Okay, so I figured I’ll start a sketchbook here for all my tech art/fx doodling, Seems like other people have been doing the same in this category, please let me know if this is not allowed,
Anyway, I’ll start this one off with a simple UE4-material function I made today to generate simple sine-Waves, I’ll look at adding some more parameters like random frequency noise, Fractal pattern etc, but here it is.
Fun little Experiment with actor position based Vertex Deformation I did a while back, I think I might take this one further and make some kinda portal or teleportation effect.
EDIT: Apologies I didn’t realize how large this gif was
Here’s Today’s experiment, tried to make a candle flame material, no textures just math/UV manipulation, though the material would be cheaper if you used a noise texture for the noise instead.
(Note: Gif framerate makes it look a lot more jittery than it is)
Today’s mini-project was this Blob Explosion effect, I just reimagined my bubble shader into a blob, I think I subconsciously channeled a stylized version of the bio-rifle blob from UT.
Spent some time today trying to create a realistic Ice Material. I was going for a more generalized shader, but I think I’m kind of straddling the line between frozen lake surface and Ice chunk at the moment. I think the noise texture I’m using might be a bit too noisy at the moment. Any thoughts/ suggestions?
EDIT: After looking at it some more, I think it reads more like jello, I think more variation in the bubble size/shape + replace noise texture on the surface, with some ice-like crack pattern instead. http://imgur.com/mD57XTy
Updated the Ice Material a little, Swapped out the noise, with a more crack-like pattern, and added size/shape variation to the Bubbles. Also, added a Transparent Forward-Shading override to use for see-through chunks.
Try making a normal map for the cracked texture and combine that with a fesnel, so when you see it on the edge of the mesh there’s less highlight. Maybe use the crack texture to mask off some of the spec for it as well, cracks in ice are usually more diffuse
Thanks for the input, sometimes you look at something soo long you miss things.
1.) Normal for cracks/fresnel: This is something that I actually tried but visually i just didn’t like the effect, so I left it out. I might try it again maybe the normal I generated was shit.
2.)Crack mask-diffuse roughness: The cracks do have a higher roughness value + they mask out bubbles, but perhaps the mask is too tight, so it isn’t very apparent. I might expand the mask a little more or maybe try bumping up the roughness value…maybe I might even try making a seperate material layer for it…but that might be overkill.
Something else I probably need to tweak some more are the color values, I think they look a little too saturated at the moment. Anyway I’ll stop rambling now.
I know how it is to stare at something for too long. When I first started working on my demo reel, I had been staring at the effect at 10% speed for so long that I got a lot of feedback about my extra elements were happening too fast for them to read.
As for the cracks, if they are under the surface of the ice, then just ignore the roughness advice. But if they are meant to be cracks in the surface then maybe try knock back some of the gloss over the cracks and add some additional elements to give them a more inset feel.
