Niagara Fluids Smoke Portal VFX Tutorial in Unreal Engine 5.3 | Real-Time Simulation | RedefineFX

This Niagara Fluids tutorial is just one of 15 videos inside the free Niagara Fluids Crash Course. Grab it here: redefinefx.com/blast/
In this unreal engine 5.3 tutorial we're using Niagara Fluids to create a volumetric, real-time simulation of a magical smoke portal. I go over creating particles, placing them on a torus shape, spinning them with a vortex force, and then using them as a source for smoke. We also add some wind and tweak the overall niagara simulation settings to get a quickly dissipating smoke. Some nice blue lighting and a few rocks from Quixel bridge complete the effect.
Enrollment in Niagara Fluids Immersion is closing in a few days redefinefx.com/epic/
Niagara Fluids comes bundled with unreal engine 5.3, download it here: www.unrealengine.com/en-US/do...
Are you interested in more Niagara Fluids VFX tutorials? Please let me know in the comments.
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0:00 Welcome to RedefineFX
0:15 Grab my FREE Niagara Fluids Crash Course
0:39 Niagara Particles Setup Starts
3:59 Niagara Fluids Smoke
8:08 Improving the volumetric simulation
8:51 Lighting setup in Unreal Engine
10:13 Adding Extra Particles
11:40 Thumbs up and thank you for watching!
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#niagaratutorial #vfxtutorial #unrealenginetutorial #vfxtutorial #cgi #vfxartist #visualeffects #computergraphics #3danimation #3dartist

[@RedefineFX]

Want to learn Niagara Fluids? Join thousands of VFX artists who have taken my new (and completely FREE!) Niagara Fluids Crash Course (15 videos): redefinefx.com/blast/

[@Legendary9Tails]

I've gone to your website and scoured it. There is no download link on that page. I signed up as a student and it's not in there either. edit: On Opera GX it doesn't show the email field so you're unable to continue. I tried in Chrome and it worked.

[@RedefineFX]

@@Legendary9Tails 👍

[@victoralexandersilva5212]

Exactly what i needed, you're amazing!

[@UnrealEngineLearn]

This single tutorial has sold me on buying your course. So impressive.

[@deygus]

Now that is absolutely cool as hell!

[@TallSilhouette]

I like how relatively simple/compact this node system is! So many other programs end up with this massive web that can be so intimidating!

[@RedefineFX]

100% agree

[@betraid]

Looks beautiful, thanks for tutorial👍

[@mdesignanimationsricardomo513]

Awesome Jesse, your famous portal 💥💥 ...As always an excellent tutorial my friend!

[@RedefineFX]

😄 now Phoenix, EmberGen and Niagara all get their blue portal tut

[@mdesignanimationsricardomo513]

You r the best@@RedefineFX

[@user-ps6ds5ov2l]

Thank You!🎉

[@ARTISTICALATION]

you are the best 👍

[@mooiijloup]

thank's duuude

[@rodericdarkwell]

Hi there! AMAZING TUTORIAL!! Makes me happy to see there´s people willing to teach so much about Unreal out there specially in this platform. Quick question if you don´t mind. What are the specs of your pc? I don´t have that good of a pc but it´s quite reasonable, and I dont know why but every time I use niagara my GPU goes nuts going to 90% to even 100% crashing my Unreal. I have a RTX 3060 TI btw. My regards from Portugal!!😄

[@kazioo2]

Standard Niagara with sprites and particles shouldn't be a problem but Niagara FLUIDS is a whole different beast and can crash even better GPUs if used more than just for small things. This is cutting edge stuff, not really meant yet for games on a larger scale.

[@RedefineFX]

This was recorded on a 4090 and yes these sims will use 100% of your GPU

[@rodericdarkwell]

@@kazioo2 Oh ok... is there an alternative to have something similar more optimized for games? Thank you so much for the input

[@RedefineFX]

For games just use regular Niagara flipbooks

[@Celestetinepte]

Awesome work ! Thanks a lot. Tho once packaged, the smoke isn't working anymore. Any idea why ? The built game is only displaying the "additionnal" particles.

[@jgracekritzinger7187]

Hello, love this tutorial, I have an issue when scaling up the system, the glowing particles don’t seem the scale up with the rest of the gas particles. Is there any way to fix this? Thank you!

[@CraigCapture]

Interesting, I'm in 5.3 and don't have a set "Fluid Source Attributes" as an option to continue the tutorial past the 4 minute mark.

[@RedefineFX]

Enable the plugin

[@CraigCapture]

Thank you. Didn't realize there were any they weren't indexing when I typed Niagra...cause I was spelling it wrong.

[@omri1324]

Looks great! How expensive is this for real time games and VR?

[@dahaniffer]

time for the tyflow prisim tutorials

[@steveherridge8965]

Ace tut. Can you emit smoke along a curve and up the level of detail, for say, a high res print?

[@RedefineFX]

You can emit particles along a curve, but there's currently no path follow force for the smoke. The detail can be raised when you cache the sim.

[@Raitan2008]

Great tut...can you do one on how to make Marvel style super hero energy balls and blasts? Or magic balls and blast that follow the body or the hands?

[@RedefineFX]

Noted. Thanks for the great suggestion

[@soggymcfries8072]

Which GPU are you using?

[@Merengil]

I couldn't see the smoke at 5:27 . After some digging, I had to switch the simtarget of emitter_particles to GPU and the bounds to fixed too in the emitter properties (I did it only for the Grid3D_Gas emitter). I hope this helped!

[@theun45ak3n6]

Thank you!

[@francescoadamo5448]

fantastic! this effect can be used for games?

[@RedefineFX]

Yes, but you’ll probably need to lower the resolution

[@briankranevitter3114]

Lowering the bounds size also helps a lot! If you don't need the trail to cover a large area, make the volume smaller and it'll improve the performance a lot.

[@MrHollt]

Anyone getting "compilation failed" the second they add the grid3d_gas_master_emitter?

[@WolfGuy1]

Hi! thanks for awesome tutorial, Is there a way for changing torus large radius so it looks portal is opening?

[@RedefineFX]

Thanks. Yes this can be done by animating a user parameter. This is covered in my Niagara immersion course.

[@maruserum2649]

Hi Jesse, I love your work, but i only know 3ds Max. Will you ever do a 3ds Max tutorial for any Effects or whatever again ? (I also would buy it btw 😅) thanks and best regards

[@RedefineFX]

Yes, but Unreal is the current focus. If there's ever an exciting update to Max, I will cover it. Same with tyFlow and Phoenix, but it's been pretty quiet there for a long time.

[@colla1985]

I was wondering if the Niagara volume could cast shadows on objects? any ideas . Anyway, fantastic tutorials seires. Love it

[@RedefineFX]

Currently you only get shadows when rendering with path tracer. Also thanks a lot

[@colla1985]

Great Thanks. In your experience in Niagara do u know if is possible to caching out a vdb file seq to handling it thrd part software ? @@RedefineFX

[@RedefineFX]

currently no VDB export @@colla1985

[@MatthewScarboro_VFX]

Can you think of any reason as to why this type of particle system only shows in one lens via VR? I've tried every permutation of options that I can think of to no avail. I've searched to the end of the net and have seen people having one lens issues but nothing like this, and most of the solutions consist of workarounds that have been deprecated/fixed versions ago. Its not stereo because that's disabled, and when in first person/third person the particle system looks as it should but preview in VR it only shows in the left lens. I have a few other particle systems in the scene that show up as they should during VR. I figured through process of elimination it has to be something within the emitter settings causing this issue if the other systems are showing up as they should and this one isn't, but I can't seem to figure this out and find a workaround, its driving me crazy. Any suggestions/thoughts would be most appreciated. Great work and thank you for what you do. P.S. Im using 5.3.2

[@sorphilia6447]

Hey can you make a tutorial for the warp gate in some marvel movies that looks like hexagon? It's usually used for ships jumps like in miss Marvel and guardian of the galaxy. So much appreciated thanks

[@RedefineFX]

Noted

[@sarulaplays6861]

@RedefineFX Looking at getting one of your courses but can't decide between Niagara or Embergen, which do you feel looks better / more realistic? I would predominantly be using Unreal 5 path tracing as the render engine!

[@RedefineFX]

I always tell people to learn both as they both have their advantages but if you’re primarily an unreal engine artist then learn niagar first as it lives entirely inside UE

[@victoralexandersilva5212]

How could we optimize this for a game, beside using cache in the sequencer and lowing the resolution? is there something else we could do to reduce drawcalls and improve the optimization? Thanks in advance!

[@RedefineFX]

Big one is how many lights illuminate the smoke - makes a huge difference I found. Turning off collisions with ground will also help.

[@FPChris]

Do you have a tutorial for interactive ground fog? Like a character walking through knee high fog in a grave yard for example.

[@RedefineFX]

Yes. This is covered in my Niagara course

[@lucaslupo9992]

Thanks for the tutorial! But I followed all your steps and when I render the portal it's all really blurry and low quality. Any clue to fix this? I tried rendering without anti-aliasing and in epic mode.

[@stepler74]

Problem ! After changing Particle Source Type (OFF on Emiter) stops displaying smoke. The portal emitter remains, but the smoke completely disappears. What could be the reason ?

[@prajwalmohithe1977]

same, got any fix ??

[@Sxyza_0]

I dont have the Details screen

[@dibellagiodigital9680]

Hello Jesse, do you know why I cant find the node "Set fluid source "?

[@RedefineFX]

Enable the niagar fluids plugin

[@dibellagiodigital9680]

@@RedefineFX haha, yes, I feel myself like a fool when I realized that. Thank you!!

[@dibellagiodigital9680]

@@RedefineFX is there a way to make this effect visible on lumen reflections o pathtracing?

[@erdincozdemir2148]

Thanks for the tutorial. Resolution max Axis is 400 and pressure Solve Iterations is 8, but the smoke does not transition smoothly as in your video and creates a flicker effect. Any idea why? I couldn't find what I did wrong.

[@RedefineFX]

Could be because your GPU can’t keep up. Try actually lowering the resolution instead see if it stops flickering

[@Blazer8496]

Hi, Jesse! I was trying to import these Niagara systems into other unreal projects but Unreal doesn't recognize them due to some reason. Was there some special method to it?

[@RedefineFX]

The Niagara fluids plugin needs to be enabled again in a new project

[@Lime_1729]

hey my why arent my dots appearing when I put an emmiuter and set the emmiter to whatever number you said. nothing is showing up im getting a blank screen, it says its there but nothing is there how do i fix this?

[@user-sx9pb4zz3i]

Since my Macbook M1 Max is failing me completely with Niagara Fluids - what windows laptop models / graphic cards can you recommend for Unreal Engine (and maybe also Houdini)? I want to use its full potential but since I travel a lot, it needs to be a laptop solution. What aspects should I look out for to make it as powerful as possible?

[@RedefineFX]

I guess MSI gaming with a 4080

[@user-sx9pb4zz3i]

@@RedefineFX thanks! that's a graphics card for a desktop PC though, right? I'm looking for a laptop solution.

[@fernandoperez4403]

El tutorial es buenisimo, pero la imagen se ve muy mal. esto esta siendo una barrera para mi. Gracias por lo que haces, me pareces genial

[@enesterov]

A very useful and entertaining lesson! Thank you for your contribution to teaching this wonderful instrument! Tell me please, is it possible to stop, freeze a certain frame of the Niagara Fluid simulation?

[@RedefineFX]

Thanks! Yes, you need to cache it first

[@enesterov]

@@RedefineFX thank you, but unfortunately the cache only helps to increase performance, but does not stop the simulation playing

[@RedefineFX]

@enesterov oh I see what you mean. Yeah perhaps with blueprints. Not something I can cover inside a KZbin comment

[@enesterov]

@@RedefineFX Of course, in any case, thank you very much!

[@rasaidtsang4456]

Hi Sir, is it possible to make snow globe effect (flowing snow inside glass ball) by niagara?

[@RedefineFX]

Yes, falling snow is pretty easy to make with Niagara

[@rasaidtsang4456]

@@RedefineFX kzbin.info/www/bejne/gV6bi6uvZbB9e6s but im not sure that is niagara abled to flow inside a glass ball up and down with collision?

[@RedefineFX]

make sure the sphere is a shell, make the particles a gpu sim, add collision module, some vortex force, drag, gravity, wind@@rasaidtsang4456

[@rasaidtsang4456]

@@RedefineFX Thanks so much!!

[@user-gl1tg8ou8x]

Jesse, hi, I'm a beginner at ue5 and I have a problem. When I create a grid 3d gas master emitter and want to move the pivot point of the emitter, I also have a red box moving, and in your video it stands still. What could be my problem? Thanks

[@RedefineFX]

This is done inside the grid emitter summary settings

[@lntredits9486]

is there a way to appear and dissapear the portal like to make it look like its opening and closing ( to get a better understand of what i mean...lets say thanos appears in a scene...there is no portal..then the portal appears...he walks out and then the portal closed again...i wanna make the portal open and close..is there any way ?

[@RedefineFX]

Yes but I can’t explain it in a KZbin comment. Maybe I’ll make another tutorial

[@lntredits9486]

@@RedefineFX this would be really great because im working on a very big project right now and this portal is excatly what i have left to do...i just need it to appear and issapear in a good looking way..this would finish the project pretty much so hopefully you can make a tutorial pretty soon

[@aakburns]

'set fluid source attributes' is missing. I'm on version 5.3. What am I missing?

[@RedefineFX]

Enable the Niagara fluids plugin

[@GregCorson]

Great tutorial, but on my 4090 I can't even get it to do a fixed 30fps doing a scene similar to yours. I had to turn the resolution down from 500 to 400 and the GPU is over 70%. Is this normal? Seems like a lot.

[@RedefineFX]

That's normal

[@nicolasalarcon5538]

Hello sir and thank you so much for your work ! 4.38 seems like black magic to me, I know this is not the very point of your video but I really don't understand how you collapse the settings of the smoke emitter, can you or someone please help me ?

[@RedefineFX]

There’s an arrow in the top left corner

[@amankumarsingh2903]

Make a tutorial on Niagara waterfall pleaseee

[@RedefineFX]

Already covered in my Niagara course

[@amankumarsingh2903]

Ill check it out, thanks @@RedefineFX

[@amankumarsingh2903]

the smoke isnt visible after I change the name of emitter @@RedefineFX

[@victoralexandersilva5212]

How to make it bigger without breaking all the parameters? when i scale it or change the Torus radius it looks completely different

[@RedefineFX]

cache it first

[@victoralexandersilva5212]

How could you make it loop without havin the glitch in between? is there a way to blend the start and the end of the sequencer? thanks@@RedefineFX

[@RedefineFX]

@victoralexandersilva5212 it will keep on spinning forever but it’s not loopable in a traditional sense

[@victoralexandersilva5212]

i know what you mean, but my idea is to use the sequencer to do the cache of the simulation in a low resolution, so i could use it on a game without habing too much impact on the drawcalls. that works... but when the sequence loop, it has this glitch, so the way i imagine solving this issue would be to blend the start and the end of the sequence so you don't notice the glitch, in the same way you would do a crossfade when you're mixing music so you won't notice the change. how can i blend the start and the end on the sequencer itself? there is sadly not enought info about it online, everyone talks about blending animations of a character, but not so much about how to blend the sequencer itself for other purposes. Thanks i hope the idea is clear@@RedefineFX

[@CreativeDen007]

Vortex forces is not working for me

[@nigussusolomon643]

The smoke is black on my side for some reason. Any idea? I tried changing the smoke color but no luck

[@RedefineFX]

you on a mac by any chance?

[@nigussusolomon643]

Yeah :( @@RedefineFX

[@RedefineFX]

not supported yet@@nigussusolomon643

[@rxyce98]

Hey there my set fluid source attribute module is missing under particle update in Niagara @ 4:10

[@RedefineFX]

Enable the Niagara fluids plugin

[@vikingsound1811]

I can't see the 3d gas emitter when I add it to the nodes, any help?

[@RedefineFX]

enable the niagara fluids plugin

[@vikingsound1811]

its enabled, I can see the circular particle but not the gas@@RedefineFX

[@victoralexandersilva5212]

@@vikingsound1811 is weird, it was working for me, but after it crashed never could see the gas again :/

[@victoralexandersilva5212]

i've just started from the beginning and is working again, it might be some bug

[@cmdrhersin592]

@@RedefineFX thank you.

[@camiloguerrero2]

could you please help me? The gas emitter doesn't show the smoke.

[@ismael8926]

i had the same problem and i was doing it in a VR template, idk where you are doing it but try it in a first person template see if it works might be the template

[@user-gw6eu5ry4n]

hai Four minutes and ten seconds and nothing was found. set fluid source attributes

[@xxsleepwalkerxx3585]

You need to turn on the Plugin "NiagaraFluids" under Edit on top left.

[@user-gw6eu5ry4n]

​@@xxsleepwalkerxx3585 Thanks

[@karenpascal2155]

help! does anyone know why my smoke is black and not grey? the color does not change with lighting also :((

[@RedefineFX]

Known issue on a Mac. If you’re on PC then no idea

[@sethjezreelnara2807]

how do i find set fluid particle :((

[@RedefineFX]

Enable the Niagara fluids plugin and watch my beginner tut

[@marialuizazettermann5217]

boa noite, pergunta de quem não sabe muito sobre UE5, como habilito o Niagara FLUIDS? tenho que comprar?

[@skidzito]

Edit > Plugins > Search and active NiagaraFluids

[@RedefineFX]

It comes with unreal engine. Just enable it under plugins

[@marialuizazettermann5217]

@@RedefineFX obrigada, deu certinho, valeu ❤.

[@alfonseraffa2308]

Very epic looking effect but unfortunately it is too resource intensive and slows my machine down to a crawl. I have a high end PC. I might need to fiddle with some of the settings to get better performance.

[@RedefineFX]

Yes you can lower the resolution quite a bit and it will still look decent but run much faster

[@ismael8926]

why is my smoke so low quality? its like yours is 1080p and mine is 240p edit: i just realized that for some reason my smoke is unaffected by the density buoyancy, i put it at 1 and at -10 and there was no difference at all

[@RedefineFX]

Could be your scalability settings for the engine are set very low

[@ismael8926]

@@RedefineFX it seems the scalability is "cinematic" in the Niagara System that has the portal, i changed the scalability of the whole project to cinematic (previously epic) but it did nothing, then i redid everything in a new NS and now it works fine but the first one is still looking awful. don't know why it is but i for sure touched something i wasn't mean to

[@aakashvishwakarma7275]

same problem vro

[@frellinghazmot4443]

Crashing crashing crashing....

[@3dquicky611]

Question: Is there a way to make the smoke collide with the floor instead of on the bottom of the bounding box? I mean it wouldn't matter much if the ground was a flat plane like a frozen lake or something... but in the vast majority of cases I'd probably prefer to put the portal somewhere in the wilderness where the ground isn't flat... where's it's more rough terrain. If I do this, having the smoke terminate on a flat plane ruins the effect if it's looked @ from a low enough angle

[@3dquicky611]

Okay. So I figured out why the smoke was not colliding with my floor. I'm actually using a different kind of floor then landscape floor. I'm using another static mesh on top of the landscape mesh and it did not have collision enabled. Once i enabled it... problem solved 😊

[@azzeddindouakha3403]

gpu killing video dont bother

[@bkyc_cmetahbl]

Hi. Please tell me the characteristics of your computer

[@RedefineFX]

4090 / 3990x / 128GB ram