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Niagara Beginners to advanced in Unreal Engine 5

Name: Niagara Beginners to advanced in Unreal Engine 5
Rating: 4.6 (778 reviews)

Learn real time VFX and Niagara in Unreal Engine 5 from scratch.

Created byRaffi Bedross

Last updated 4/2026

English

English [Auto],French [Auto],

What you'll learn

Learn how to create real time effects
Learn Niagara by creating effects
Understand how Niagara works
Creating variety of effects for games.
Creating stylized fire
Creating stylized explosion
Creating Energy Ball
Niagara fluids

Course content

24 sections • 162 lectures • 14h 49m total length

Introduction2:03
Learn the Niagara real-time particle system in Unreal Engine 5 to create effects without coding. Start with simple effects and progress to advanced ones, unlocking numerous vfx possibilities.
Overview10:25
Master practical VFX in Unreal Engine 5 using Niagara, creating particles, stylized explosions, portals, and energy effects through hands-on projects and scratchpad workflows.
Creating your first niagara system5:08
Create your first Niagara emitter and assemble a Niagara system using the fountain template, then adjust the environment, preview scene settings, and gravity and noise forces for dynamic particles.
Initialize Particles4:13
we will take a look at initialize particles module.
Dynamic input curve6:29
Understand Dynamic input curve and how it works
Burst particles5:31
Using the burst particles to add explosion effect
Start creating the Missile effect3:19
We are going to start creating a missile effect in niagara.
Creating the Trail6:19
adding a trail to the missile
Adding capsule explosion3:55
We are going to add particle burst when the capsule dies.
Quiz 1
Exercise0:10
Download Unreal Engine Project Fog stage0:08
Shape location4:00
Explore shape location in Niagara and learn to emit particles from points, spheres, cylinders, toruses, boxes, or planes. Adjust radii, dimensions, emitter scale, and rotation modes to control distribution.
Kill particles in volume1:21
Explore how to kill particles in Niagara with a volume-based approach. Use the kill shape, invert volume, and switch shapes to control when particles die inside or outside a volume.
Adding velocity to spawned particles3:22
Learn to add velocity to spawned particles in Niagara, using the spawn-time velocity module with from point and in cone options to control direction, speed, gravity, and random velocity.
Forces in particle spawn and particle update3:05
Explore how vertex velocity and vector noise force differ when added under particle spawn versus particle update in Niagara, Unreal Engine 5: spawn applies at birth, update throughout lifetime.

Downloadable resources0:01
Portal intro and breakdown0:57
Create a simple magic portal in Unreal Engine 5 using Niagara, with a smoky spiral main body, a ring, and particles flowing in and out.
Creating the spiral texture7:49
Create a spiral texture in Photoshop using grid alignment, black and white painting, and smart object workflow, save as PNG for use in a Niagara emitter in Unreal Engine 5.
Setup the spiral emitter7:09
Creating the ring texture6:47
Create a ring texture in Photoshop, export as PNG, import into Unreal Engine 5, and build a translucent, unlit Niagara material with a spiral emitter.
Creating the radial smoke5:32
Create smoke ring by building a matte material from a noise texture and converting it to radial coordinates. Tune tiling and emissive color in Niagara to render the ring smoke.
Creating the particles5:21
Learn to create two Niagara emitters in Unreal Engine 5, emitting particles from a torus, tune velocity, gravity, drag, lifetime, and color, and align particles to velocity with glow.

Emitting meshes5:59
Emitting meshes in Niagara, create a system with a mesh renderer using the arrow mesh, adjust spawn, velocity, gravity, and enable smooth orientation toward a vector.
Multiple meshes and Velocity alignment2:38
Align meshes to velocity with flight orientation or velocity facing mode, adjust velocity to control speed, and emit multiple meshes from one emitter using random mesh renderers.
Intro to mesh trails0:39
Modeling the trail meshes in Maya3:25
Create trail mesh in Maya with sweep mesh, shape as five-sided star, twist, raise precision, normalize UVs, and export trail; then build a capsule from half a sphere and export.
Creating the Capsule material6:59
Create a matte translucent capsule material using a noise texture, unlit shading, and emissive color with opacity via a linear gradient and panner animation; drive a Niagara mesh trail.
Creating trail material and particles10:22
Create a translucent, unlit trail material in Unreal Engine 5 using Niagara, with emissive color, dual linear gradients for falloff, and animated panner to drive mesh-based trail particles.
Controlling the texture speed2:39
Master texture speed control by varying UV scale and panner settings, demonstrated on planes with uniform versus scaled UVs, using Maya and a texture noise in the material.
Twisted mesh12:36
Create a twisted mesh effect in Maya and Unreal Engine 5 using manual and sweep mesh methods, refine UVs, and implement a Niagara workflow to emit multiple meshes.

Adjust the exposure of the scene.3:05
I'll show you some tips about the scene exposure.
Creating fresnel effect for the sphere5:08
Creating the Fresnel effect, this will give us nice glowy edge.
Creating the sphere emitter and assign material4:05
Emit the mesh from particle
Creating the projected lightning on the sphere9:18
Creating the lightning texture and material.
Creating Emitter for projected lightning3:50
Assigning the material to the particle.
Creating the inside lightning7:35
Creating the lightning inside the sphere.
Creating the outside lightning8:11
Emitting lightning from the surface of the sphere.
Creating the outside lightning Large4:42
Adding large lightning
Adding particles9:15
Adding particles

Understanding the dynamic parameter3:09
You will understand how the dynamic parameter works with niagara.
Creating the material11:42
Creating the erode effect
Adding variation using dynamic parameter4:29
Another example of using dynamic parameter to add variation to the a texture offset.
Particle position2:46
using powerful particle position world space node
Particle direction and radius3:27
Changing the color of the particles based on their direction and radius

Downloadable resources0:02
Creating the first layer7:51
Creating the second layer5:20
Create a second material for two spheres in Niagara, apply a texture with color and power adjustments, and use texture coordinates and UV tiling to build a moving layered look.
Creating the ground smoke material2:30
Create a matte smoke material in Niagara by using a radial gradient, setting translucent and unlit, and linking particle color alpha to opacity.
Creating the particle smoke8:08

Creating the electrons and ribbons5:29
Create a Niagara atom animation by building a mesh emitter with a sphere, configuring a three-particle burst and rotation around a point with random directions, then apply yellow electron material.
Creating the Nucleus6:47
Create ribbons around emitters in Niagara by enabling ribbon render and one ribbon per particle. Duplicate electrons, assign red and blue materials, and enable local space to orbit the nucleus.

Requirements

knowing the fundamentals of Unreal Engine like User Interface and navigating in the viewport

Description

This course is a projects based course

No presentations, Straight to the point, no time wasting, it's all about creating effects.

Niagara is the most powerful and flexible particle system in the game engines,

One of the great features of Niagara is its ability to simulate millions of particles in real-time, making it perfect for creating realistic weather effects, explosions, and other large-scale effects. It also has a comprehensive set of tools for optimizing performance and controlling particle behavior based on various parameters such as distance, speed, and other game-related events.

Niagara also has

a flexible and powerful system for working with materials, allowing developers to create unique and detailed particle effects that can be seamlessly integrated into the game world.

With Niagara, the technical artist has the ability to create additional functionality on their own, without the assistance of a programmer, You can create very complicated effects without using a single line of code. It's flexible and easy to understand.

I'll teach you the powerful particle system in unreal engine by creating a wide variety of real time effects.

We are going to start supper simple then gradually we're gonna move to create more attractive and professional effects.

This course is for beginners who don't know anything about Niagara or for those who want to dive into real time FX.

After you finish watching this course, you will have solid knowledge in Niagara and you'll be able to create your own real time FX confidently.

This is what we're gonna do:

Fast introduction to Niagara emitters and System.
Creating Missile effect.
Stylized fire.
Smoke.
Stylized Explosion.
Creating Energy Ball.
Creating materials for your game VFX
Nuke Explosion
And more VFX

Before you enroll in this course you should have basic knowledge of Unreal engine like understanding the user interface and basic knowledge about materials.

Who this course is for:

Unreal Engine users who want to learn Niagara
Unreal Engine users who want to learn how to create visual effects inside Unreal Engine.
Unreal engine programmers.
Any game developer who wants to learn real time FX in Unreal Engine.

Niagara Beginners to advanced in Unreal Engine 5

What you'll learn

Explore related topics

Course content

Introduction15 lectures • 59min

Stylized fire3 lectures • 11min

Creating smoke effects3 lectures • 15min

Creating Stylized Explosion5 lectures • 26min

Magic Portal7 lectures • 34min

Working with meshes in Niagara8 lectures • 45min

Energy Ball9 lectures • 55min

Dynamic Parameter and particle nodes5 lectures • 26min

Shield Effect5 lectures • 24min

Atom2 lectures • 12min

Requirements

Description

Who this course is for: