UE4-Particle Track

Unreal Engine is a great game engine, and ecosystem, but some seemingly basic things are really complicated to pull off. I want to have a particle follow a path, something that is pretty easy in most other systems, but not UE4.

First thing I need a path. UE4 calls these splines, but you can't import a spline! What?! I did find a video describing a workaround, but only for 3DSMax. OK more hunting turned up Bezier Curves from Blender to UE4 Splines I gave it a try by creating a text object, converting to curves, then running the script. Unfortunately when imported to UE4 every point seems to need to be rotated not quite 180 degrees. The spline is really messed up, and I haven't figured out the trick to automate.

Next I need a particle to follow the spline. This Youtube was the best description I could find, blueprint is very powerful, and I learned a little about the timeline node.

Finally I need a nice particle, CGHow has a video on doing just this.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the power of these tools, but as artist tools? terrible, terrible. I don't want the artistic flow interrupted by a ton of technical stuff. This should just be a feature. It needs to be driven from sequencer (still haven't figured that out) and a standard part of Niagara. Particles can publish their location to other particles, maybe if Niagara particles could get location information from regular objects that would provide the required functionality. Ultimately Niagara should just be able to follow a spline, and splines should be easily imported from other programs like Blender.