Real Time VFX on a noisy surface

I generally see VFX showcase on a flat place which lead me to wander how does it work on a terrain. Its like projecting a decal from top and it distorts as per the terrain. Can anyone help me figure out this mystery?

Well it’s difficult. As soon as you have varying terrain (or even worse, stairs/steps/cliffs), you need to get creative.

  • Decals are the best solution most of the time. Any kind of projection system really.
  • You can also do some kind of WPO deformation, for example shown here by Simon, but it will be more expensive (except for, if you would have the height data anyway an you can just read it for free):
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjGisUVeM3E
  • If you have some kind of voxel terrain you could deform it wherever your effect is.
  • You can use the custom depth to fake cracks etc. E.g. shown here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pws2ntTC0NM
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