Vortex Grenade VFX
Recreating the destiny 2 vortex grenade using UE5's Niagara Particle System
Introduction
In this article I will show and explain how the Vortex Grenade visual effects were recreated using Niagara in UE5.
Vortex Grenade effects in Destiny 2
Here is an example video of the original effect:
Niagara particle effects breakdown
The Niagara system ended up looking like this:
In order to recreate the effects of the vortex grenade, I divided the effects into three main sections:
- The impact decal which is applied onto the surface the grenade hits and lingers for a few seconds after its duration expires.
- The main explosion effects which are the initial effects shown when the grenade impacts a surface or target.
- The vortex effect which lingers where the grenade impacted for a few seconds (this is the area of effect that applies damage if any targets enter it) before dissapearing.
Impact decal
The impact decal is handled by a single Niagara Emmiter using a Decal Renderer (a new emmiter renderer introduced in UE 5.2). Most of the effects for the decal are handled inside the material. Through the use of noise textures, the cracks and energy effects are randomized each time the decal is spawned by adding a random noise offset to the noise texture’s input uv coordinates.
Main explosion
For the main explosion, the effects were divided into 5 different sprite emmiters shown below:
Vortex
Finally the vortex effects are a mix of sprite and mesh renderer emitters that start playing on the emitter with a second delay with respect to the main explosion emmiters
Screen shake
As an extra game-feel addition, when the grenade first spawns the vortex effects, a small screen shake effect is palyed at the location of the grenade to all nearby players. This can be seen in the video at the top of the article (around the 20 second mark).