Stylized Explosion FX Animation - Overwatch Inspired

Atif_FX

Hi everyone  I am a VFX/Animation artist and I always aspire to share and learn knowledge from the art community. Polycount seems a wonderful place to showcase work and share knowledge. As my first post, I would like to post my recent FX animation work here for critic and feedback. I have crafted a stylized explosion animation, my reference was one of the explosions from Junkrat's Frag launcher in the game Overwatch. I have done it using the particle and shader masking technique in the real-time software tool Fork Particle. There were 18 components employed in creating this effect. Timing is critical as most emitter layers are short lived. 

Explosion FX



I am sorry for the quality in Gif its little banded here due to the gif quality. However If anyone wants to see it with less banding and little better quality, I am posting a video link as well 

https://vimeo.com/207095575

Reference I Recorded 



Feedback and suggestions are highly welcome guys. I would love to share a breakdown as well in due time. Thanks

Green_Cheek_Conure

First of all this looks amazing! 
I certainly wouldn't know where to start in creating something like that!

I know next to nothing of FX animation so I certainly can't give any sound technical advice, but I'll try to give some advice as just another everyday viewer.

Only two things I wanna point out.

First is the very center-piece explosion with the deepest colors. One thing that's different with your version compared to the references is the direction and timing of the explosion. Yours seems to be more of an implosion where it starts off at its strongest at F1 then becomes weaker eventually fading away inwardly(Its enveloping into itself to fade away, to put it another way).

While the references explosions center, seems to start very close to its full explosion strength at F1 then reaches its peak point of explosion strength i'm guessing 3-5 frames later. Then starts to slowly fade away outwardly, expanding its range all the while(Starts very near max strength but just not quiet, quickly reaches max strength then starts fading away while all the while expanding itself).

Now how you would fix that . . . 
Your better off telling me haha! GL 

The second thing I wanna mention is the bounding box for the explosion is still too visible. I can't tell from a one time view, or if I wasn't focusing on it, like in a fast paced game scenario. But after focusing solely on it and watching it multiple times the viewer will start to realize that the animation is disappearing in an unnatural way at the edges(The explosions at the edges need a bit more room to dissapier naturally).

 I'm guessing you used a circular bounding box for most if not all your FX's. And I may be totally wrong in recommending this and look like a doofus from my next to none knowledge in this matter. But maybe try increasing the size of the bounding box while also playing with the curves for the colors falloff, for the FX at the edge. Maybe that'll help.

But honestly...this is still amazingly done regardless. Keep this up men!! I'm looking forward to your future works!

Atif_FX

Thanks liking and giving a feedback mate I appreciate it that you deliver best to your understanding. Some of your suggestions are pretty good. Yeah the center explosion is looking more kind of implosion compared to the original reference, Basically I haven't utilized hand-drawn cartoony texture or used a flipbook/sprite animation technique here. Those techniques would have made a lot difference. I just utilized the particle and shader technique in there to see how close I can get and how the effect animation turns out. The outer ring was first giving me hard edges in the effect so I had to improve the shader script to give it softer look. 

I am working on it second pass to improve the inner explosion further as well as sparks in the effect. Will be sharing soon here  

Green_Cheek_Conure

Nice! Good luck with the fix's and cant wait for the update!

Atif_FX

Hi,

Just did a second pass on the effect. Fixed the implosion feeling and improved the timings of the Sparks