Rock and a hard place

I'm beginning to question using UE4 for rendering seemed like a good idea at the time however now that I'm having to animate in it I am finding that UE4 has some of the most convoluted ways of animating I have ever seen. I managed to get my ship to stretch slightly before warping off however this was in a tester map and required the use of blend shapes, blueprints and a lot of problem solving. However when I tried to add it to my actual scene it failed miserably and I couldn't figure out how to get it working. In the end I decided to drop it and use a bit of animation to work around it. Animating the emissive texture has been beyond a nightmare and so far no tutorials I have found or have been presented with have worked neither has my messing around with material and blueprint nodes and the whole thing has been incredibly stressful and draining but it is pretty much required for my show reel. Another thing that is required is the blast of air from the umbilical cord however I have no experience with UE4 particles so I have asked for help on the UE4 Answer Hub so hopefully someone will give me some useful advice on how to achieve the results I want. I think I might have bitten off more than I can chew with this project but it's called Advanced 3D for a reason, and boy am I learning some advanced 3D methods.