Quick answer: Unreal Niagara skeletal mesh data interface spawning at rest pose locations instead of current animation? The sampler reads the bone transform at the wrong tick - enable Sample From Master Pose Component.
Particles meant to spawn from a skeletal mesh's hand follow the rest pose location instead of the animated hand position.
Enable Sample From Master Pose
On the Niagara Skeletal Mesh DI, check Sample From Master Pose Component. Reads the post-animation bone transform instead of the rest pose.
Set Tick Group to Post-Update
Niagara component > Tick Group = Post-Update Work. Animation has finished by then; sampling sees the final pose.
Verify with debug spheres
Spawn a single particle at bone 0 each frame as a debug. If it tracks the bone, sampling is right; if it stays at origin, the DI is reading rest.
“Animation runs in a tick group. Niagara reads in a tick group. Order matters.”
Build the spawn-from-bone test scene once and check it whenever animation pipeline changes. It catches the regression in five seconds.