I've started to get a grip of the style and timing of the game. It will be challenging to nail the lightning fast attacks used by a lot of champions so I think I will try and aim for at least one of the slower ones to give me more space to make a visually pleasing effect.
I have also decided to follow the style of the concept art instead of the effects in the game because, well this:
I will be using Unreal. I haven't used it since it was UDK so it will take some getting used to at first. I bought a subscription yesterday so I should be ready to roll.
I will not recreate an existing effect. Instead I will invent a new one following the style so I still have some research to do.
I haven't had a look at it yet. It looks cool though. It would be a lot easier to do it in frostbite since I'm so used to it. Oh well, I like a good challenge.
Had a few minutes to doodle out a couple of quick ideas tonight. I don't know if I like them yet but there might be pieces of them to bring to the next idea
I'm not sure how much research you've done with League, so sorry if this suggestion is redundant. If you are going the direction I'm guessing with the Death effect, I'd recommend looking at Braum's ultimate for some reference, and possibly Lissandra's 'Glacial Path'
Thanks for the tip! I'll check it out. I'm still playing around trying to decide on an effect to do. I don't seem to have as much time for this as I would have liked though
A quick maya sketch from tonight:
Awful timing and supersimple shapes but it shows the idea of deploying an energy weapon and blasting tha ball away with a beam.
Green Lantern is absolutley an inspiration for the behaviour but for the design I think I will head more in a Tronish direction. I think the two mix really well.
A quick moodboard before I have to run out again (when am I going to get time to work on this!?!)
Hard light ref I think the digital Wind Wall would be a good look.
PROJECT: Yasuo effects are orange, but if you could get the mesh to have that hard-edge-soft-face feel, in that random geometric face look for your mesh along with your blues, I think that'd look really cool.
Hard light ref I think the digital Wind Wall would be a good look.
PROJECT: Yasuo effects are orange, but if you could get the mesh to have that hard-edge-soft-face feel, in that random geometric face look for your mesh along with your blues, I think that'd look really cool.
Thanks! Yasuo has a style that really fits the effect I'm going for. Thanks for pointing him out!
So I've spent some time blocking out the animation for the skull projectile and figuring out how to get my animations from Houdini and Maya to UE. It wasn't that difficult once I found the quirks, but it's always a bit bumpy learning a new engine I've updated my scripts so now I have the pipe in place to iterate on it without tooo much hassle which is pretty neat!
Many things to fix on the animation still, but at this stage I can start looking at shaders and sprite effects.
I might go back and rough out the animation for the turret effect before I move on to the unreal work. Need to use what little time I have carefully
Rusty, no the ground fracture was animated in Houdini and then brought into maya where I hand animated the skull to match. For a real game effect I would do something similar but let the skull transforms be driven by a projectile and the projectile life would drive the fracture animation, but since I don't have a coder at hand I'll just do it manually
Ah sweet. I thought you did it through unreal with geo emitters or something. I guess that would not look as clean however. Looks super nice! Love seeing so many people try different things.
Ah sorry, that wasn't what I meant. I guess a better question would be have you given thought to how you're going to optimize it yet? All those pieces may get expensive.
Braum's Glacial Fissure is something similar. They used a set of repeating geometry for the "edges" of the fractures, spawned a few pieces of moving geometry per section of the ult path as it moves forward, and have a texture of more pieces of broken ground with some cool opacity trickery to keep it from looking very flat. http://www.vgamerz.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/b1.jpg
This is only a suggestion though, I'm not trying to redirect the art style of your effect! I already think it looks cool, and I'm waiting to see what else you add to it. Sorry, I get a little caught up in trying to fake as much as I can with effects :P
Sure, there are plenty of ways to optimize it but I don't know if I will. The current setup is still feasible on currentgen platforms, and there aren't any specs to optimize towards in the competition so I don't see the point.
Generally yes, and doubly so if you were to run it on the PS3.
Travis is right though, for this effect it's the animation data that's a bit expensive. If needed I would simplify the simulation in Houdini (Yay, procedural workflows) and handanimate the hero pieces like in the Glacial effect. Not a big deal. I might do so later if I feel it will add something to the style of the effect. Opting for optings sake wouldn't make much sense at this point though since it's not even using the systems needed to drive it nor are we aiming towards an old platform.
Don't worry, if I need to opt it, I will. Optimizing effects is kinda my thing
In fact, it would have been a cool challenge to make sure all the effects we create can run on a certain spec. (Sometimes I miss cramming every last drop of performance out of the PS2. Damn that machine could run stuff...)
Well for my stuff, I am trying to mirror the style of Riot's effects, including their limitations for tech. I wasn't sure if others were going for art style or just making cool stuff. I guess it would have made more sense if I had opened with that before my last suggestion, so there was some context to it.
Hey I got a couple of minutes in this weekend Spent it getting to grips with cascade and mocking up some temp effects for the projectile. Before I continue with it and add impacts and so on, I need to fix the timing of the animation so it's a bit less horrible.
I figured I'd give you an update anyway. It never looks good in the beginning after all
Replies
I have also decided to follow the style of the concept art instead of the effects in the game because, well this:
VS
I will not recreate an existing effect. Instead I will invent a new one following the style so I still have some research to do.
Have you checked out the node based particle system yet for UE4 yet?
Had a few minutes to doodle out a couple of quick ideas tonight. I don't know if I like them yet but there might be pieces of them to bring to the next idea
I started playing around with it a bit. Sadly I'm away over the weekend so progress will stop for a while now.
A quick maya sketch from tonight:
Awful timing and supersimple shapes but it shows the idea of deploying an energy weapon and blasting tha ball away with a beam.
I can't wait to see it in action! \o/
A quick moodboard before I have to run out again (when am I going to get time to work on this!?!)
PROJECT: Yasuo effects are orange, but if you could get the mesh to have that hard-edge-soft-face feel, in that random geometric face look for your mesh along with your blues, I think that'd look really cool.
Thanks! Yasuo has a style that really fits the effect I'm going for. Thanks for pointing him out!
Many things to fix on the animation still, but at this stage I can start looking at shaders and sprite effects.
I might go back and rough out the animation for the turret effect before I move on to the unreal work. Need to use what little time I have carefully
Keep going !
Can't wait to see it with the appropriate shaders and particle effects!
Rusty, no the ground fracture was animated in Houdini and then brought into maya where I hand animated the skull to match. For a real game effect I would do something similar but let the skull transforms be driven by a projectile and the projectile life would drive the fracture animation, but since I don't have a coder at hand I'll just do it manually
Braum's Glacial Fissure is something similar. They used a set of repeating geometry for the "edges" of the fractures, spawned a few pieces of moving geometry per section of the ult path as it moves forward, and have a texture of more pieces of broken ground with some cool opacity trickery to keep it from looking very flat.
http://www.vgamerz.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/b1.jpg
This is only a suggestion though, I'm not trying to redirect the art style of your effect! I already think it looks cool, and I'm waiting to see what else you add to it. Sorry, I get a little caught up in trying to fake as much as I can with effects :P
Travis is right though, for this effect it's the animation data that's a bit expensive. If needed I would simplify the simulation in Houdini (Yay, procedural workflows) and handanimate the hero pieces like in the Glacial effect. Not a big deal. I might do so later if I feel it will add something to the style of the effect. Opting for optings sake wouldn't make much sense at this point though since it's not even using the systems needed to drive it nor are we aiming towards an old platform.
Don't worry, if I need to opt it, I will. Optimizing effects is kinda my thing
In fact, it would have been a cool challenge to make sure all the effects we create can run on a certain spec. (Sometimes I miss cramming every last drop of performance out of the PS2. Damn that machine could run stuff...)
I figured I'd give you an update anyway. It never looks good in the beginning after all
Makes me think of Black Rock Shooter's skulls. \o/