Effects
Overview
A PopcornFXEffect is the UE asset (.uasset) that will contain the sources of the PopcornFX Effect (.pkfx) (see Effect production pipeline).
Importing an effect
Effects are imported like any other UE asset, with any of those two methods:
-
Click the Import button and select the source pkfx
-
Drag & drop the source pkfx file into your project’s content browser.
Once the effect is imported, you should see the PopcornFXEffect asset in your content browser with its associated thumbnail (see Capturing thumbnails).
Effect editor
A dedicated asset editor is available for PopcornFX effects. You can edit default attribute values, materials and preview it here. Double-click a PopcornFXEffect asset to open it:
Effect materials
PopcornFX renderers are grouped together by compatibility: renderer type, enabled features, properties like diffuse and emissive texture etc…
When compatible (when all the properties above are the same for multiple renderers), they are batched together in a single draw call that uses the same UE material and properties.
This section lists each draw call, where you can see what type of renderer is drawn (billboard, ribbon, mesh, etc…), see which renderers are batched in this draw call in the Batched renderers section and edit the in-use material and its associated properties. Overriding a property will update it for all the renderers batched in this draw call. This can only be edited per effect, thus for every existing instance of the effect. If you want to modify properties per instance, use attributes and attribute samplers in emitters.
You can also edit individual renderers if you want a more fine-grained control. All the renderers are listed under the Edit individual renderers section at the bottom of the panel. Beware that this will update the batching: editing a renderer will make it incompatible with the ones from its draw call; it will be removed from it. If possible, it will be batched in another draw call, otherwise a new draw call has to be created. Your effect performance can be affected.
The plugin provides a set of default UE materials compatible with the various renderers the effect uses. When importing your effect, it will associate one for each renderer of your effect. You can override them with custom ones too. Learn more about how UE materials parameters are linked to effects here.
Effect dependencies
You will find here every asset dependency (Textures, Meshes, Atlases, Sounds, ..) the effect needs for update (simulation) and rendering.
All dependencies can be overridden by a custom asset as long as the new asset resides inside the Pack Mount Point. This is the lowest level edition that you can do. Use this to fix import/pipeline issues, if some of the assets you used in PopcornFX editor are not supported in UE for example. Don’t use this to "edit" your effect.
Effect attributes
This section lists the effect’s attributes and attribute samplers.
Modifying attributes values in this section will set default values for the effect, thus for all future instances of this effect (it will not update already existing instances).
To edit attributes per instance, edit them on emitters. Same when setting default values of an effect inside a Blueprint.
Attributes can either be set from here or in realtime via C++ or Blueprint.