Boorch's VFX Sketchbook

Checked with the latest 5.2.2 and it doesn’t seem to work there either. Not sure if I’m missing something or not. I’ve not dug into the LWRP (or HDRP) much as I’m finishing up a project that’s shipping on 2018 using the built in forward rendering path.

I’ve decided to ditch LWRP and go with Unity defaults + Amplify Shader Editor.

Nevertheless, I’m sharing a slightly revised version of the fx for the sake of closure. :slight_smile:

Edit: I’ve designed some sfx and updated the video clip.
(There’s a tiny black square near the end, I guess vimeo had a glitch during encoding since the raw video file does not have that glitch)

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I’ve tried a hologram/HUD sort of thing.

  • Textures created in Substance Designer.
  • Shader created in Amplify Shader Editor/Unity.

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Aaand… This is a stylized explosion effect.

  • Flipbook created in After Effects (love subtractive “mask” animation)
  • Some textures created in Substance Designer
  • Particle System in Unity

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This is a Warp Tunnel Effect inspired by Mirza’s tutorial.

  • Textures created in Substance Designer & Filter Forge
  • Shader created in Amplify Shader Editor / Unity

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nice one! I like the style your going for. Maybe try some more movement in the smoke for a nice dissolve/disappear feeling, as it comes in contact with the wind.

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A HUD Element sketch, inspired by RzFx HUD Shaders. It’s also only 1 plane and 1 texture with parallax and rotation animation controlled via the material properties.

  • Texture created in After Effects. (Repeater rules!!!) RGB Packed in Substance Designer.
  • Shader created in Amplify Shader Editor / Unity.

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Here’s a WIP effect I’ve started. I’ve been working on this for hours and my eyes hurt so I’m posting this as an “early stage”. I’d love any sort of feedback so I can tweak it before going in too deep!

(One thing I’ll do tonight is to tweak dissolve timing and add a trail for the “reappearing” moment to add a little bit of “fake” anticipation and stylized motion blur)

  • Shader created in Amplify Shader Editor / Unity.
  • Various Noise Textures used in shader created in Substance Designer.
  • 3D Humanoid animations from imported from Mixamo to Unity. Sequenced on a Timeline.

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I was toying around with Substance Designer and came up with this ground crack and I just wanted to create a simple opacity mask shader combined with a Simplex 2D noise.

  • Texture created in Substance Designer.
  • Shader created in Amplify Shader Editor / Unity.

Sorry for the terrible compression. :confused:

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This is a quick shader sketch inspired by the “Demon Hunter” skins on Apex Legends.
I’ve just created the shader and dropped it on the model.

  • Texture/Opacity Mask created in Substance Designer
  • Shader created in Amplify Shader Editor / Unity

Fire Loop (1 plane 1 texture)

  • Pyro Sim in Houdini
  • (Flipbook + Gradient Map) Shader created in Amplify Shader Editor / Unity

Houdini is awesome!

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An attempt to create a “Diablo-esque” Fire Shield using only 2 textures.

  • Textures created in Substance Designer
  • Shader created in Amplify Shader Editor / Unity

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that looks super dope!

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I’ve continued to iterate upon the latest shader I’ve created.

  • Texture created in Substance Designer
  • Shader created in Amplify Shader Editor / Unity
  • Mesh created in Cinema 4D


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This is a WIP portal effect partially inspired by the Bandit portal in Destiny 2.

  • Textures created in Substance Designer
  • Shader created in Amplify Shader Editor / Unity
  • Mesh created in Cinema 4D

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Cool! It would be great if you showed some shader settings for training purposes only x)

Hey thanks! I’m currently crunching for a project but of course, I would explain how I construct my shaders when I have some free time!

To be honest, I know I won’t feel comfortable just posting a simple screenshot of the shader graph without any explanation. I’d love to at least have comment windows that explain the math on some parts of the graph but doing stuff like this takes up a surprisingly great deal of time, which I currently don’t have. :slight_smile: But I definitely want to give back to the community since most of the things I’ve learnt about shader creation is provided by the lovely community here!

Nevertheless, the shaders I’ve created mostly has the basic math and UV scrolling stuff.
Textures and meshes/UVs deserve the real credit in terms of “looks” of these effects. :slight_smile:

What you’ve made is very cool ! :smiley: How did you manage to create a gradient map in ASE? I can’t find anything, and what I’ve tried is completely wrong. I really want to use one but it’s too hard for me.
Instead of creating flipbook, you should try to use the alpha dissolve, the render look like flipfbook without being a flipbook but just a texture, it’s magical haha and pretty light (I just finish to create my shader in ASE, so I can share it if you want) :smiley:

Edit: I made a gradient map, it’s not as complicated as I thought, I connected my texture to an append then to the gradient map and in the append node I put a vector 1 and I can change the index thanks to the vector 1 :slight_smile:

Hi! I’m sorry for the late reply. There’s been a lot going on in my life for the past couple of months. I’ve looked for VFX jobs literally throughout the whole world but I can’t find any. So I decided to go back to what I originally do: indie games development.

I’m currently releasing a cross-platform multiplayer game (a solo project, so a lot of work beyond development, such as submission to steam/app store and creating all visual and textual metadata etc) so I guess I’ll be a bit “afk” from VFX stuff. I need to heal my broken heart :slight_smile: (just kidding)

Nevertheless, for gradients I just use a static (pre-rendered/serialized) image with Lerp. I recently needed to upgrade my OS and formatted my whole disk so everything is currently on a backup disk somewhere, but I remember I got an Editor script for Unity that can “serialize” standard unity gradients to a small png file. That’s how I create my gradient maps most of the time. I will post the script here whenever I have time to restore my projects. By the way, I consider myself an “anti-flipbook” artist. Amongst all the vfx I’ve posted here, none uses flipbooks except the fire loop I’ve created using Houdini. All others are basically some UV magic! :smiley:

P.S: Check out the trailer for my game I mentioned above, if you’re interested :slight_smile: Hopefully it’ll be released on Steam next month, and App Store the following.

EDIT:
mini PVP is released on Steam now! Woohooooo!

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I’m back after almost a year!

While I was away, I released 2 solo game projects and I’ve found a day job as a Technical Artist in a mobile games company so it’s been a pretty busy year.

I realized I was missing a “Magic Rune” type of vfx on my portfolio so I gave it a try. :slight_smile:

Unity’s own Recorder somehow records with a terrible bitrate. The “fade” at the end was actually pretty smooth, but somehow compression made it feel like it’s stuttering :confused:

Anyways,

  • Particle System created in Unity
  • Rune sprite created in After Effects
  • Hand painted Flame texture in Procreate
  • Shader created in Amplify Shader Editor
  • VFX Meshes modelled & UV Unwrapped in Blender

1 Like