Recreating some of these atmospheric/PostProcess effects from Last of Us and Flower

Stu2Prof

Hi guys

I am looking to start a project in Unreal that effectively incorporates some or hopefully all of the following aesthetic features from The Last of Us and Flower. These are two of my favourite games of late and I would love to be able to learn more about the process and try to create something similar. I could use your expertise on breaking down how best to create these features.

First off is the bloom in Flower


Unlike previous examples I have seen in Unreal the bloom in Flower seems to almost make the whole Sun grow in scale as the user looks directly at it. Is there an ability to control the falloff of the bloom to replicate this in Unreal?

Second - The dust in the Last of Us

I love particles and I just thought this was a great use. Especially as they near the camera and fade away. They look absolutely gorgeous (In spite of their sinister plot point)

3rd - Lens Distortion in Flower



I have looked at a few tutorials already on Cubic Lens distortion in Unreal but all seem to create an area of noise and distortion around a central circle on the viewport that needs to be covered with a silhouette like you were viewing through a sniper scope. Flower though seems to keep its distortion stretching to the far corners of the screenspace. Any thoughts on how they did this?

Thanks for any thoughts you can share about this. Hopefully this turns into an interesting project

Obscura

There is a radial gradient function in Unreal, I used that to create custom vignette and blur effects. You can set the radius of the circle, and its sharpness. For fading things out, you can measure and use pixel depth.

throttlekitty

For the particles, looks like this is the way to go. I'm not an Unreal user, so depth fade may be a particle/sprite attribute by default.
https://wiki.unrealengine.com/Visual_Effects:_Lesson_02:_Using_Depth_Fade