Unreal Engine 3D Fluid To Flipbook

Source: Dev.to

Baking the Fluid Simulation

1. Create a Gas 3D simulation in a Niagara particle system.

2. Open the Niagara asset and click the Baker button.

   

3. In the Bake menu, adjust the camera so the particle is centered on the screen.

   

4. Set the bake options:

   • Name – choose a descriptive name.
   • Frame Size – 128 works well.
   • Texture Atlas Size – 1K or 2K resolution is ideal for games.
   • Click the Bake button (green arrow).

5. The bake process generates a texture atlas similar to this:

   

Creating the Material

1. Create a new material and set its Blend Mode to Translucent.

2. Press T to add a Texture Sample node and assign the generated atlas texture to it.

3. To remove the black background:

   • Divide RGB by Alpha and connect the result to Emissive Color.
   • Connect Alpha to Opacity.

   

Creating the Sprite Emitter

1. Use the Sprite Template to create a new Niagara particle system.

2. Add the following modules (in this order):

   • Scale Sprite Size (optional, for size control)
   • Sub UV Animation

   

3. Configure the Sub UV Animation module to use the texture atlas you baked.

4. To adjust sprite size, connect a Scale Sprite Size node as shown:

   

5. Enable looping: open the Emitter Update module, set Loop Count to Infinite, and adjust the Loop Delay as needed.

   

That’s it—you now have a 2D flip‑book version of your 3D fluid simulation ready to use in any Unreal Engine project.