material-vfx

name	material-vfx
description	Material authoring and VFX workflow for the Flopperam Unreal Engine MCP. Covers material creation, expression graphs, Niagara particle systems, Chaos destruction, and curve assets. Use when creating materials, material instances, Niagara systems, destruction effects, or procedural audio.

Material & VFX Workflow

Materials

Inspect Before Edit

Always run material_inspect before editing an existing material to understand:

• Current expression graph structure
• Existing connections and parameters
• Texture references and shader stats
• Parent chain (for Material Instances)

Creating Materials

material_edit(operation="create_material", material_path="/Game/Materials/M_MyMaterial")

Material Workflow

1. search_assets with class_names=["Texture2D"] — find textures
2. material_edit with create_material — create base material
3. material_edit — create parameters (scalar, vector, texture) and expressions
4. material_edit — wire expressions to material properties (BaseColor, Roughness, Metallic, Normal, Emissive, etc.)
5. material_edit with recompile_material — compile
6. material_inspect — verify graph, connections, parameter setup

Material Instances

Create instances that inherit from a parent material and expose parameter overrides without recompiling the parent shader.

Material Functions

Reusable expression subgraphs that can be shared across materials.

Material Parameter Collections

Global parameter sets accessible from any material — useful for time-of-day, weather, global tinting.

Pin Name Resolution

material_edit auto-retries single-input pin name resolution — passing empty to_input_name for single-input nodes (Sine, Cosine, Abs, Normalize) is the canonical form.

Niagara VFX

System Architecture

• NiagaraSystem — top-level container with emitters
• NiagaraEmitter — particle behavior (spawn, update, render)
• NiagaraScript — reusable module graphs

Workflow

1. niagara_inspect — read-only system inspection (emitters, modules, parameters, renderers)
2. niagara_edit — create/modify systems, emitters, user parameters, renderers
3. niagara_script_edit — author reusable NiagaraScript module graphs (custom particle behavior)

Spawning Niagara in Blueprints

Use function_call with SpawnSystemAtLocation from /Script/Niagara.NiagaraFunctionLibrary:

• Pin defaults: SystemTemplate (asset path), Location (vector), Rotation (rotator), Scale (vector)

Chaos Destruction

chaos_edit handles Geometry Collections:

• Fracture geometry into pieces
• Clustering (how pieces group)
• Damage thresholds (when things break)
• Physics properties for debris

Curve Assets

ramp_authoring creates:

• UCurveFloat — scalar curves (falloff, opacity over time)
• UCurveVector — vector curves (position paths, wind)
• UCurveLinearColor — color gradients (material ramps, VFX color over life)

Author the curve FIRST, then reference its path from the consumer (material, Niagara module, widget animation, etc.).

Procedural Audio

metasound_edit — MetaSound graph authoring:

• Oscillators (sine, saw, square, noise)
• Filters (low-pass, high-pass, band-pass)
• Envelopes (ADSR)
• Mixers and gain
• Sample players

sound_asset_edit — traditional audio:

• SoundCue graphs (attenuation, random, modulator, mixer nodes)
• SoundClass hierarchy
• SoundAttenuation curves and spatialization settings

PCG (Procedural Content Generation)

pcg_graph_edit — PCG graph authoring:

• Point generators and samplers
• Filters and density operators
• Mesh spawners with typed pin wiring
• Landscape-aware placement