Spirit Lords - FX dump - (mobile)

Zoid

:wave: I wanted to share with polycount the latest release 'Spirit Lords' [discontinued] nearly two years at Kabam and showcasing the work.

playlist - https://youtu.be/rqWattfSMXc?list=PLlJ07Rirjk9GAUySNQbGIIUI_emiatnt5


youtube links







- I was responsible for all in-game FX, native inside Unity (no 3rd party asset store/plugins nor particle middleware)
- assets are traditional animation sprites within Shuriken emitters to get a blended style; hand-drawn feel + randomness
- 2D work is Photoshop and Flash
- predominately all spells are handled with just 1 simple blended-Additive Shader

three small examples

Chain Lightning

https://torbach78.sites.google.com/site/torbach78/unity/chainlightning

Flame Hands

https://torbach78.sites.google.com/site/torbach78/unity/flaminghands

Ged

really good work! congrats! did you use any cool tricks eg custom shaders or a bespoke particle system or some wierd awesome texture sheet script? Did you come up against any really complex problems that you had to solve? Im making quite a bit of unity vfx lately.

PeteHawk

Such a cute game, looks great well done, I'm interested.
I'm also interested in your vfx pipeline a little more, as I'm researching to do this sort of stuff for a game I'm working with. Maya to Unity, would be great if you could show more

Zoid

(outside of asset creation) it's native, no 3rd party creation or scripts drive the visuals and most use the same shader.

Shuriken handles 95% of spells, sometimes mechanim when necessary

event triggers are handled through front-end and most of the challenge the magnitude - memory, draw calls, overdraw/LOD system

visual challenges from what I recall

• accuracy of a swirling black hole/vortex
• vortex of flying crows
• drool that stretches and swings from a monsters lips.
• destructible objects to feel like they physically shatter without any collision nor dismantling of the model
• 2D traditional Sword/swooshes matching imported character animation arcs
• hits/splashes that can cover large monster but also tiny monsters without clipping the ground :poly127:

having a 2D traditional animation on a surface without a shader was handled though mechanim; just key the UV's

there were two front-end system tools I loved

1) modifier that passes size so a producer can alter spells per component; a ring size 5 become 6 without a new prefab or my help :thumbup:
2) making spells loop by default infinitely and using a grace period to fade them off, rather than a hard deactivation - absolutely crucial as it cut the number of prefabs and multiplied the amount of spell variations possible

PeteHawk wrote: »

I'm also interested in your vfx pipeline a little more,

I did have a small tutorial I was meaning to post i'll keep it brief to just images and you can work out the rest

jenioss

Wait! hold on.. All these vfx are made with Shuriken? o_o sick job man
I expecially like the chain lighting effect! I always love cartoon vfx styles