial from SideFX for Unreal (link to tutorial), and I came across an undocumented issue that was hard to pin down. After much troubleshooting, my colleague Michael Hall and I discovered a workaround, which I hope will save others time and frustration.
The Issue: The problem we encountered was a double-triggered animation effect when running the Vertex Animation Textures in Unreal Engine Through Niagara. Here’s how we solved it.
Solution Steps:
- In Your Base Material:
- Place a RemapValueRange node.
- Add four Constant variables to the node.
- Convert one of the constants to a Parameter and name it something descriptive. I used NumberofFramesFromHoudini, representing the number of frames in your vertex animation set up in Houdini or another software.
- Add a Dynamic Parameter Node:
- Drop in a Dynamic Parameter node and give it a name to track.
- Set Up in Niagara:
- Within your Niagara System, place a Dynamic Material Parameters module.
- Switch from a Float Interface to Float From Curve.
- Make sure to flip the curve from (0.0, 0.0) to (1.0, 1.0)
- Finally, set your Niagara System and emitter to Once to avoid double-triggered animations.
We wanted to share our findings here to help anyone encountering the same issue,
I hope this helps. Let us know if you’ve found additional workarounds!