Hey everyone! I finally found some more time to get into Vfx.
I have run into an problem while working with an effect from a Tutorial-video.
I was trying to recreate the lightning Effect, made my own SubUv and copied the Material and Particle notes. But I cant get it to work properly and because I’m quite new and a bit out of training, I don’t know if my Texture, my Material or my Particle system is the problem.
Here is the Video with the effect I’m trying to replicate:
CGHow is nice, but dont expect any decent performance tricks from them.
the results are nice, workflow and performance… not so much.
(which we keep telling him)
If you use the flipbook material node, dont use a subimage module, those will overlap and mess up.
the sub-uv settings in the image are wrong, horizontal should have been 8, vertical should have been 2.
Particle random only works for gpu particles.
use the dynamic module instead.
Make sure you set a min/max and “on spawn only” in the module.
The random part you get by a uniform constant parameter inside your own system drop a dynamic module after you set it up in your material, Just make sure it always returns proper values with no decimals to avoid any weirdness if thats the case.
Yes, Don’t use 1000+ edit: (per emitter) CPU particles like done in the video and try doing it with a mesh and a shader instead.
Do an eroded mesh for the cone and do a cylinder cap or torus piece for the ground stuff or whatever else geometry shape works for you.
Spawning that many particles is a bad habbit don’t get used to it unless you tried everything and there is no other way or it’s on the GPU and even in the cases above it’s questionable.
Simple shapes usually do. A basic understanding of UV mapping is needed tho in case you ned to manipulate those.
For erosion there are multiple out there for sure.
I switched to a Gpu particle and deleted the sub-image module. Now It seems to work better, I get random particles. But It looks like they are selected out of 3-4 parts every time I restart the system. That probably has to do with your other suggestions but I don’t know were to integrate them.
Also I get weird texture glitches in the view port, but they don’t seem to occur in the Map.
Set those sub images in your required node to 1-1, You will be handling that part from your dynamic parameter and material.
Then in your material do a Dynamic Parameter and plug Red into your flipbook (where particle random value is).
Make sure number of columns and rows in your material is right, Then in your particle system emitter drop a Dynamic parameter, Once its in refresh it and on the first param change it from a constant to a uniform, Plug 2 values in there and tick on “on spawn only” as mentioned by Luos.
I learned 80% of what I know about FX from ImbueFX vids. (well, 80% prior to getting a job)
They are well worth the time and cover both exact process for an effect, as well as concepts and process you can apply to new stuff. All the concepts and info still apply to current fx stuff now
