Grab over 50 free Unreal Engine 5 VFX systems

The Fab store features on our list of the best places to get free video game assets, and it deserves that place even more with the new release of the new Niagara Examples Pack for Unreal Engine 5.7.

Epic Games' free collection contains over 50 VFX Niagara systems that UE5 users can take advantage of for inspiration, training or to include in projects that require real-time VFX.

The free Niagara Examples Pack covers a broad array of effects, from sparks and explosions to bullet impacts, trails, smoke, mist and weapon buffs and debuffs. There are also Animation-Notify-based footstep effects, pings and markers, lightning, hit dissolves, and more.

The effects can be used as is or customised as needed for any project. Each system has been assigned a Niagara Effect Type specifying scalability settings such as spawn limits; whether to pause or kill the system at a distance; and spawn multipliers for each scalability group.

The pack includes a dedicated gallery gameplay level to illustrate the use of each system. There are also impact and footstep systems, which make use of Niagara Data Channels and reduce the number of components spawned by handling all impacts or footsteps inside an island with a single Niagara system. Lightweight emitters also help reduce cost.

You can download the pack from Fab. Epic says it plans to update it with new systems in future releases.

Unreal Engine currently tops our guide to best game development software. For more on Epic's software, see our pick of the best Unreal Engine courses and our own roundup of Unreal Engine tutorials.