First test for an ice/crystal attack made in Houdini and exported as point cache to Unreal 5 using Niagara. I am using a Paragon material for visualization. The spike instance was created in Houdini as well procedurally with UVs and baked normals.

The simulation is sop based (controlled with vex right now). Simulation in Houdini with the spike instanced with a copy to point sop as pre-vis.