QbieShay: Sketch#46 Dragon Breath

Events 46 - RE Dragon Breath
#1

Yay first time participating!

I was inspired by this beautiful drawing and decided to create a dragon’s breath for a fairy dragon!
Here 's the inspiration: https://www.deviantart.com/alviaalcedo/art/Magical-orb-694886278

Here’s the final result

I got a lot of people helping me and supporting me through the creation of this effect. Shout-out to @Nibilli for helping all the time, @jasonkey for the feedback and the suggestions on the flames and smoke, @hadidjah for encouraging me to improve the feedback, the other students of the VFXApprentice course for sitting it through with me and last but not least Harmonie for suggesting the final color palette! Thank you so much!

------------------ OLDER POST

I worked on this for a full day and got to this point, but I’m not entirely satisfied by the core flipbook for the fire, of which I’ll post more progress pictures later.

23 Likes
#2

The first part that I worked on were the bright swirls. I’ve tried a number of different meshes

Screenshot_2021-09-14_14-35-58
Screenshot_2021-09-14_14-35-581920×1042 216 KB

#3

And in the end settled with some more linear shapes:
Screenshot_2021-09-14_14-37-05

#4

Because the swirls were rotating always in the same direction, i mirrored the mesh and made a second particle system with the mirrored mesh.

Screenshot_2021-09-14_14-37-13

#5

I tried an elaborate texture and a bigger mesh, but it had a little too much detail:

Twirls
Twirls512×512 50.1 KB

3 Likes
#6

Smoke is not super interesting: just a billboard quad with color over life, size over life, and a dissolve texture:

Smoke
Smoke512×512 59.9 KB

3 Likes
#7

I tried a different flipbook. More fire-y, but too noisy (thanks to Hadidjah for pointing that out)

4 Likes
#8

Final flipbook is done! Happy with this one. It isn’t perfect on its own, but works fine in 3D :slight_smile:

FireFlipbookPlzThisTime
FireFlipbookPlzThisTime512×512 64.6 KB

https://gfycat.com/scientificvalidcygnet

4 Likes
#9

Wow, I love the colours on this! I think it looks super good and fits the source creature! Is it possible you go more in dept with the main flame/cloud effect?

#10

Nice animation! What tool do you use to draw the flipbooks?

#11

Calling this one done! Thanks so so much to Harmonie for the new colour palette, it really kicked it to the next level! This is possibly the one effect I’m most satisfied with

@Filo I used krita!

@Arkeus the fire is on a custom mesh and I use it in 2 particle systems, @jasonkey suggested to make one more regular, smaller, with slower particles, and one with less particles and bigger and faster flames. Let me know if you have other questions!

6 Likes