Hey really great stuff! Try using an orbit module to give your embers some variable swirling, much like you'd see embers in a real fire riding inside of heat vortices. You can also do some material work do get those embers to flicker automatically.
Also it looks like you're using a flipbook for the base fire? If so, I really see it stuttering between frames. Make sure you using subuv blending if you aren't already, and maybe speed up the flipbook speed to help get rid of it.
Updated video (see OP). Increased the fire saturation (although possibly too much now tbh!), added colour variation in the material to both the fire and the lights, reduced the size of some of the logs, added orbit swirling to the embers and increased the flipbook speed of the larger flames.
yeah i'm definitely doing something wrong with the colour over life node - the particle system we use at work doesnt work in the same way. if the particle has a colour from the material then is the colour over life additive, multiplied or just replaces the particle colour? also is there any way to just use a greyscale material and just use the colour over life node to colour it? that what i was doing in the first one but there didnt seem to be a way to increase the intensity - anything over 1 just blew out the colour.
i'll have another update tonight
edit: updated again now once vimeo has buffered it or whatever it does. it's better - less saturation and the light variation has been sped up - but it's still not quite where i want it to be. somehow i just cant get the colours to do what i want, any experienced cascade users who can give me some pointers? i think it might be that the texture is just greyscale and coloured all inside udk rather than a full rgb texture but that massively increases the memory footprint and i was trying to keep things low...
You want your texture to be greyscale inside of your material. What you need to make sure you're doing is multiplying your greyscale texturesample against a vertex color expression. Plug that in to your emissive slot.
Now the colors you set with your color module inside of cascade will tint the particles. Since it's a fire you can use values above 1 to activate the bloom effect inside of unreal to give your fire sprites a nice glow as well.
Your current effect has a very jumpy and jittery feel. Like you're using sprites and swapping them out every 0.05 seconds or something. Real fires (though moving fast) are much smoother.
I think what might work better is having a quickly scrolling 'wispy' texture, controlled with a noise/cloud map and a gradual fade.
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Chimp
Agreed, also needs the occasional crisp pop's with the blinks. Good work, nice ambient feel to it.
Also it looks like you're using a flipbook for the base fire? If so, I really see it stuttering between frames. Make sure you using subuv blending if you aren't already, and maybe speed up the flipbook speed to help get rid of it.
Hope this helps!
look at this:
and increasing the speed of light blinking may look better.
i'll have another update tonight
edit: updated again now once vimeo has buffered it or whatever it does. it's better - less saturation and the light variation has been sped up - but it's still not quite where i want it to be. somehow i just cant get the colours to do what i want, any experienced cascade users who can give me some pointers? i think it might be that the texture is just greyscale and coloured all inside udk rather than a full rgb texture but that massively increases the memory footprint and i was trying to keep things low...
Now the colors you set with your color module inside of cascade will tint the particles. Since it's a fire you can use values above 1 to activate the bloom effect inside of unreal to give your fire sprites a nice glow as well.
Hope this helps!
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Your current effect has a very jumpy and jittery feel. Like you're using sprites and swapping them out every 0.05 seconds or something. Real fires (though moving fast) are much smoother.
I think what might work better is having a quickly scrolling 'wispy' texture, controlled with a noise/cloud map and a gradual fade.