I came across this gem in the Rocket League Season 2 promo video. I can’t get over that sweet middle explosion with a face/skull. The integration of an animated mesh with a unified material just works so well with the particles.
Respect.
Anyone have a breakdown of how to achieve this kind of effect? I’d love to take a peek <3
Psyonix, the company that makes Rocket League, is now hiring:
https://jobs.realtimevfx.com/jobs/10940449-fx-artist-at-psyonix
At first glance I’d say they had a depth fade on the explosion sub uv, and then the skull and the explosion are both using the same panning texture using MacroUVs for uniform noise. I’d guess the whole thing’s color is controlled with a LUT gradient for uniform color, especially as the skull dissolves out
Rocket League allows you to watch saved replay games with a free-cam in slow motion. I highly recommend getting up-close and personal with these! It’s quite inspiring to see all of the different techniques that they’re using.
Can someone record this, and link it to us? That’d be so great! c:
Did something similar a while back. Some key aspects were to use threshold / choke to make the mesh dissipate as it alphas out slightly before the particles. So as the mesh get some holes in it, what you see is the particles, that layering makes a good illusion when the colors on the mesh and on the particle are so similar.
Another aspect we wanted on ours, was for the mesh shape to “come out” of the particle. So we used the Mesh’s vert position on the front to back axis and animated a threshold there to do a wipe reveal, while at the same time, moving the mesh forward so that the edge of the reveal remained at the place where the particle quad is. The illusion was quite convincing.
I doubt there is anything Depth related (since its all transparent). But since you know where the emitter is and what the vert pos are, then some simple maths there and you have a fade gradient for verts coming close to the emitter on a given axis.
Brilliant! I’d love to see the end result sometime, if you have it available.
First iteration, roughly 2-3hours. Lots of room to polish but trashed the idea…
That one doesn’t use skin / boned animated mesh, the skull is a static mesh moved with ALU in shader based on some UV masking.
So cool! Thanks for sharing :^]
I could provide you all with a video later today when I get back home. I think Id have to buy the effect but Ill consider it a personal investment 
Download Bakkesmod, you can have all the skin in game and more ( only you can see it ) i can do it tonight to i have the skin 
There she is, i uploaded on youtube for the slow https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kwkBxMopgA&feature=youtu.be
thanks for the tip and the video too mate, much appreciated
this is fantastic! thanks a ton!