Hello Sig!
First of I try to decipher the sentence for you. You did understand the gist correctly.
“Uses a cutoff value to clip the pixels according to the texture’s grayscale value (without the rounding, for more values).”
Cutoff: is basically the name of a value that fits the context.
Clip the pixels: clipping is also known as “discarding”. We discard the pixel information on that point, so we can see through the mesh. (the shader function is called clip())
texture’s grayscale value: greyscale textures are basically gradient information between 0 and 1 (mid gray being 0.5).
I try to rephrase it “we use a value to discard pixels with the texture as reference on which pixels to discard”
For more information on that topic, there is a great thread on this forum:
What I can give you as feedback already:
I like to break down components of an effect into primary, secondary and tertiary “layers”.
Primary is mostly for information purposes and the base of the effect.
Secondary is for emphasizing movement and impact of the primary.
Tertiary is for parts that could be left out, but help to give it footing in the world.
In Harry’s explosion I would break it down as
Primary: the fire orb and the orange glowing around it.
Secondary: the darker contrasting orb swirl and the grey-brown “dirt”
Tertiary: imo none. it could be some sort of pebbles that get blasted away in this example.
I hope this helps you! 