Hi everyone !
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This is my entry for this month :
https://imgur.com/MAHPnR2
I am posting this late because I had a very late idea about what kind of effect I would make and how to achieve it.
Still a lot to do to improve, and I already have a roadmap !
- Using Houdini to create a nice Floawmap (Maybe with the help of Glad Tutorial
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- Using Houdini to add vertex animation little explosion to bring more life on the effect.
- Using Substance Designer to create more ambitious textures
- Improve the look of the shader and the improve the system (Tweak the distance fields, add height map and vertex offset, add effect relative to height map)
Very inspire by the last God Of War, and the Muspelheim effect in particular :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3KZ_wnBC44
See you soon for the next update !
6 Likes
Hey !
This is the next step I worked on today :
https://gph.is/2NY2WtW
I get a major issue about Distance Field and how to setup it for now, so I decided to see this later and continue and iterate on the other step I decided to work on.
I create a little mesh thanks to Houdini, but I’m not sure if I rather take this kind of technics, or go on vertex animation instead. What do you thinks guys ?
Also, I’m split between continue with distance field in order to do this smooth contraction effect (like my first gif), when the texture is near a rock, or take the time to bake a cool flowmap on Houdini. What do you think I should do ?
The very last step will be to tweak the envionment, make the rocks darker, and to lava shinier. I very want to push forward the volcano ambiance here ! 
Stay tuned for the next iterations, critics are always welcomed as I try many thing at the same time !
3 Likes
Hi, this is me again !
Didn’t manage to do a lot of new thing, cleaned and tweak my lava shader at least.
On this iteration, I really wanted to work on the ambiance and the mood. I’m quite satisfied for now, still things to correct but look good for now.
So yeah, I promise, next iteration will be on Houdini integration into my effect. Still don’t know if flowmaps and vertex animation is a good idea according to what I already have. What do you think ?
6 Likes
i love the sparkles and smoke. adds a lot atmosphere! <3
1 Like
Thanks mates
I am planning to improve the bubble explosion, but do you have any suggestion to improve the global effect overall ?
I’m running out of ideas, but may be it’s cool enough and don’t have to see too complicated for this one 
i guess you could add some distortion as heat-flickering as a little detail but i think making the bubble explosion better integrated is the most important part. could be interesting if - before the explosion happens - the lava would lighten up “below the surface” first and then the explosion comes
here some references which i found when i searched for lava stuff:
https://realtimevfx.com/uploads/default/original/1X/e9a6fe50c39723377c90a0e03f3a509ffe77cd06.gif
3 Likes
Oh man thank you for the refs !
Bubbles were my first thing to rework, I will definitly take a look on it, thanks !
This is a pretty nice lava river, I could nearly feel the heat! 
1 Like
