Sunday 28 April 2013

Finished Maybe?

So I've done a bit more work on this. I've given the core a bit more intensity and added in some mesh data for some whispy bits off the core. I've also reworked the sparkles coming out of the trail to give it more energy. I couldn't decide whether it'd look better having the trail expand over time to make it look like it was dissipating or whether to have the trail shrink over time to fade away so I did both. The first video is having the trail expand over time and the second video is where it shrinks. 



I still feel like my work lacks energy and that visual 'punch' that FX should have. Also looking at it the smoke textures look popcorny.

Friday 26 April 2013

Right, so I spent my morning trying to fix some rendering errors with my ground attack thing to only discover that I couldn't get it to go away so I'm sure it'll be something that I'll have to look into later for when I inevitably have to rerender this out. No idea why it spawns two emitters on top of each other a fraction of a second apart but oh well. 

So this is the AoE type ground attack that I've been working on that I was talking about yesterday. In the first video it's just the normal one but in the second video I was experimenting with staggering the timing for a greater sense of impact. It's supposed to be that there's an initial hit then a brief pause before the main impact explodes outward. I think the idea is sound and would give the effect greater presence but I think I'm off with the timing as it isn't gelling together properly. 



So improvements. Obviously I've mentioned the timing. But I think the overall effect lacks that energy and impact you'd expect from an effect like this. I'll have to readdress the textures and see if I can't get some fast panners in there to maybe try and give it that energy. The other major problem is that I don't like the rocks that shot out. It's supposed to be the displacement of earth from the force of the impact but I think I've over done it. I think it would work a lot better if I tried something more subtle like a large indented crack where just some of the chunks of earth round the outside are sticking out.

Thursday 25 April 2013

Just Some Stuff

So I've been working on a few things recently just between projects. One is like an AoE ground attack and the other is this kind of ice spell. The only thing is that the videos I rendered out for the AoE seem to be having some troubles with spawning emitters on top of each other so I'll have to retry rendering it out tonight and try and fix the problem.

But on with the show I guess. I've had this idea rolling around in my head for a while, and especially after playing DotA I admit. But it was a good opportunity to learn about how ribbons work and how to implement them. So I worked up a really quick concept to just kind of help me visualise it. Below is my concept and a quick render of where it's out.




I apologise for the poor quality of the video but I can't seem to get ribbons to render in UDK, I had the same trouble with the previous gas station project. I'm only really just started with it so it's got a long way to go. A real big problem I see is that it lacks luster, it's not got that great sense of energy that something like this should have. But some things that I've seen that need changing is the centre point. It needs more too it to convey that sense of energy but also I think it's a little too long. The sparkles last too long around the centre, I want them to live longer as they leave a trail but they need to die really quickly at the centre. And the other thing is that I need to change the whispy ribbons that come from the centre, I think it's too expensive to have so many ribbons so I'm thinking I'll make some kind of whispy mesh for those parts.

Saturday 20 April 2013

Long Time No See :)

So I've not updated my blog in a long time so I think it's about time I get back into it. For a while I've had to put other stuff a little to the back whilst I work on my uni projects. But I'm starting to wrap up my uni projects so now I can get back into my personal projects. 

So I thought I'd give a bit of an update on my uni projects as well. For it I've been making a rain shader that uses up vectors to switch between a panning rain fall for walls and ripples for up facing normals. The scene needs a lot of work to it, like fixing the rain emitter and adding water running off of edges. And fixing up the steam coming from vents and adding steam coming from air conditioner units to make it feel a little atmospheric.


But for now I'm working on another portfolio piece. The idea is to have an RPG hit a gas station where there's an initial explosion and then it burns for a bit before it tiggers another larger explosion. It's only in its initial stages right now and some of the textures are old and in dire need of redoing. 



I'm thinking that the initial explosion doesn't have enough impact and I had to render another video from screen capture as the ribbon trail did't render in my initial render from UDK.