Impact Designer is an Unreal Engine plugin designed to simplify the management of visual effects for all types of impacts in a game or real-time application. To achieve this, the plugin integrates various systems and components. The most important include:
IMPACT CONTEXT #
Impact Context is an asset that contains all the data necessary to generate visual effects related to an impact. For example, a bullet hitting a concrete wall.
IMPACT CONTEXT EDITOR #
Impact Designer integrates an editor for easy modification of the Impact Context asset. With this editor, you can configure the visual effects that will be executed based on various parameters such as surface type, surface thickness, projectile velocity at impact, etc. You can also quickly and easily modify physical surfaces of your project (physics project settings).
IMPACT WEAPON #
Impact Designer integrates weapon classes with basic functions that can be extended using weapon subsystems. You can add features like overheating, jamming, and more to a weapon. Weapon classes utilize all of Impact Designer’s features, so it’s recommended to use them for your project.
IMPACT PROJECTILE MOVEMENT #
Handles the physics of a high-speed projectile. This component supports advanced features such as ricochets and surface penetration.
IMPACT PROJECTILE SPAWNER #
This component manages projectile instantiation. It integrates a pooling system to improve performance and memory consumption with weapons that have a high rate of fire.
AND MANY OTHERS #
The plugin includes many other features, and you can find more information on each one in the documentation.
- Impact Trigger
- Impact Equipment
- Impact Effect Module
- Impact Effect Actor
- Impact Particle Event
- Event Condition
- Etc.
PREVIEW OF FUTURE UPDATES #
Impact Designer is still in development and new features will be added with each update. See roadmap!
In its 2026.1 version, the plugin focuses on firearms and energy weapons (lasers), but future updates will add support for additional impact types. In the long term, Impact Designer will become a plugin that allows for the easy management of complex visual effects related to impacts, as well as in other areas such as fire propagation, destruction, fluid management, and zone management (temperature, gas, etc.).
- Support for melee weapons (bladed weapons).
- Support for objects impact (destruction).
- Improved modularity of weapon classes and their subsystems.
- Voxel-based visual effects (propagation and destruction)
- Runtime paint (vertex, render target, or other painting)
