Since Unreal Engine 5.3 we can use static or animated VDBs in our project, thanks to a Heterogenous Volume and a built-in engine material. Here’s how to set this up. I’m using one of the excellent free assets from the JangaFX website.
Import the VDB
Right-click in your content browser and select “import” to bring your VDB into the project. Dragging and dropping may have worked at some point in the past, but it has never worked for me. This brings up a dialogue that lets us adjust mapping settings as necessary, or we can leave the defaults. Animations are automatically detected.
What we get with this import is an Animated (or Static) Sparse Volume Texture. This can’t be used by itself and needs to be added to a material we’ll create next.
Creating the Material Instance
To display our VDB, we need a shader (or rather a material). Thankfully UE ships with one that can be found under Engine – Engine Materials – SparseVolumeMaterial. Make a copy of it and put it somewhere safe. Now create a Material Instance of it and open that. Here you’ll find an option to override the Sparse Volume Texture (under Global Texture Parameters). Plug your imported VDB into there.
Also notice some of the other parameters you can change later to adjust the look and feel of your VDB: Albedo Color, Albedo Scale and Density Scale. If you’ve worked with VDBs before, those will be familiar to you.
Creating the Display Volume
Now that we have the data and the shader, we can use a volume to display it in our scene. Use the Actors Panel to place a Heterogenous Volume, then find its Material section and add your VDB Material Instance to it.
That’s it! Now you’ll see an animated version of your VDB file in your scene. Scale it, adjust parameters and see what cool effects it can bring to the party.