Sifa's Sketchbook

[sifa]

Souler Coasters? How about Souler Tentacles?

(noisy gif to reduce size)

Not much progress yesterday, just had an idea in mind and wanted to practice some more HDA development. Made a tangly bramble asset with proper UVs and a bunch of options.

Developed a tool to draw curves and make brambles/offshoots in engine.

Some parameters to control your asset.

The houdini graph (WIP)

I wanted to try the vertex colour options idea I had in mind.

I made an option to apply :

Random R channel per branch to use for the UV offset in the shader (shown in the above gif) or to collapse them to reduce overdraw.
and/or G channel fading out across the entire mesh (can use to mask either tip off or make rings on the branches)
and/or B channel noise across the mesh to help with alpha erosion to spawn it in/out.

All channels enabled together.

Also implemented an experimental detangle option that I still need to develop more. Helps a lot with weird collisions or strong options.

Speaking of, also implemented the ability for it to collide and grow around objects.

And the UVs are all nicely laid out, too. Should make an option to multiply them for more control.

Early screenshot of testing out interacting with obstacles.

[sifa]

Just made my first full effect! Spent all day yesterday working on this.

Thanks to PowerAnze and bftd on the discord server for some critique and feedback

It’s inspired by Yrel from HOTS

Still looking for any and all feedback, please!

UE4 Slam VFX v01

I think the slam is a bit too…crowded? Maybe it just has too much noise, might cut down on elements there.

I also need to polish the timings a lot.

[cghow]

Nice effect… Fine and smooth…

[sifa]

Made Soldier : 76’s biotic field today. Feeling very comfortable with cascade now.

UE4 Soldier:76 Biotic Field VFX study

also fixed my fps issues and made a video for this again

https://youtu.be/_TjxyQ7L7ZQ

[sifa]

Saw a pinterest post I can’t remember where someone made a custom depth ground crack thing in Unity, wanted to recreate it in UE4. I didn’t polish this because my approach is way too naive to use in actual games. I might get back to it later though. Thinking blueprints and rendertargets next time or something, dunno yet.

The shader for the cracks

The crack mesh in Blender.

I’m using a custom depth pass to render out the top cap. I wanna look into other approaches if there are any to get something more usable and cheaper for an effect I have planned.

[sifa]

Have been studying since I woke up, gonna take a break for today and finish this in the next two days.

WIP, Johanna W ability from HoTS.

[Hovl]

The effect is quite simple, but because of the ideal timings, everything looks very cool

[xiaofeng_VFX]

This is very cool, thanks for sharing!

[sifa]

Thank you, that means a lot to me! I started off fawning over your work

[sifa]

Thanks, your work is great and very inspiring

[sifa]

Managed to do a full effect in a day, pretty happy! Just gonna call it done, learned a lot.

My main focus for this study was to get more familiar with refraction since I couldn’t quite get it looking good.

I’m unhappy with the timings, there’s a lot more tightening to be done but I just want to move on and focus on other stuff for now. I feel like studies should be quick, to the point and focused. It’s working well for me and I feel like I’m getting better everyday instead of spending days tinkering the minutia of each emitter. I think focusing on the macro right now is better for me anyway

That being said, I definitely love doing that and get consumed by it so it’s very difficult to restrain myself and move on quick.

Another thing I’ve been doing is reading books and sketching effects everyday, I want to slowly start making original effects and I have sooo many sketches for all kinds of effects and sequences already. Super exciting and fun I really love doing this, I can’t believe I spent so much time being afraid of it and didn’t dive in sooner. It feels so natural and effortless to me and I’m happy with my progress so far.

Also slowly working on a level and set dressing it, it’s been going well so far and I’m super excited to use it for some effects in the future.

/ramble

Here’s the higher def video if anyone’s interested.

UE4 Johanna VFX Study

Still haven’t found ideal encoding/recording settings. Youtube destroys my videos too. Might have to try vimeo next.

(Gah, the primitive has faceting and it looks so bad, gonna fix it from the next effect onwards)

[Hovl]

I don’t know… the effect seems to me not bright enough. And the explosion doesn’t resemble shape of the effect.

[sifa]

Yeah, I think I need to give more impact to the explosion. The shape thing is because I was trying to conserve some momentum from the things from the below zoning in. I’ll work on it some more thank you for the feedback

[sifa]

Not much progress today, did a few misc things and I had an idea for an effect so I sketched out a shader real quick. Still a lot of work to do but I managed to figure out all the individual parts I needed for the effect, just have to make it work together now, but I know what I’ll do for that.

I’ll first try sketching out ideas and sequences now that the technical part is taken care of.

[sifa]

Last week was tough because I didn’t have consistent electricity/internet (yay, monsoon!) but I managed to piece together the map I wanted to port from OW for VFX studies/fanart.

[sifa]

Spent all day tweaking the map and learning about building stuff in UE4, lighting and techniques. Learned a lot and I’m kinda happy with it now. Will focus on FX again from tomorrow.

[sifa]

I want to at least make this somewhat interact-able so I made some blueprints to do that today. Been busy with life stuff at the moment.

[sifa]

Damn, has it really been 25 days already?

Small life update.

I got an internship/job at Ubisoft, moved 12 hours away from my home and started working about 2 weeks ago. It’s been tough but nothing I can’t handle. I’m extremely grateful for everyone here and the community that I could even get to this point. I really love it at work but I want to push myself more now. Been figuring out how to live alone and manage things, rent, food, finances, time and general adulting. (Got sick a few times already, wew!) My team and co-workers are really awesome so I haven’t been feeling socially down and they keep my spirits up everyday. I get sad when I can’t go to work these days. The work culture is amazing there.

Don’t have proper internet rn but I got my machine set up so I’ve been working on personal stuff after I get back from work these days. Full time jobs really suck your time up, man. Feels like I had infinite time before. But I’m getting really good at time management and discipline right now so it’s alright.

Learning to cook food and scheduling my day is really fun. It’s like a game. I think a month more and I’ll settle in properly.

On the work side I’ve almost finished the Ana FX study, with playable controls for all the abilities and corresponding BPs and Particle systems. Here’s and old video I recorded before leaving home.

I’ve been making a lot of “interactive” FX lately with BPs, like a mine that checks around it and pops down a new one recursively until they hit a limit.

The idea is to model and texture a mine, play an “open up” animation on the top and construct a small mine, throw it out. Make it look all fancy with dynamic materials, LED lights, blinks, glitter and all that.

And LOADS of random tests and snippets like this.

And currently started working on a personal project with a lot of dynamic elements.

Next up I want to publish my first asset pack on UE4 marketplace, that’s my current goal right now.
I already have an idea and some sketches and I’ve been researching into it for a bit.

That’s all for now, folks. Again, a very heartfelt thank you to the entire community. I love you guys.

[Lush]

Congratulations on landing that job!

So glad to see you’re enjoying it that much

Lots of support to you. Waiting for that asset pack you’re about to release!

[Ninjin]

I stopped reading after you described the working culture and how happy you are. I’m 2 jealous too read any further, so I’ll just leave with a simple GG and congrats for the new job! <3