Dude .... just wow. The impact here is just amazing on that lightning. That red thing looks so swish too. Though Id suggest maybe speeding up the red projectiles a bit. They feel a bit too soft at the moment. Though im guessing that was already on the table to fix :P Those textures though.... *whistles*
Again awesome! One extra thing is I feel they need a bit more... soul. Not sure how to say it. At the moment one is a lightning bang. The other is a red projectile. Maybe have the lightning as say holy lightning and the other as demonic or void magic(im not suggesting do these things. This was just an example!). I don't know... its hard to explain. Do you get me? They need like... a theme as well as a element.
*edit* I realise soul is probably not the right word. That maybe sounded quite offensive. Theme or character was probably the word I was looking for.
Really digging the color temperature on the second effect! Your getting that full range of heat which is great! I feel like it's sorta getting faster towards the end but I think it would be great if you could exaggerate it out further. Your first effect is awesome as well, it's got a great snap to it.
There seems to be a general consensus to speed the trails up so I'll try and tighten this up further. From past experience with this I'm a bit careful with speed because I start loosing texture detail, it starts looking like a blur. I guess I'll need to find a sweet spot!
Russell, I see what you're saying yeah but did you mean they needed more character just in name or appearance as well?
The reason I'm reluctant to go down this path is because I think there's still a place for these types of "standard magic elements" in the roster. I set out to make them distinct purely by finding a unique visual style, if I succeed of course. Does that make sense?
Really nice stuff Klemen, I'm loving the texture work so definitely preserve as much of that as possible! Out of interest do you have any good reference or learning material for flash animation for the lightning and such or just plenty of experimentation? I've been playing around with it myself to push the LoL style but getting this level of fidelity out of it is pretty damn impressive!
Maybe im just an ostentatious kinda guy haha. Im sure these skills work well as default player ability's. Im stuck making real default fast spamable ability's for PoE so when I get a chance to make a character ultimate...
I dont know my feedback heres probably irrelevant. Your stuff looks rad either way.
This probably isn't very important for this competition but im interested so ill ask anyway. How would the red effect look if the target was closer or further away. Also how would it work if the target was moving from left to right. Would the entire effect swivel or would it just hit where the target was standing originally. Would it stretch and condense. If so what would this do to the travel time and texture. I cant tell if these were built from meshes or ribbons so im interested. We get struck with problems like this all the time here so I want to hear what someone else would do. Quite often I make a effect look good in the asset veiwer. Then once hooked up in game I see the skill used on a target a center meter away and moving. The whole thing turns to custard haha.
Ugh. Klemen, I want to know how you got that perfect distortion on the electric effect. Brilliant color in that one too by the way. Reminiscent of the gorgeous neon palette they go with in infamous.
Rusty, he's definitely using mesh and I'm going to assume he could just use a particle attractor on his target if he want it to track movement, otherwise he's just pathing the particles to the target and using Events for his impacts.
I understand what hes doing to create it. Im wondering how he would get around the problems I presented. I come across this issue all the time so im interested to know what he would do to get around it. Especially the condensing part. Iv made so many trail effects that straight up did not work when shot at a very close target. Having to go back to square one suuuucked. So interested to know what someone else would do to solve this.
Its partially why I did not pick a projectile for this competition :P They always have so many issues if they are tracking effects like the red one above.
I still dont get how you create that lightning crackling effect Klemen. I dont come across effects that baffle me very often haha
Adam, there's a couple of resources you could look at, I don't know if I can post links here but there's a nice flashfx blogspot with a ton of reference and Adam Phillips, ex Disney animator runs a vfx course on his website, I'm sure there's other stuff out there as well. Transferring that hand drawn style to 3D isn't always as straightforward as it may seem though, depends on what you're working on, if it's a 2D side scroller like Rayman it would be perfect.
Russell, translating something like that into actual gameplay would definitely require some code support. I imagine the trails homing in on the target even if it's moving, might be too random otherwise for a game like this. Pretty straightforward with ribbons but even with custom geometry like I'm using you could still bend it in the direction of the target. For closer distances one solution might be masking the trails so they pass through the target but you don't see them come out the other way and hide this with impact effects.
The lightning elements are essentially flipbook meshes, I'm cycling through a stack of them in different ways to get the animation.
Thanks Klemen, I've taken a look through that flashfx blogspot actually, really great reference. I managed to rough out a blast animation with help from examples on that site that I'll test and post later tonight, maybe with some of my other less successful flash tests. Lightning is proving somewhat difficult and you seem to have nailed that down so nice work!
AH so it is flipbook phew. I was worried you were generating them with some crazy ribbon movements or something. They look so fluid! Thanks for the answer.
Im still interested in seeing what the lightning flipbook texture looks like after the comp. I have some issue with lightning charge up effects. They always come out too soft or noisey
I should clarify, I'm not using flipbook textures for the lightning, I have a stack of meshes and I'm revealing them through the shader based on their animation order, like a flipbook, but with meshes...
Oh I forgot, Shepherd, for that glitchy effect I'm offsetting scene color channels and multiplying them.
Here's my final submission. Apart from some minor tweaks, the electricity is mostly the same, I've spent the remainder of time polishing the fire spell. I'm pretty happy with how everything turned out, I think I succeeded in reaching my initial vision of a simple concept with a lot of stylisation. I want to note it's meant to look the best from top-down LoL's gameplay perspective, I've included front and side views as per the competition rules.
I wish good luck to all of you, it's been great seeing everyone's progress, a lot of excellent effects all around!
Click the image to view the animation:
Additionally here's a compilation of action shots I've submitted:
I've been gearing up to do a tutorial for a while now and this seems like a good platform, but I would rather wait and do a comprehensive breakdown a bit further down the line when I have more spare time.
that is exactly what I wanted to read :'D I hope you'll don't forget us
I checked out your site and can't see a breakdown/tutorial of the VFX you did here. Is it still being prepared coz I'm really interested to see how you went about this.
Replies
Again awesome! One extra thing is I feel they need a bit more... soul. Not sure how to say it. At the moment one is a lightning bang. The other is a red projectile. Maybe have the lightning as say holy lightning and the other as demonic or void magic(im not suggesting do these things. This was just an example!). I don't know... its hard to explain. Do you get me? They need like... a theme as well as a element.
*edit* I realise soul is probably not the right word. That maybe sounded quite offensive. Theme or character was probably the word I was looking for.
I gota step up my game!
There seems to be a general consensus to speed the trails up so I'll try and tighten this up further. From past experience with this I'm a bit careful with speed because I start loosing texture detail, it starts looking like a blur. I guess I'll need to find a sweet spot!
Russell, I see what you're saying yeah but did you mean they needed more character just in name or appearance as well?
The reason I'm reluctant to go down this path is because I think there's still a place for these types of "standard magic elements" in the roster. I set out to make them distinct purely by finding a unique visual style, if I succeed of course. Does that make sense?
I dont know my feedback heres probably irrelevant. Your stuff looks rad either way.
This probably isn't very important for this competition but im interested so ill ask anyway. How would the red effect look if the target was closer or further away. Also how would it work if the target was moving from left to right. Would the entire effect swivel or would it just hit where the target was standing originally. Would it stretch and condense. If so what would this do to the travel time and texture. I cant tell if these were built from meshes or ribbons so im interested. We get struck with problems like this all the time here so I want to hear what someone else would do. Quite often I make a effect look good in the asset veiwer. Then once hooked up in game I see the skill used on a target a center meter away and moving. The whole thing turns to custard haha.
Rusty, he's definitely using mesh and I'm going to assume he could just use a particle attractor on his target if he want it to track movement, otherwise he's just pathing the particles to the target and using Events for his impacts.
Its partially why I did not pick a projectile for this competition :P They always have so many issues if they are tracking effects like the red one above.
I still dont get how you create that lightning crackling effect Klemen. I dont come across effects that baffle me very often haha
Russell, translating something like that into actual gameplay would definitely require some code support. I imagine the trails homing in on the target even if it's moving, might be too random otherwise for a game like this. Pretty straightforward with ribbons but even with custom geometry like I'm using you could still bend it in the direction of the target. For closer distances one solution might be masking the trails so they pass through the target but you don't see them come out the other way and hide this with impact effects.
The lightning elements are essentially flipbook meshes, I'm cycling through a stack of them in different ways to get the animation.
Im still interested in seeing what the lightning flipbook texture looks like after the comp. I have some issue with lightning charge up effects. They always come out too soft or noisey
Oh I forgot, Shepherd, for that glitchy effect I'm offsetting scene color channels and multiplying them.
Cheers
I wish good luck to all of you, it's been great seeing everyone's progress, a lot of excellent effects all around!
Click the image to view the animation:
Additionally here's a compilation of action shots I've submitted:
Great work!
I would love to learn how to make this type of things and use this almost hand drawn looking particles.
that fire line and.. spear screw.. is it mesh line???
sorry, clumsy English..
then.. all images are the sequence???
question like this will be an example...
have a good day!
that is exactly what I wanted to read :'D I hope you'll don't forget us
As far as the breakdown goes, I'm on the fence between doing a written blog post and a video, what would you guys like to see personally?