Shannon McSheehan - LoL FX + Knowledge Share

Resources & Knowledge
#256

Heyo! It depends mostly on how many increments, and how long it’s on screen for. If it’s an indicator, most players in LoL use quick cast so the odds of players even seeing it is low. We have the ability to scale indicators on X and Y independently so having a high rez triangular indicator like that and squash and stretching it LUA side is pretty handy. This saves us from making a lot of different particles for every instance.

BUT if it’s on screen for a long time (charges with button press for example) then you could argue that making a different particle hook for every level would be helpful. It’s not very expensive either as you’re already loading the assets once.

#257

gif_animation_016

Hey @ShannonBerke! :gem:

This is my attempt at using this trails technique. Nothing too fancy, just a couple trails layered with time offset to spice it up. I created the trail texture in Krita with “wrap mode” enabled.

I’ll be posting the results of each and every of your techniques!
Thank you very much for sharing the knowledge.

10 Likes
#258

Ahhh this makes me soooo happy!!! I LOVE seeing others FX, I can’t wait to see more! :star_struck:

1 Like
#259

:slightly_smiling_face: thanks for the answer !!

#260

Hi Shannon, I made this shield eruption effect with the help of your awesome shield tutorial. It helped me out alot to setup the shield effect.

The player casts the shield and after a few seconds an AOW attack erupts, dealing damage to targets close to the player.

I’m curious how you go to work when it comes to new VFX, is there a specific time estimate for sketching/drawing the concepts?

7 Likes
#261

gif_animation_007_

I also created this “sword trail”, but it has some stepping on the mesh.

You can slow down or pause the .gif using a tool like this one.

I’m working my way around creating high quality gifs, but the file size gets pretty big and it won’t let me upload them to the forum. I would be really happy if someone could lend me a hand!

2 Likes
Unity Trail is chopped
#262

This is a little known secret, but I’ve never been a big fan of trails attached to meshes @.@!! Haha, secrets!! This is mostly because the trails usually end up choppy because of framerate or anim compression. It has its pros though :thinking: but I’m selfish and like meshes ooohohoh $$$

You can always use an external site like DeviantArt to host and link to it on the site instead. :slight_smile:

3 Likes
#263

Team Mesh Trails for life

#264

you said LoL dont use many shaders cause you want it to run on everything, then are you using a master shader that can do it all? Or smaller but more expansive shaders?

#265

Hi Shannon, first of all thank you for this incredible thread! I just finished reading it and has made me so excited to go out and create!

My understanding of this is that you’ve used a blend shape for the bubble? If so, was it spawned within the emitter? I have searched how to do this a few times and haven’t had much luck; for UE4 at least. Or was it squash and stretched with vertex displacement within the shader? Would you be able to go into slightly more detail about how the bubble was spawned and animated?
Edit: Just realized you could spawn a sphere and key frame size over life :doh:

Also just out of curiosity, does the VFX team make the meshes for things like the ram head for Braums Q or are they done by people from the environment or character art side?

Thanks again!! :slight_smile:

#266

For something character-specific I’d imagine that’s included in a character artist’s task list, but the Riot fx team are just all-around amazeballs artists, so it wouldn’t surprise me if one of them made it themselves. But vfx artist as a whole tend to borrow and chop up whatever meshes we need for our own uses.

1 Like
#267

Ah, I’m so happy that this thread was inspiring to you!! :smiley: I can’t wait to see what you make!!

Zoe’s bubble wasn’t a bleandshape, or vert offset, but a static mesh that I hand keyed scaled in our particle engine X Y and Z values for. This gif is choppy as butts, but it shows the keys on the left and bubble on the right:Zoe_Bubble_Bounce

Looking back (omg this is 1.5 years old now what @.@) it’s not too shabby!

To get stuff inside the bubble I attached a child particle to the mesh so that the glow/sparkles would move with it and I wouldn’t have to key their positions.

It depends on the artist actually! Some are more comfortable with making meshes, UV, rig, texture, etc. For large things like Ornns Ram that was done by a character artist and animator with FX on top as it’s the same screen space as a champ so we wanted to make extra sure that the details and quality were awesome awesome. Often times it’s so much faster to have a character artist tackle those things too. I think I’m one of the rare artist who really likes doing it myself haha and even then it’s usually smaller meshes like Talon’s blades in his W.

16 Likes
#268

I’ve stolen so many things from environment and character art :rofl: cut some stuff out, re-UV, throw a soft transparent material on it, and only the most discerning artist will notice :grin:

2 Likes
#269

Hello shannon! I have a question regarding a Skin. Its Snow day Syndra. Her Q’s windup in the beginning have these lines coming into the Center. Seen here image

Is this just a circle UV mapped to have a special texture panner towards the center or is it something else?

#270

Please make a breakdown of the nexus explosion effect. How did you guys make the windup effect, like in this video?

Thank you very much :D.

#271

It’s a mesh with the UV’s spiraled in so that the texture looks like it’s beeing pulled in towards the center as it scrolls. There is a brighter flash in the center to cover any of the pinching look you can get with meshes.

2 Likes
#272

I’d like to hear from you, or others, how you think it’s done actually :slight_smile: It’s a fun exercise and helps develop your eye to see if you can identify how someone might have made something. This is also a very complex effect with many parts. What are your thoughts?

2 Likes
#273

Hey Shannon! Thanks for all the breakdowns and knowledge shares. Helps a tooooon!

I’ll take a stab at it.

From the looks of it, it’s a pre-made animation, see how it “snaps” to the first frame when the explosion begins?

For the Idle loop it seems it’s a basic animated/particle system rotation, with some simple ambient particles, sprite particles rotating and scaling in(?)

After the snap to frame 1, the sequence begins.

A quick flash at the center to signify the breaking/cracking of the crystal and release of some energy(?)

Ambient sprites fading in and getting stronger, textures panning on pre-made meshes for the energy spiraling in across the screen and around the crystal, some other textured elements for the spikes of energy and glow around the crystal. Energy release imminent? Getting ready for the boom :boom:

Dust/energy spiraling in with darker textures (contrast :astonished:) and to help the anticipation of the actual explosion, they start getting faster.

Also there seems to be some sort of distortion or shader effect pulling things in for more oomph to the explosion.

Then the actual explosion happens (I like the few fully dark frames, adds a lot to the impact and feeling of it) Seems pretty standard with stylized textures, particles and smoke in there.

A shockwave distortion that emanates from the explosion.

Burn marks/decal effects around the crystal, along with updated models and textures for the aftermath of the explosion.

The crystal pieces are keyed to rotate around and scale down to disappear and every other particle/sprite starts to slowly dissipate.

I’d love to crosscheck with how you guys actually did it!

2 Likes
#274

Not sure if I should weigh in on this, or sit back and read the answers :thinking:

#275

Well the nexus effects strings in the beginning are most likely really long and dragged out planes that have been placed in various ways spiraling everywhere with a texture pannering down, around the crystal is probably just a shader pannering a texture upwards or just a mesh with transparent alpha channel. Then with circle quads with the center cut out with a texture on the outside. Smoke is probably a quad or spherical mesh with the same syndra trick just with the center cut out