My VFX art and breakdowns

THendersonVFX

Hi Polycount! This will be my first thread on here. I'm a vfx artist, and I thought I'd start sharing my work on here. Feedback and comments are welcome.

First up is a health pickup I made over a year ago. Why am I just posting this now then? Well, I was prompted to make breakdowns of some of my work, so I figured I'd include some of my concept as well as my first attempt at a vfx breakdown vid. Let me know what you think, I'm already in the process of applying some feedback I got from GDC this year.

Concept


Screen grab


Breakdown [attempt #1]
http://youtu.be/yC7Q75Pkt7g


Thanks for stopping by! I'll be adding more breakdowns and FX work in progress on here soon.

THendersonVFX

Shield effect wip

Yilativ

Hey, really interesting work, and so cool

Keep it up

THendersonVFX

Update: Effect in a day! I will be trying to create a new effect each day for the next few days.
Today's effect: Orbital Strike





I'll be making targeting textures and various textures for my materials in Photoshop, the few meshes that I'll need in Maya, and putting it all together in UDK. Hoping to have a playblast/screen grab of the final rough effect before 12pm pst tonight. Let the race begin! I'll be trying to post updates throughout the day

urgaffel

While speed is good, why not take more than a day to create the effect? Would mean you have a bit more time to work on timing and polish... Unless it's just meant to be a fast prototype thing in which case ignore what I just said

THendersonVFX

You're quite right, and I only got through the blocking stage yesterday as it was. I will re adjust my times tables for 1 new, polished effect a week.

I was hoping to do a sort of "speed sculpt/model in a day" type thing, but with FX. I don't think I'm fast enough for that yet though.

Add3r

As someone really interested in dabbling in the FX realm of game art to supplement his/her art pipeline, would be really cool to see your different steps of development of a custom effect. As for Engine, did you mean UE4? Or actually UDK?

THendersonVFX

UDK for now. I have some works in progress within that so far. Once those are done, I'll swap over to UE4 and learn that from the ground up. I have just under a week off, so I am trying to catch up with the feedback I got at GDC as well as get some new stuff going. Once I get back to work, I plan on learning UE4 bit by bit in my free time, including blueprint and the new features.

I'll try and remember to take some progressive screen grabs and videos so you can see the process.

THendersonVFX

screen grab of the blocking. I'm mostly just duplicating emitters now, while making polished art assets for the final effect.

THendersonVFX

I've started concepting out the tech rings I'll be using as my targeting system ground decal. For anyone who needs inspiration for tech rings, my go to is always "Iron Man HUD" in Google image search. Here are some good references:







And finally my rough concept. I'll be greypacking sets of the rings into RGBA so I can have more control over them in the material editor. My biggest consideration for my concept, and the effect itself, are leading lines that will match up to give the look of crosshairs. The sets of rings will rotate around at varying speeds when the effect starts, and will eventually stop and change color when they are all aligned.

THendersonVFX

Shield breakdown post while I work on the orbital strike

[vv]122051061[/vv]

THendersonVFX

Wip of the Orbital Laser. Would like any feedback on the timing and colors so far. Having the timing down for target would help before moving on to the timing of the laser, blast and additional elements

[vv]123025906[/vv]

THendersonVFX

Added more elements (more to come) and put the wip effect in an environment. Environment is Epic's Epic Citadel map. There is some post process stuff in the map as is, so it may look a little blurry.

To be added next: Dust ring from the impact, sparks, ground damage texture, residual smoke, residual heat/distortion particles.

Critiques and feedback encouraged! I'm always looking to get better with my work

EDIT: If video doesn't show up it may still be uploading on Vimeo, as I'm only a basic user. Try refreshing in 10-20 minutes

[vv]123452610[/vv]

Eric Chadwick

This is great, you're doing some cool work. There aren't that many FX people here on Polycount though.

You might get additional feedback over on Tech-Artists.Org, where they have a dedicated section.
http://tech-artists.org/forum/forumdisplay.php?35-VFX-Artists

THendersonVFX

Sweet! Thanks a bunch for the link

THendersonVFX

Finished designing my impact cracks. I'll be using this as a template in Maya to model the pieces of debris and orient them, as well as a mask for my plasma emissive in my material. After that I'll put that into zbrush to do some texturing work, then bake out a normal and displacement map. These will then go together to create my decal for the residual after the blast. The plan is to have displacement and normal values, and a lightly shaded material that modifies any ground texture underneath, instead of just the same texture decal over and over

Add3r

These break downs have been amazing so far! As said in my previous post, seeing the process is hugely informative. Orbital laser is my favorite so far

THendersonVFX

Thanks! The hp pickups and the holo shield are just over a year old now. I need to go back to them and apply what I've learned since then. Hoping to have more progress of some stuff by tonight

THendersonVFX

Updated version. Need to mask out the edges of the texture for the material. Waiting to hear back from someone on whether I use a mesh or displacement map for the ground scarring.

[ame]www.youtube.com/watch?v=Db8vwwG7Wns[/ame]

Jarran

looking good mate, keep at it

THendersonVFX

While waiting for feedback on my orbital laser question, I decided to jump in and do some work with Ribbons/Trails. This is something I see in almost every game I've played, even a few shooters. I don't expect my first attempt will be all too crazy, but I'm going to try and get a cool ice trail going (see what I did there? :P) on a sword anim I have.



some concept and colors

THendersonVFX

While in between working on my sword trails effect and the Orbital Strike thing, a friend wanted me to make a fog effect that fades when the player gets close to it. Here is the non-tweaked test of it. The camera/object world position nodes are connected to find their distance and use that number to drive the opacity and Alpha Erosion for the material. Effect pops in and out too quickly, but again, this is un-tweaked.

[ame]www.youtube.com/watch?v=xG9B1CqOQfI[/ame]

Myging

Wow these are really cool.

THendersonVFX

Throwing stuff into zbrush for some texturing and sculpting. This will go over the glowing crack decal after the blast

THendersonVFX

Rubble quickly textured and put in the particle system

THendersonVFX

Finally uploaded my beginning trails work on the Ice sword. Here's my basic run at it so far, though it still needs the mesh around the blade and some extra elements as well.

[ame]www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3xoZby1tuw[/ame]

urgaffel

The lignering particles look a bit weird. I'm guessing they are supposed to be snow but I'm not sure that it works all that well. If you're going for more of an ice crystal feel then you need to make them twinkle a bit and maybe have more crystaline shapes, sharper edges.

For your ion laser thing, have you thought about generating actual meshes for the impact, a couple of rocky things that look a bit like your impact mesh? You can have them come up through the ground (or just appear behind the smoke) to give it a more 3d feel.

The timing on the ion blast seems a bit off too, it lacks a certain oomph. I'm not sure if it's because it's all quite linear or too slow. Could you upload an mp4 or quicktime so I can step through it? It's easier to see what the timing is like when you play it slower/step through the frames

THendersonVFX

The problem with the snow feel on the sword is there's something in UDK that's going on. When the camera is pulled really far back, you can see them all, but up close a bunch of them disappear. If that wasn't a problem, I'd reduce the life on the snow a bit so it just sits closer to the blade for a more subtle approach. I'll take your advice on the ice crystals though. I sketched some out in my concept for it, and I think I will add some of those in.

As for the impact, I do actually have a mesh in there, I just scaled it down too far on the Z I guess I'll bump it up a bit and see how it looks.

You are right about the "oomph' factor too. I have a few ideas on how to add some more to it and give it some punch. As it stands now, the beam is an un moving cylinder that just intensifies really fast. I was thinking of adding some downward moving element and some more initial impact pizzazz

What would be the best way to upload a quicktime on here?

THendersonVFX

oops double post

THendersonVFX

PS, thanks for the feedback, it's appreciated! ^_^

THendersonVFX

I haven't done an update in a while, and I've been on a time crunch so I won't be able to post everything I want just yet to accompany this, but here is an update of the orbital laser: [ame]www.youtube.com/watch?v=37TfNoiyxsI[/ame]

THendersonVFX

I do plan on adding in breakdowns and texture/material screen grabs to show how it's all put together, but that'll be for a later date.

St4lis

You should use the dual of a Geodisic Dome for the shield effect. Ain't no good using hexagons if you're gonna pinch them at the poles anyway.

Ged

nice work so far, orbital lazer is especially cool!

THendersonVFX

Camp fire I've been working on as well, still wip

[ame]www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1HlZGHP4nE[/ame]

THendersonVFX

Updating my "Health Pickup" atm. Trying to get a better fantasy feel with less generic elements. Currently re topologising (sp?) a quick crystal I made in zbrush that I will not only use as a mesh, but will render out and make a sub uv texture of for other uses later on (vfx kitbashing!)

THendersonVFX

Also St4lis, I tried the geodesic sphere, but it was really hard to make, and the scripts I found weren't very good. Also I still got pinching at poles just the same as using a regular sphere. As my holo shield uses a texture and texture manipulation for the effect, using the geodesic sphere with a fresnel just wasn't as versatile and gave me less control of the effect.

THendersonVFX

Health pack update!

First, a comparison of my first go at it almost 2 years ago and the new one.


wip update of the effect itself:
[ame]www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2vsBonuPdc[/ame]