Hi everyone, long time lurker and first time poster here. I recently quit my job as a game art generalist to pursue a career as (freelance) VFX artist. It was a tough choice, but there simply wasn’t enough VFX work to keep me satisfied.
I thought I’d share some of my work here, although at this time most of it is professional work. I’m also working hard to fill my portfolio with some more personal work, as I’m not able to use all of my professional work due to NDA’s. Hope you all like it, and feel free to leave me any feedback (I’m always eager to learn!) and to follow me on Artstation!
Some of my recent work was on a mobile 2,5D sidescrolling game set in a scifi/futuristic universe. I’ve made a couple of vehicle trails and matching explosions.
I’m happy with how these turned out, but none of them are perfect. I had some constraints within the context of the game, as well as time constraints. If it was personal work, I would have pushed some of them a bit further.
I recently made another trail and explosion set. I made a chromatic abberation shader for these effects, a short demo can be found on my artstation. Hope you all like it!
By the way, is it possible to upload video’s here instead of GIF’s? They really don’t do the effects justice.
Good luck on your new path! These looks really awesome. What’s the concept behind the first one? To me, it seems like magic that is very pure/clean… hope that makes sense, idk how else to express what I’m thinking lol.
To offer a bit of context: The game I’m working on is a 2,5D scifi/futuristic race-type game. The trails would be used behind a vehicle, and the explosion effects would be used whenever the vehicle crashes (i.e. game over). There’s a ton of different customisable VFX sets to be unlocked. Unfortunately the project is still TBA so I can’t share anything else.
The idea/theme behind the last set was ‘light’. I thought the chromatic abberation shaders I made would fit the idea well, because it sort of looks like light refraction. But I get what you mean, I think these effects could also fit some pure and clean, sparkly magic spells!
I see, it does have a scifi and futuristic vibe - my mind just always gravitates to magic haha. Your game seems very exciting, hope you have fun making it!
It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything. I’ve been working on some personal stuff and I thought I’d share some progress along the way
The general idea is an AoE attack where Mjolnir spawns and smashes down doing lightning damage. I did some sketching to flesh out the idea and general feel.
I worked on the shader and very rough animation. I might reduce the squash and stretch a whole lot, it feels way too cartoony. Also the dissolve mappings looks pretty bad. I’m using object space UV’s at the moment, but it’s not really working out.
I made a bit of progress today. I tweaked the animation a bit, did fracturing simulation in Blender. Ran into FBX export/import issues, so eventually I just used the blend file directly in Unity. Not really the way to go, but for this purpose it’ll have to do. Maybe it’s time to start learning Houdini though.
I also started adding some effects, dissolve fragment particles, impact frame etc.
Currently working on the hammer’s aura. I came across a nice Unity plugin for generating meshes, but I’m now running into issues with coloring.
Either way, I’m happy with the progress so far, the impact already feels nice and oomphy.
Phew, I think this is about 99% done. I’d like to improve the hammer dissolve a bit more, and eventually put everything in a proper environment.
Learned so much doing this effect. All textures are made in Substance Designer, which I never used before. I watched a ton of @pamar’s tutorials so thanks for that
Spent some time doing an intro sequence for my company logo. What better way to do that than creating a bunch of shaders and effects and doing it right in Unity. I’m especially happy with how the shine at the end turned out. I generated a normal texture from my logo, which is overlaid with the logo and distorts the shiny texture that pans over it.
Also started a new effect. I really wanted to do some sand/rock based stuff, so the idea is to have a projectile form from sand, and launched at an dummy. It then shatters into pieces which will float around for a bit, and then get launched at the dummy again.
I’ve mainly blocked out the effect and worked on the timing. I just started adding some shaders and textures.
I recently purchased Chroma and wanted to try it out for a bit. I thought an aurora shader would be a nice change of pace from all the explosions and projectiles.
Thanks Simon! Honestly though there’s so much room for improvement, maybe I’ll revamp it later. Would be cool if it was actually more volumetric instead of just some flat planes
Did a bit more work on the projectile effect. Spent quite some time creating a master VFX shader, which does all the things I need for VFX (think UV scrolling, dissolve, etc). It’s quite big, but it means I can do about 90% of effects with this one shader.
I’m still thinking about how I’m going to do the buildup of the projectile itself. I was thinking of splitting it into a bunch of separate meshes and then adding a dissolve to move it in. Or maybe I can use vertex displacement to make it grow. I’ll try some things soon ᵗᵐ.
Did a lot more work on the effect. I ended up going for vertex displacement to grow the projectile, along with particles that move towards the center point and ‘stick’. It’s not perfect, but it works fine for this purpose.
Also if this was an actual game scenario, a direction/range indicator would be nice, so I added one. I think the fade out is a bit boring, so maybe some lingering particles would be a nice addition.
I also added an effect to the character’s hands, because you know, magic . I’m not that happy yet with how it’s looking as of now, so I’ll polish it later.
Wrapped up the effect today. Mainly polished it, added a camera shake and impact frames. Also put everything in an environment for presentation. Hope you all enjoyed the journey, on to the next one!
. I’m not that happy yet with how it’s looking as of now, so I’ll polish it later.