I’ll probably try to participate, I have a week or two.
My idea is to use an existing animation in a blueprint for the effect and update it for the winter effect.
I started with the ValleyoftheAncient project, there are already cool animations and charging as an effect, I want to update the effects.
I replaced all the key effects with my own, for now there are placeholders. My idea is to create a winter portal to Santa :). I will start with the most difficult, the appearance of the portal, then its animation of appearance, then I will switch to the effects for the character, if I have time.
I have already created a simple winter location so that I can immediately adjust it for lighting.
I really like the shape and the portal on the top right, everything else is winter attributes that I will follow.
I spent a long time looking for some more or less interesting solutions for the portal border. It seems to me that icicles are not very original, but they look extremely good.
While working in Houdini, I was looking for options for creating a shape portal. I tried to make something like destroyed ice or make a height map. It seems to me that a height map looks like a good solution for animation, but it was not enough when I tested creating a material in Unreal.
In general, the processes in Houdini for creating a mask and contour turned out to be too complicated, but I was able to remember how interesting it is to create such things using all the charm of Houdini.
Then I tried working with icicles, at first I wanted to use just geometry, but it broke the contour of the portal, I needed something that would rotate my geometry without touching the base. Then I clicked on vertex animation and realized that this is quite complicated for such a thing and there must be something that makes it a little easier. I remembered that there is Pivot Painter, I sat for a few hours to figure out how it works and then set it up in Unreal.
Can’t wait to see the final result! 
shader updates, also added vertex animation on the edges of the portal for the animation of appearance.
I used a picture from the Internet for the portal inside, I didn’t bother with getting rid of the edges, I’m just saving time for now.
Someone is clearly having fun, this is looking great!
I’m still working on the look and feel. I’m planning to add trails flying into the portal.
In the process of adding an interesting thing, but it seems there are quite a lot of different things to consider. The size of the portal, when we can get close, the quality of the crack details, the animation of the spread, some parallax, noise around the portal (various types of smoke)
I used three Niagara, one is an emitter, the second is trails, and the third is impacts (when it hits, there is an animation inside the material)
my reference
