Introduction to Lightweight Emitters for Niagara in Unreal Engine

Unreal Engine’s Niagara system empowers developers with the tools to create stunning particle effects. Lightweight Emitters offer a way to balance visual brilliance with performance efficiency. By optimizing these particle systems, developers can ensure smooth gameplay and high frame rates, making them essential for any project aiming for both beauty and performance.

Let’s explore with iRender!

The Niagara system is Unreal Engine’s next-generation visual effects (VFX) toolset. It allows artists to create complex particle simulations without needing to write code. Niagara is highly adaptable and flexible, enabling technical artists to add custom functionality independently. 

In the Niagara VFX system, there are four core components:

Systems: Niagara systems are containers for multiple emitters, all combined into one effect.

Emitters: Niagara emitters are containers for modules and are designed for single purposes but are re-usable. They allow for creating simulations with the module stack and rendering them in multiple ways within the same emitter.

Modules: Niagara modules are the base level of Niagara VFX. Modules are the equivalent of Cascade’s behaviors. Modules speak to common data, encapsulate behaviors, stack with other modules, and write functions.

Parameters: Parameters are an abstraction of data in a Niagara simulation. Parameter types are assigned to a parameter to define the data that parameter represents. There are four types of parameters: 

• • • Primitive: This type of parameter defines numeric data of varying precision and channel widths.
    • Enum: This type of parameter defines a fixed set of named values, and assumes one of the named values.
    • Struct: This type of parameter defines a combined set of Primitive and Enum types.
    • Data Interfaces: This type of parameter defines functions that provide data from external data sources. This can be data from other parts of UE4, or data from an outside application.

Niagara lightweight emitters, also called stateless emitters, are optimized to minimize (and in some cases eliminate) the use of tick during the simulation. 

In addition, lightweight emitters don’t need to be compiled, which results in a faster workflow and the amount of emitters in a system will have less impact on performance. This means that in most cases a stateless emitter will be significantly more performant than stateful (traditional) emitter.

Stateless emitters were primarily included to lower Niagara’s memory and CPU costs and speed up VFX artists’ workflows. It:

• • • Reduce Game Thread tick cost if the Niagara System is fully stateless.
    • Remove the concurrent tick cost per stateless emitter.
    • Reduce Render Thread cost when the Niagara System is fully stateless.
    • Reduce memory cost, as there are no scripts or particle information in memory.
    • Removes performance impact of emitter count and particle instance count.
    • Reduce (and sometimes remove) the need for compilation.

Step 1: Right-click in the Content Browser, and select Niagara System.

Step 2: In the Asset Browser, select the FountainLightweight system, and click Create.

Step 3: Next open the NS_Fountain_LW system in the Niagara Editor. This system template includes a lightweight emitter for a fountain effect. 

Step 1: Double-click the name of the lightweight emitter to edit the field. Rename the emitter Fountain-LW.

Step 2: Select the emitter, then click Spawn Rate. Change the Rate setting to 300.

Step 3: In the emitter, leave the default settings for the following modules:

• • • Initialize Particle
    • Shape Location
    • Add Velocity
    • Drag
    • Gravity Force

Step 4: Click the Scale Color module. Change the color to red, so you can distinguish more easily between the regular and lightweight systems when testing. Then click OK.

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References and image sources: dev.epicgames.com