For this week I started making particle effects for the tires. I found a video on making a Niagara for Smoke. I downloaded the image they used and I imported it into the project. I then made it transparent and then made it into a material.
I then did the following:
I made sure that the material domain was surface and the blending mode was masked as I didn't want it to be transparent. I also made sure that the shading was unlit as I didn't want any lighting to bounce off the smoke.
Next, I then made a new Niagra system for the smoke. I imported the material.
This is what I have added to the Niagara system.
I made the spawn rate a Multiply Float and it spawns 20 at a time.
For Initialize Particle I made the lifetime Random Float Range. I set the Minimum to 1
and Maximum of 2. I then made the color a light grey colour with a white outline to make it look natural.
I then added a velocity to the smoke. I made it linear with a velocity of -100 in X, 0 in Y, and 25 in Z. I then made the velocity scale 1.0.
For particle state, I ticked the option for Kill Particles when the lifetime has elapsed. This means that the clouds will turn very small and then disappear.
I then Scale Sprite Size using the Uniform curve. I then made this curve. The smoke will start off medium-sized and then get bigger about halfway and then it will turn very small and disappear.
For the tire tracks, I used these settings:
This is the end result:
*Unfortunately I have lost all the coding that I have done to place the Niagara into an emitter and spawn the Niagara when drifting. When figuring out a frame rate issue I deleted the smoke by accident and the project auto-saved. Unfortunately, I just haven't had time to do all the coding and I never backed up the project. There was also an issue where the smoke would spawn with the car and follow the car the entire game. Unfortunately, this was an issue that I could never fix. I was hoping to re-add it but I underestimated the timeframe that I had left.*