Looking to get into Particle and FX Art

iangoold3d · May 2014

Hello PC,

Lately I have been getting into particle and FX art, I have been using cascade in UE4 to make simple smoke and fire particles but im looking to take my FX art to the next level for next gen games. Do you guys have any tutorials or tips on how to get better at FX art. Im still a little confused on the GPU and CPU stuff...

Anyways just an artist looking for some pointers

Thanks guys!

Bruno Afonseca · May 2014

https://www.imbuefx.com has some pretty nice tutorials. There's a forum there, and also at http://tech-artists.org.
Eat3d has some material, such as http://eat3d.com/udk_shaders (free, from our buddy d1ver) and http://eat3d.com/advanced_vfx1.
Does this help?

iangoold3d · May 2014

Thanks! this helps a TON! I was having problems creating my own "flipbooks" but I understand much more now.

Im really starting to love FX stuff

Thanks again

Demno · May 2014

GPU vs CPU, simplified:

GPU, drawing the particles. Why do you need to care? Because particles can make the engine draw the same pixel a lot of times. One for each layer of overdraw (overlapping sprites). The more expensive the shader you put on the sprite, the more expensive each pixel gets to draw.

CPU, simulating the particles. Directing how they move and behave. Some engines (like ue4) now have gpu particles that can be simulated on the gpu making them very fast to calculate, but limiting what they can do instead.

There are some scripts that can help you combine an imagesequence to a flipbook but the easiest way I've found, if you have access to Houdini is to use the mosaic node that will do it for you. It will do it procedurally so if you want to update the sequence or remove some frames it will just instaupdate and give you a new flipbook.

Happy FXing!

iangoold3d · May 2014

Thanks @Demno!

I have ran into a road block. the project I am working on has slow motion, does this ruin the idea of flipbooks? because the flip book wont run in slo mo? if so can I make the flipbooks slow down and speed up in real time? or is there a way to make fire and smoke without flipbooks? I need help!!!

Please help me polycount your my only hope :P

anyways, thanks!

Demno · May 2014

I haven't used UE4 so I don't know if it has the feature but in our engine we have a parameter called timescale so we can slow everything down or speed it up. This affects everything, even texture framerate.

If that's not there, you can try modifying the subUV framerate (is it even called that anymore?) at the same time as you slow down the effect.

However, this will make it more obvious that you are just blending between frames. The faster it plays the smoother it will look. If you pull down the framerate, the individual frames will be easier to spot. The slower you take it, the more detail you need in the effect. Generally, effects don't like being played in slowmotion due to the nature of sprites (Tell that to the trailer guys...). Flat things really stick out in 3d worlds I'm afraid.

Edit: After a quick look at the UE4 Documentation there is a time menu. In there you can find something called AnimSpeed. Have a look and see if you can animate that or modify it somehow.

Bruno Afonseca · May 2014

It all depends, really... if your fire is just a simple flipbook it might, but you'd want to have some other elements going on. I very rarely rely on flipbooks, unless it's more cartoony/hand-drawn stuff. If your fire has distortion on the uvs, some embers flying around, sparks and whatnot, it'll feel more natural and less stiff, so it'll look better in slo-mo.

On this tutorial Bill Kladis gives some pretty good insight on all the elements you could have on your fire effects:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCfmwSonCBw

Demno · May 2014

UV Distortion will give you more problems with slowmotion though. Unless you are using true slowmotion and slowing the actual gametime. Since the distortion is (usually) driven by scrolling textures in the material it doesn't care if the effect slows down.

Edit: Also, UVDistortion always look the same :S You can always spot it. Naughty Dog does it quite good but most other attempts look samey and bland. With Flipbooks mixed with single sprites you can get a lot more variety I think.

iangoold3d · May 2014

Thanks you guys for helping me and teaching me some wisdom! my PFX is coming along very nicely :poly121:

video will be up soon!

...im really falling in love with this FX stuff!

:thumbup::poly136:

Looking to get into Particle and FX Art

Replies