Shannon McSheehan - LoL FX + Knowledge Share

Ahhhh this is so helpful! I’m so excited to try something like this!

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That is amazing! Thanks for sharing.

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Amazing work, with mini-tutorials a great help for noob artist like me :smiley:

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That’s wonderful to hear! :smiley:

If there is anything you’d like to learn how to do I’d be happy to share.

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Thanks for the reply, :wink: I am gonna bug you with a lot of questions soon! :smiley:

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@ShannonBerke
You’re work is such an inspiration, truly awesome stuff :slight_smile:
You guys over at Riot rock, keep it up!

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:smiley: Thank you so much for the kind words!

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Awesome work! Thanks so much for the tutorial.

I’m rather new to the world of VFX but I’m trying to pick up as much as I can, so apologies for the beginner question:

For the final dynamic effect you’ve shown, is that achieved by panning UVs on a plane with tweaked vertex colours?

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Thanks for share nice effects.

I’m really interested in knowing how the Annie’s W skill was made. How are the textures set-up? and do they have a special UV animation or shader trickery ?

Thanks you so much

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Sorry for the delayed response!

Don’t ever be sorry for asking questions. It’s exciting the answering them :slight_smile:

This is in reply to the trails post, by final dynamic effect did you mean the last red trail or something else?

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No shader trickery, we have pretty minimal shader functions so that League will run on almost any computer.

Annie’s W looks pretty nice for something so simple! There are three groups that make up her W emitter

  • quads of fire with a panning texture
  • orange glow
  • darker ambiguous shape layer

Let me know if you want more in depth explanation on anything!

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layering; what are the tools you use to sort/fudge billboard draw order and prevent popping? when you specifically want opaque over additive, and does this complicate batching limitations; or is it largely automated??

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We have a global pass system that we can set by each group inside an emitter.

Batching limitations aren’t something I can speak all that in depth about for worry of miss information in regards to how League as a whole renders all of it’s many assets. I do know that it wasn’t till about a month ago we ran into a batch load issue, as we generally keep things very cheap. Older content of course doesn’t always follow that same rule, but we’re always working to make it better haha.

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Aha noted :smiley: No problem!

I meant for these, it looks like you’re panning your tiling trail texture along your UV’s but to achieve the nice fade at the right hand side of the trail it (and a little bit at the front) you’d need transparency on the vertex colours at these points.

https://realtimevfx.com/uploads/default/original/2X/7/7e218899277918296bddb5b50b3ee543dc613e67.gif

I started trying to work out how I’d achieve something like that on my trail effects, but I’ve since figured out that this is precisely how Unity’s trail effect works - I didn’t realise it gave me access to colours/transparency at set point along the trail :smiley:

I’m sure this is done differently in different engines but I’m guessing this is possible, and generally how it’s achieved across the board?

Thanks again for the great tut! I coincidentally watched the LoL art panel last night and realised I recognised your name, fun moment :smiley:

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The mesh for the trail is tapered from left to right, which is how it pinches down. The blue (and the one above it) just have some darker values in the center of the texture. The whole thing is multiplied by a non-panning gradient, slightly soft at far left, built up quickly to white, then faded smoother to black from center to right. The bottom fire has a separate noise texture panning across it from left to right as well at a different speed to give the holes in the texture for extra randomization. It’s possible to use vertex colors/alpha on the mesh, but if you are using ribbons/trails and aren’t able to control the vert colors, you just multiply a gradient with your texture instead.

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LOL I WAS SO NERVOUS I’m pretty sure I was breathing into the mic too hahaha hope it was useful! ;D

Yes, key framing opacity and hue are very handy basic functions of trails, glad you found those perimeters!

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Haha don’t worry, you got away with it :smiley: Yeah definitely, such an inspiring panel as a whole.

Yeah, my friend at work pointed it out and I felt a little dumb for overthinking it. Ah well, s’all learning :smiley:

Ah yes, I forgot about tapering, definitely adds to the effect.

And of course! Such a simple solution if you don’t have access to trail tools or vertex colours. Thanks a lot for the help Travis! :slight_smile:

(Edit: Sorry for double post for each reply, maybe should have rolled that into one!)

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Thanks you so much! I will try it
And i Just see Championship Kalista Skin! Can you make detail explanation How to create the animation of the trail arrow slowly disapearring

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Sure thing! Though as to not misrepresent the original author of the work @Troyzilla, I’ll pick something that I’ve worked on that uses the same technique. :slight_smile:

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