VR dynamic lighting with portals?

fu_films

hello everyone. I have an idea, however I'm not too sure what exactly I should be looking into to achieve it. I don't want to fall down the wrong rabbit hole as I only have some experience in environment art. What I would like to do is create a black room which has lights with certain effects and
trails and all that jazz, and lights that project depth ie going into a layered portal and lights that project colours that would encompass the whole room then fade. The lights would have a dimensional space which moves around the room at different heights, sizes etc. however I would like all the effects to rhythmically react to a complicated drum beat, for example a pulse shape would hit when the kick drum hits. Ideally I would like to be able to view this room in VR. Any suggestions as to what I should be looking into or programs that may help with this? here are some reference pics with what I had in mind. thank you very much in advance.

Eric Chadwick

A better topic title will help draw experienced people in to give you feedback. "I have an idea" is pretty vague. A better one could be "VR dynamic lighting with portals?"

This idea could be possible. I would try mocking it up in Unity since it has good VR support. You could use sprites to represent the light sources. And maybe render-to-texture for the portal.

Do you have some concept art, or example images to help explain the idea? Even a mashup of existing images might help.

fu_films

thanks for your advice Eric your a champ! I've updated the original post

RN

Those are visual effects. You can do such a thing using particle systems (explanation).

For example, using trail / line particles to make those beams of light that travel in those curved paths, and using textured quads (4-corner rectangular polygons) with soft alpha transparency to make those circles / rings (the texture is masked in a circular shape, so even though it's being displayed with a rectangle it still looks like a circle).

Then you need to learn how to set up materials and post-processing effects to complement the particles -- for example, producing bloom (aka glow).

Some resources:

- Learning FX Workflow
- Unity 5 - Game Effects VFX - Teleport & Spawn

- Diablo 3 - Wings of Angels (Game Art Tricks)

fu_films said:

I would like all the effects to rhythmically react to a complicated drum beat, for example a pulse shape would hit when the kick drum hits.

This concerns to the game programming. For example, controlling some property of the material(s) of the particles based on some tests that you make: "did X time pass? If so, apply this easing curve to these properties of the material, making them go from value A to value B, taking Y time and causing such visual change".

You can go as deep as you want with this, up to analyzing the music beats being played so you can time the changes in music with changes in visuals. 
But just choreographing / sequencing these changes in some data file that your scripts read should be simpler, if you already know what songs you'll have to synchronize with in your game.

fu_films

RN thank you so much for your detailed reply, much appreciated!