Five anime-style area and beam skill effects for Unreal Engine 5.8, built in Niagara, with sound. Vol.1 was all projectiles; in Vol.2 nothing flies from A to B: two in-place novas, a ground eruption, a sustained breath beam and a chain lightning that jumps from target to target. Each effect is a full cast cycle: an anticipation beat, the release, and an impact on every target it reaches.

Requirements: Unreal Engine 5.8. Only two engine plugins are used, Niagara and Engine Cameras (camera shakes); both are enabled by default. No C++, no input mappings, no project settings needed.

Quick start (60 seconds)

1. Press Play in the demo. Open Maps/Demo/L_StylizedSkillFX_Demo_Vol2 and press Play. Keys 1–5 cast each effect at the five dummies (the beam and the chain from you, the area casts on the ground under a dummy); every hit prints Hit <Actor> on screen. WASD + mouse move and look. (Maps/L_StylizedSkillFX_Overview_Vol2 shows every effect on its own station and fires them on a timer.)
2. Use an effect: drag and drop. Drag the effect's Blueprint from Blueprints/<Effect>/ (for example Blueprints/NovaBurstIce/BP_FX_Cast_NovaBurstIce) into your level and press Play: a cast bursts where it stands and hits every actor tagged FXTarget in range; the beam and the chain aim at their Target. In Details → 3 · Look untick Use Default Look to recolour it (Main Color, Secondary Color) or change its glow (Glow Intensity); Scale resizes it.
3. Gameplay. Bind OnImpact (Hit Actor, Hit Location) for damage, call Cast() / Cancel() on a pre-placed actor, or spawn it with Spawn Actor from Class. BP_FX_DemoCaster_Vol2 in the demo level is a complete, commented example for all three archetypes.

1. What is in this version

• 07 Ice and 10 Wind are an A/B pair: the same nova shape with opposite timing. Ice snaps out and stops dead; Wind lets go softly and keeps drifting.
• 05 Dark sucks the ground in, then bursts a column up (alpha-blended Void master: it really darkens the scene).
• 06 Fire breathes a jet of fire for BeamDuration seconds (1.6 s by default) along BeamLength units.
• 08 Lightning strikes the first target, then jumps to the next one every 0.08 s (up to 8 targets).

The numbers are series numbers: Vol.1 holds 01–04 and 09, Vol.2 fills 05–08 and 10, and every volume installs into the same folder.

New in v1.1: sound (three sounds per effect, played by the systems themselves), Low–Epic quality levels on every system, drag-and-drop Blueprints with colour / size controls and gameplay events (OnCastStarted, OnCastReleased, OnImpact, OnFinished, Cast(), Cancel()), a playable demo level, a START HERE board, full recolour (every coloured layer follows the colours), smoother hand-offs from the anticipation to the release, and a folder layout / naming pass (FXS_, BP_, LS_, L_StylizedSkillFX_*).

New in v1.1.2 (Fab review of Vol.3): the demo key-legend widget is now BP_FX_DemoLegendWidget (every Blueprint class uses BP_); every static mesh stores 2 UV channels (UV 1 = a non-overlapping lightmap layout, Light Map Coordinate Index 1); the listing states the exact texture count (38). Effects, materials and Niagara systems are unchanged.

New in v1.1.1: every Blueprint class uses the BP_ prefix (the camera shakes are now Blueprints/<Effect>/BP_CameraShake_<Effect>; the CameraShakes/ folder is gone); every showcase map loops its effect when you press Play, with an editor-only board naming the Blueprint to drag; all maps re-tested with stress input and random stops (0 errors at load, during Play and after Stop).

2. Folder layout

Content/StylizedSkillFX/
  Blueprints/
    Shared/        BP_FX_Cast, BP_FX_Beam, BP_FX_Chain (bases, abstract), BP_FX_Target, BP_FX_ShowcaseGameMode,
                   BP_FX_DemoCaster_Vol2, BP_FX_DemoLegendWidget
    <Effect>/      BP_FX_Cast_<Effect> / BP_FX_Beam_<Effect> / BP_FX_Chain_<Effect>   <- drag this into a level
                   BP_CameraShake_<Effect>  (the effect's camera shake)
  Maps/            L_StylizedSkillFX_Overview_Vol2     every effect on a labelled station (START HERE board)
    Demo/          L_StylizedSkillFX_Demo_Vol2         playable demo (keys 1-5)
                   L_StylizedSkillFX_Showcase_<Effect> the stage each sequence renders in
  Materials/
    Masters/       M_StylizedFX_Master / _Ribbon / _Void / _Refract, M_FX_Floor, M_FX_Label
    Shared/        MI_FX_*  (generic instances, MI_FX_TargetDummy)
    Labels/        MI_FX_Label_*  (overview floor labels, START HERE board)
    <Effect>/      MI_<Effect>_*
  Meshes/          SM_FX_Plane, SM_FX_Sphere, SM_FX_Sphere_Low
  Niagara/
    EffectTypes/   EFT_StylizedSkillFX, EFT_StylizedSkillFX_Sustained  (quality levels + culling)
    <Effect>/      FXS_<Effect>_Cast (novas, eruption) / _Beam / _Chain, FXS_<Effect>_Impact
  Sequences/       LS_<Effect>
  Sounds/
    Shared/        ATT_FX_Skill  (shared attenuation)
    <Effect>/      SFX_<Effect>_Charge, _Release, _Impact
  Textures/
    Shared/        T_*  greyscale masks and noises
    Labels/        T_Label_*