Five anime-style support and movement skill effects for Unreal Engine 5.8, built in Niagara, with sound. Vol.1 was all projectiles and Vol.2 area and beam spells; Vol.3 adds attached, telegraphed and movement skills: a barrier shield on its owner, a heal aura on an ally, a blink dash that moves the caster, a summoning gate that raises an actor and a meteor that marks the ground before it lands. 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_Vol3 and press Play. Keys 1–5 cast each effect on the five dummies; every gameplay event prints on screen (Blocked 1…4, Heal tick 1: Dummy_2, Hit Dummy_3, Arrived, Summoned …). WASD + mouse move and look. (Maps/L_StylizedSkillFX_Overview_Vol3 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/MeteorStrikeFire/BP_FX_Meteor_MeteorStrikeFire) into your level and press Play: the meteor strikes the ground under it (or under its Target), the aura and the shield sit on their Target / AttachTo actor, the summon opens its gate where it stands and the dash moves its MoveActor. 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 the archetype's event (OnImpact, OnHealTick, OnBlocked, OnArrived, OnSummoned), call Cast() / Cancel() on a pre-placed actor, or spawn it with Spawn Actor from Class. The shield has no collision of its own: call TakeHit(HitLocation) from your projectiles. BP_FX_DemoCaster_Vol3 in the demo level is a complete, commented example for all five archetypes.

1. What is in this version

• 11 Ice slams a shell of hex ice plates shut around its owner: six rows fly in and stop dead, a white lock sweep runs up the dome, and it holds for ShieldDuration (6 s). Every hit flashes, cracks the shell (the crack stays as a scar), snaps out ice chips and makes the plates flinch. After HitsToBreak hits (4) it shatters: every plate pops out, hangs frozen for 6 frames, then falls. On expiry it breaks softly.
• 12 Wind wraps an ally in a soft green wind for AuraDuration (5 s): a turning glyph on the ground, three ribbons climbing a helix with leaves and a column of light, and a heal pulse every second. No flash and no shake: a heal never reads as a hit. It ends with a clean fade, early or on time.
• 13 Lightning blinks the caster: a 3-frame crackle, the caster vanishes in a departure flash while a white-hot streak exists at full length on its first frame, and reappears at the end in an arrival flash with a shock ring and a scorch. A capsule afterimage lingers at the start.
• 14 Dark opens a void gate in the floor (alpha-blended Void master: it really darkens the floor): its sigil ignites in three steps, the surface breaks and an object rises out of it: a black obelisk by default (BP_FX_SummonPillar), or any actor class you choose. The gate pulls itself shut; the object stays.
• 15 Fire marks the ground and counts down for 1.2 s, then a burning rock falls at 35° and the spot explodes: a flash, a fireball dome, debris under gravity and a crater that cools in four steps.

The numbers are series numbers: Vol.1 holds 01–04 and 09, Vol.2 05–08 and 10, Vol.3 11–15, and every volume installs into the same folder.

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 (41). Effects, materials and Niagara systems are unchanged.

New in v1.1.1 (Fab review fixes): every Blueprint now uses the BP_ prefix, camera shakes included (Blueprints/<Effect>/BP_CameraShake_...; the CameraShakes/ folder is gone). Each showcase map plays its effect on a loop when you press Play and explains itself with an editor-only SHOWCASE board. Also: START HERE text, generated lightmap UVs on the shared meshes, no unused default nodes in BP_FX_Target / BP_FX_ShowcaseGameMode. Every map was re-tested: load, Play, Stop at random moments - 0 errors, 0 warnings.

New in v1.1: drag-and-drop Blueprints with colour / size controls and gameplay events (OnCastStarted, OnCastReleased, OnImpact, OnHealTick, OnBlocked, OnArrived, OnSummoned, OnFinished, Cast(), Cancel()), Scale now also sizes the heal aura and the shield dome, a playable demo level, a START HERE board and station labels naming the Blueprint to drag, smoother hand-offs (longer eased flash tails; the shield dome fades out over the break instead of vanishing; the meteor's head holds on the ground under the landing flash), and a folder layout / naming pass (FXS_, BP_ (1.1.1: camera shakes too), LS_, L_StylizedSkillFX_*, Blueprints/<Effect>/, Blueprints/Shared/). The sounds and the Low–Epic quality levels shipped in v1.0 and are unchanged.

2. Folder layout