Hello, I’m both excited and nervous, this is my first attempt for a RTVFX challenge, it’s been so long I wanted to give it a try !
Here is my final submission :
Thumbnail :
I had to lower a lot my goals for this one, but I’m quite happy with the result 
The flame material alone (no simulation or spritesheet, only some noises, panning, tricks with depth and global spaguetti mess) :
https://media.giphy.com/media/WRm1ZjLhJ25yYpzPX2/giphy-downsized-large.gif
My main references here :
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/WK5JYQ - Amazing style and fire behavior - by wan qi
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hOUhq-FQDI - more stylised but good to have
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/5XxXWP - Amazing super realistic campfire by Michał Arendt
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wKiNZ-u-HA&t=80s - Very useful (and soothing) ref
Good luck everyone ! 
7 Likes
Soooooo…
After a long time of hesitation, many experimentations and as much changing plans, I am here, in the rush of the last week before the deadline, reducing my project to :
- Having a good looking campfire (a lot was planned initially around this poor campfire
)
I finally got some result I like from all the experimentations, let’s see where it goes from there ! (still a lot of work to do… And I am forcing myself to not look at the other entries on the challenge to not loose motivation 
)
Good luck everyone and have fun !!!
2 Likes
Ok, so here is my latest progress ! I have only the campfire for now, and as we are close to the deadline I am just posting it here, and see if I manage to do anything else ! 
It was very refreshing to work on a personnal project, it’s been ages ! I feel like I needed it, as was getting pretty rusty. I will definitely try to participate again to the RT VFX challenge !
1 Like
I realised I totally forget to mention, but feel free to give some feedbacks, I’m always eager to improve myself !
congratz for finishing, very well done Is this a mask, distorted by noise on a camera-oriented plane?
p.s. you’ve written in your 1st pose that it’s panning+noise. i wonder how the noises + masks look and how many layers of noise you used.
1 Like
Thank you Simon !
Yes, it’s a camera oriented plane, here is a preview of my material for the fire :
Nothing very complicated here, I actually have only one noise and one mask, which are those :
I use a sphere mask to use the distorded mask as an input and get as a result, a nice gradient that I can directly input in the opacity. There is some artefacts created by the sphere mask on the base of the fire, I remove them with a simple multiplied gradient.
The wind is created by a vector to give the direction and a simple perlin noise to give more motion.
Hope this answered your questions ! Don’t hesitate if you have more 
6 Likes
The shapes of the flames look very beautiful 
Thanks for the insights you already shared! I think I get most of the node setup. I image Wind and WPO make the sprite skew and jitter a bit? I’m also unfamiliar with the Plane Push approach, is it to layer the sprite in front of the log meshes? Does this work well in combination with the depth fade?
Also interesting to see that you have refraction built into the same shader. Doesn’t that make it harder to control the refraction, as opposed to having separate refraction particles?
Overall great entry! 
My only point of criticism would be about the ember texture of the logs, which I feel is a tad too realistic or too noisy in comparison to the more stylized look of the flames (but it would probably depend on what the rest of the game looked like).
You’ve got my vote 
1 Like
Aw, thank you very much for the feedbacks and the vote !! 
To answer you, yes, the fake “wind” is making the plane jitter, as it’s not only a quad, but a tesselated plane And you are right, the Plane Push was just to bring a bit the plane to the front so it’s not hidden behind the logs, and as it’s part of the WPO, it doens’t mess with the depth fade as the whole mesh is moving in the camera direction !
Yep, the refraction in the shader doesn’t really give any adventage, I probably should have done it separately, but it’s subtle enough to not be a problem being inside the fire
I agree, I could have come with a better log texture/mesh, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to be more stylised or more realistic, and it lacks consistancy. Texturing is really an area where I need to improve ! I don’t have the eye yet to know what works well or not, so thank you very much for pointing this !
1 Like
