Help Creating Goop Dripping Effect

[Tmankun]

Hey everyone, I’m still new to VFX as a whole but feel welcomed by the community that has been curated here to seek out some help. I’m a student working on a project where I’m trying to figure out how to make this thick goopy liquid dripping effect for one of our monsters. As with most stuff I’m kinda stuck trying to figure out how to get started with such an effect. Thought by trying to recreate a rain effect but most of them are done by drawing lines that appear as rain but that doesn’t quite suit what I’m looking for. I will attach a concept image of our creature to give a sense of what I am trying to achieve. I work primarily in Unreal Engine and Niagara if that helps at all. And any hints or feedback would be appreciated and thank you.

Think I will start off by creating a droplet model, some masks of a droplet, and create a material similar to the blackish-green liquid and play with it from there.

[M0okA]

If you are more confortable working with Unreal and Niagara, you could check the Epic Games ContentExample project. In the Niagara_Advanced map there is some usecase that look to what you’re looking for. Looking in those systems and related assets would be a start I guess

[FRGFX]

Welcome to the world of VFX!

The best place to start with any effect is reference. You have some concept art, so that’s good; but you also need video which shows motion. Try to find clips from games and movies which are similar to what you envision. Then, you can break down what’s happening and recreate it.

Believe it or not, when you’ve been doing VFX for long enough, you can break down in your head without thinking. (It’s actually kinda annoying – I can’t watch a film or play a game without breaking down all the FX while I’m watching. Very distracting)

Post some links to reference and we’ll go through it!

[Tmankun]

I found this video from Evil Within 2 and I really like its chin but I know that’s not VFX that’s part of the model. The actually dripping to me looks like 2D sprites with different masks and textures, and lifetime and all the nitty gritty. Interested in both and will try and recreate them both.

THE EVIL WITHIN 2: SLIME MONSTER

[TobiasTobasco]

Yeah, the dangling bits are probably just physics chains or cloth-sim.
Would be an interesting challenge to create them in Niagara
(Similar to this: [Niagara 4.25] Rope Physics Mini Tutorial or the ‘Chain’ Niagara content example. It’s more difficult with one continous mesh though, without the separated links of a chain.)

The sprites you can clearly see, as they fade out.

On a side note: For droplets, you don’t even need a mesh, just a simple drop texture like this should do the trick:

Just shade it correctly in the shader and you should be good. The more important thing is movement and stretching (which you can all do in Niagara). It’s usually easiest to align the drops to velocity for effects like this.

[FRGFX]

Yup, that’s how I’d do it as well. Much of the work will be in the material. You might try a subsurface shader to get that milky look.

[Tmankun]

I will definitely give this a try soon! Got loaded with some stuff to do first cause we are developing in agile and this is for later lol. But thank you I really appreciate your suggestions and help!