Recreating a specific VFX

General Discussion
#1

Hey,
i’m trying to recreate a specific VFX from “Devil May Cry 5 Special Edition” in Unity. I’ve been trying to get it done for months now but can’t seem to get the hang of it. Are there any experts/tutors willing to help me out with this? I’m also willing to pay for the help/lesson(s). I also tried reaching out to unitys 1:1 live help but my request doesn’t get answered. I’m familiar with Shader Graph/Particle System/VFX Graph in Unity. The effect is AAA worthy so i really need an expert on this topic. If anyone is interested in this “job” feel free to dm me on discord. I timestamped the effect im talking about https://youtu.be/H6c9qPSN83w?t=68

Discord: Mirko#1513

Greets!

Ps.: I know this might not be the right place to ask for this but i’ve tried looking for tutors or alikes online and couldn’t find anyone/anything besides the unity 1:1 help sessions and i’m really really desperate with this effect by now.

#2

Hello Mirkowo,

welcome to the forum! :slight_smile:
A tutor for 1on1 lesson is quite expensive especially if they are positioned in higher levels. Therefore I suggest that you post the actual problems you have with the recreation in the forum as people (even from AAA) can potentially help you. Furthermore the information is here for others to see when the struggle the same way!
In my opinion it would be great if you outline:

  • what you aim for (what you already did)
  • what you think the effect consists of
  • what you already tried to do
  • what currently works for you

These will help others to access the situation better and can help you more precisely.
For more immediate feedback, you can hop onto the Real-time VFX Discord: https://discord.com/invite/X9KMhze

No matter which way you choose, I hope you succeed in implementing the effect and present it here in the forum :slight_smile:

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#3

Thanks a bunch for the reply.
You are pretty much the first person on the Net giving me an answer i can work with. I think my major issue is where to start and what tools to use for each part of the effect. I want to use Unity’s built-in VFX tools and im convinced it could work that way but everything i’ve tried so far didn’t work. This might seem stubborn but im 100% convinced that if an expert recreates this effect with me i gain an incredible amount of knowledge that allows me to create anything i can think of. I realise this is far from simple and requires a huge level of VFX experience thats why im also not affraid to put in a huge amount of money.
I’ve been looking around for a tutor that has the required skills for weeks now. Unfortunately i couldn’t find a single soul on the Net offering such a service + having the required amount of skill :frowning:

#4

To answer your questions so anyone can have a deeper look into this and my issues:

  • what you think the effect consists of
    I think the effect consists of slash-shaped meshes seemingly appearing out of nowhere (in reality they scale their size from 0—100 OR they instantiate themselves from one edge to the other and then scale in size). The colors used also trouble me a lot since they just seem white-blue, pausing and slowing down the effect shows that this is not the case. The slashes rotate and re-position so goddamn fast that i can’t even exactly tell how they behave even tho im slowing down the effect by a bunch (on youtube) (frames also need to be taken into consideration here). After the slashes did their “thing” Black-Shadowish Trails instantiate randomly around the circle area of the effect crossing each other in the middle of their lifetime (OR NOT) and fade away when reaching their destination. There is also a blurish/distortion effect going on which i can’t name.
  • what you already tried to do
    I tried to render a slash-shaped mesh from one edge to the other using Unitys Particle System. That didn’t work for me. I tried creating a dissolve Shader for the appearance that i just mentioned. That didn’t work me.
    I also tried different kind of textures on a circle mesh. That didn’t work for me.
    Realising how hard it was to even let those slashes appear from one edge to the other (even if the eye only sees it for a splitsecond) i tried to get some help.
  • what currently works for me
    I actually created some very good looking effects using Unitys VFX Graph with Photoshop textures i created. Im convinced my effects so far have a pretty decent level to it. But the effect im trying to recreate is beyond me on so many levels.
#5

Hey Mirkowo,

first a tip with Youtube, that you might not know. If you pase the video, you can move through single frames using , / ..
I try to break it down from my perspective, while focusing just on the impact effects and not on the one on Vergil.
It consists of

  1. “Slash mesh” shapes with two different looks:
    1.1. RGB stripes that are additive (the colors get brighter when they layer on top of each other)
    1.2. RGB stripes that are subtractive (the colors get darker when they layer on top of each other)
  2. Some translucent flare billboards
  3. Some blueish flash billboards
  4. A blackish sphere at the end that extends a bit
  5. A sphere with refraction shader at the end
  6. Some rock mesh particles that fly from the ground center outwards
  7. Destruction decal on the ground
  8. Dark trail particle “shadows” that spawn randomly on a sphere location and move to the effect center (not to the target mesh!)

a quick note to point 1: They look like they just appear. It may be that they fade in or scale up but really really fast. They then spin around and some more spawn along. The speed and the short flares are the secret for the “wild” look.
I’ll attach some single frames, that may help to dissect it more.
Vergil0 Vergil2 Vergil3 Vergil4 Vergil5 Vergil6 Vergil7 Vergil8 Vergil9 Vergil10 Vergil11

Sadly I do not have more time today. But I hope this helps at least a bit for now :slight_smile:

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#6

It really does help me a lot. Thank you so much. I will give this another good shot using the insight you gave me. I didn’t know about the youtube framing feature either. That will come in very handy in the future aswell. I will keep this up to date and hopefully come back with the effect recreated :slight_smile:

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#7

YO,
after doing a tremendous amount of research i’ve found a modder on nexusmods that adjusted the slashes to be a straight line. I asked him on some insight since he obviously adjusted the slashes shapes so he had to have some sort of knowledge on this. He told me that “Judgment Cut” consists of 20+ effects. He even dissected the effect in the games files using a HEX Editor to have each effect appear as a standalone and used a cheat engine to slow it down ingame. He has send me 7 video files of the effects where you can SUPER CLEARLY see whats going on. He said the other ones used are barely visible but i can get back to him if i need more.

  1. https://streamable.com/hx73dl - Dark Slashes
  2. https://streamable.com/wna6o8 - Thin light Slashes
  3. https://streamable.com/m7ds0a - Distorted thin Slashes
  4. https://streamable.com/xytwwz# - Vortex
  5. https://streamable.com/dz6blc - Distortion Sphere
  6. https://streamable.com/2ufm0o - Weak Distortion Sphere
  7. https://streamable.com/e0hei1 - Fading Sphere

My assumption that the Slashes are meshes is wrong. They are actually textures. The glowy/rgb part of the effect is created by the fact that the distorted Sphere/Slashes overlap with the other Slashes (thats my guess at least). Being able to see properly how they behave is a huge thing in order to recreate this. Since i got my first help here i feel obligated to share my research for anyone interested in this :). Big shout out to the modder: “thezippotm” (he was pretty much the only person that has done this kind of dissection, so thats a big good job to him). I will come back to this post once i recreated this, which im finally able to do lol!

edit: full collection https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1GrPjnc7rPJMcwRMFj0FjrSNwQpFXwAxx?usp=sharing

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#8

Thanks for sharing this Insight. Didn’t see it coming, that there is a chromatic aberration effecting the slashes. That is actually a cool idea.

Looking forward to see your take on it! :slight_smile:

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#9

Complete collection of all the effects involved in this:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1GrPjnc7rPJMcwRMFj0FjrSNwQpFXwAxx?usp=sharing

Huge thanks to “thezippotm”!

Just wanted to add this here since streamable links get deleted after a while.

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