Making "Wings of Light" (Cascade Help/Suggestions)

artstream

Hey out there,

So I've been trying to replicate these wings for the final part of my project in UDK, and I keep running into walls. Here's the video for reference. The wings appear at roughly 12-13 seconds in.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZ3tgQc_t78"]Xenogears FMV - Weltalls Transformation - 13/25 - YouTube[/ame]

I've tried doing it with Cascade, but I can't get it to work the way it is in the video. Here's an image of what i have so far.



The idea with that image is it would be the "wing" part, and I'd animate the core getting larger (the bright part that overtakes the wing).

Maybe it would better accomplished with a mesh of some sort? Any ideas would be appreciated.

tharle

yeah i think you'd be better off with a mesh and then animating the material parameters over time with matinee (presumably you're going to be showing this effect off coming to life like in the video)

theres a pretty good video on youtube that tutorials how to set this up : [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ov5GhqaM9AA"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ov5GhqaM9AA[/ame] basically you just plug the parameters of the material instance into matinee and animate them over time.

looking at the wings in the video they do unfurl as they start up so you might want some mesh animation in combination with the material animation, or you could just do it all in the material with some clever use of parameters, up to you really.

artstream

Hey tharle, thanks for the suggestion! Yea, that sounds like something I'd do with it.

Here's what I have so far, each wing would be about 10-12 tris, with 5 bone objects. So in total, about 72 tris and 30 new bones (has to duplicate on each side), dunno if I should make it simpler/if that's considered expensive. If anyone has thoughts on that I'd be open to hearing them!

Phase 1 (first image) is how it would start, with low to no opacity, phase 2 is when it's in full effect (full opacity).

tharle

depends what level of quality you're after here - if it's for an ios game then i'd probably just have each wing be like 3 tris and 2 bones but if its a console game cutscene actor then you'll obviously want to go much higher res.

best thing is it try it and see how it works out!

artstream

Agreed, here's what I've gotten since the last post. I'm pretty happy with it, especially the energy "swelling" across the mesh.

https://vimeo.com/56407766

I'd be happy to hear any suggestions on how to make it better!