Hey guys! I’m starting a little sketchbook to help me stay accountable for creating manageable effects. The goal is to have a new smaller one up by every Wednesday. If I’m working on a more complex one, I want to post tangible updates on that effect.
To start with:
Merry Christmas! I created this at the end of my advanced shader workshop. Credit goes to Kayozz on sketchfab(now fab) for the cabin model and texturing and CGAxis over on Fab.com for the Firs. Nothing entirely crazy is going on with this but it was a lot of layering of textures for the inner part of the orb.
Here is week 2. I wanted to play with the idea of a stylized cloud burst. I’m not entirely happy with it, but I want to be strict with myself regarding time limits. I am learning to fail faster so I can get better results. My noodling heart is dying a little, but I know it will be worth it.
Things I would like to improve:
Timing (feels a little too soft for my liking)
Dissolve. For some reason, the back-facing portion dissolves at a different rate, despite using the same timeline. It would require more investigation.
Color fade and control on inner portion. I used LUT for the color selection of the different cloud types. I would love to experiment with more control on the timing of the color change on the inner portion. Right now it is controlled by distance from the heart of the effect. I like the effect for the toxic looking cloud on the outside but I feel like it weakens in the dissipation stage.
Dissolve map size: I think I would like to try zooming in a bit on the dissolve texture. I would want to have different coordinates sampled in that case though to help with it not being too stale.
I’ve been bad about posting here, but I’ve continued working on the effects! Here is a list of things I’ve worked on over the weeks! As always, I see room for improvement and am excited to reach a point where efficiency helps me accomplish more in these weeks.
[For some reason, Giphy isn’t liking my latest effect]
Been working at a waterfall. Here is a WIP of it. I wanted to try to capture more of an animation-style real-time effect. My next goal is to play around with some interaction in the environment.
Another update with the waterfall! I added some ripples for rocks/objects intersecting at the base and made a procedural rock material that will put stylized moss on top. My next goal is to get some cool behaviors out of the waterfall body itself.
Alright! I got some interactivity with the main body of the falls. This was my first time working with distance fields and distance field gradients. I also played around with scratchpad, but it felt like an enormous undertaking for only a couple of days of work without direct guidance.
This isn’t exactly what I envisioned; I had a theory of projecting on the z-axis, and if it gets interrupted, make opacity below it 0. However, that theory was complicated for me to pull off with my current skill set. Using some of the things I learned about distance fields and masking, I tried to at least play around with that to see if I could get somewhat close to the idea. It had mild success. One last thing I want to do is knock back the collision particles on the rocks, as I see them as somewhat distracting.
I want to return to this, but I’m trying to break noodling habits. So maybe after the end of March, I will let myself do a circle back.
