Technical Artist Edoardo Grimaldi has experimented with Unreal Engine 5's Niagara, a built-in toolset for setting up visual effects in the engine, showcasing Rats Horde, an impressive custom-made system that lets one simulate myriads of interactive rats.
As the author explains, this system utilizes Niagara for GPU particle simulation, enabling the rats to detect and avoid the player and lights. The system incorporates diverse states for each rat, a Level of Detail mechanism, and VAT animations. Moreover, the system is exceptionally optimized and offers cost-effective performance, especially considering the number of particles spawned.
