Incandescent Rukhmar quill
Starting to play with particle effects along with 3D in this piece of fan art, focus on just putting it into practice and use of basic resources while trying to optimize/compensate some aspects with the use of art. I will do my best to be objective and as brief as possible.
putting the initial idea on “paper” while trying to stick with something that makes sense
after some research, trying to figure out how it will work in general
refining sketch to start some 3D
modeling the main shape
refining the mesh and adding some silhouette to it
with the model ready, it becomes doable to do some tests such as a hierarchy of values without losing the sense of progress
sketching the mesh of the other components
meshes are ready
UV map logic
preparing the textures to be used: ember
here there is the use of some rgb channels for alpha (so the smoke doesn’t disappear abruptly)
sketching some idea of color and details
and some hand painting process
MVP
some considerations about shaders and particle system (and the feeling when you study it the first time)
final polishing after checking that everything is ok
Cool resource
Lots of useful information about particle effects on the artist channel:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRXg4ewWi7k
Don’t get me wrong, it seems simple but it was a hell of work gather the initial information and convert it into a visual response like this, even if you are a person invested in take things apart to see how it works inside there will still be disciplines worth to taking shortcuts if you can, luckily the general sense of share and grow within the vfx community helped a lot in that regard.
In the end I was very happy with the result and I hope something can be useful to you too. Thanks