Laser Beam

 By far the most technical of the effects I had worked on to this point, this required a ton of learning before it was show worthy. 

The core of the effect is really found in the material work rather than the niagara systems. The materials at play are found in both the sphere and cylinder that make up the main body of the laser beam.

The sphere material was rather simple. A simple noise texture panning across the sphere and a fresnel to make the edges glow.

 

The main body of the laser beam however, utilized the sphere material, along with layers of this voroni material. The rest of the effect came together with in system controls that can be found in the image below.

 

Fortunately for me, there was still a ton of fun still to be had in this project...CODING. The disintegration portion of this effect required considerable blueprints in order to be effective. In simple terms, this blueprint takes a user provided static mesh and sets dynamic materials for both the static meshes and the particles that spread over the mesh. It then spawns a new Niagara system that handles the actual "disintegration" of the effect.