Ahh, yes that’s a very good point! I’ll give that a whirl and see how it looks.
I know that it is just placeholders right now but I really love that rounded style explosion !
Also I really love the subblte blue color of the shield. That’s a really nice addition to me !
But I am not a hudge fan of the black smoke trail on the debrits. You were afraid that the force field would draw too much attention, but the balance is really great. Now I think your black trail are drawing too much attention. Maybe if they where a bit more subblte, with less opacity and maybe not that dark.
Also your cracked floor could probably last a little longer ( but that’s really a matter of opinion here )
1 Like
thanks for the feedback! i’ll defintely keep it in mind for the next iterations!
- debris trails start later (when they have laded)
- smoke now “crawls” along the shield (thx to a vector field created in houdini)
- added glowing ares on debris, scorchmark on ground, sparkles when debris hit shield, everything stays a bit longer
preview:
video:
https://imgur.com/B9t17WC
here is the vector field (slice):
6 Likes
I think I’m finished with my prototype. Now, if you want, feel free to give any feedback. I think the most important points would be readability and timing.
here is my design for the explosion. i’m trying to make it “snappy” with a pre-flash and an inverted frame like in anime:
preview:
video:
https://imgur.com/Pr5c3Hu
feedback notes:
- black powder fuze
- shield build up?
- longer pre-flash, longer pause
- some structure to the shield?
- debris impact brighter
8 Likes
I tried to improve the timing by making the pre-flash a bit longer, letting alonger pause inbetween pre-flash and main explosion and also i implemented pure black/white frames like in classical manga. not sure if this is too much thought …
- longer pre-flash, longer pause
- debris impact brighter
- video in 60fps
preview:
video:
https://imgur.com/sKXIQH4
- rillen statt complete barrel flash ?
- nova/shield interaction at first explosion)
- real black barrel
- black powder fuze
- shield build up?
- some structure to the shield?
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Tried around with the barrel-flash. I didn’t like that it flashes white out of nothing. Here is a version where a little internal explosion gives reason for the glow:
10 Likes
This is very cool Simon! I think the timing you had before with the shorter pause worked better though. That one felt really punchy.
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thanks for the feedback! oh, and you posted the first time 
thanks for spending your very first post to my thread! <3
Small update (Added black powder):
I can control the shape with a small custom logic snippet:
The particles are spawned in a thin box location (400.0x6.0x0.0) and then I add a custom offset:
This is the offset logic (just adding sin/cos offsets):
The burning effect is done by adding using a custom lifetime. Based on the particle position I add more lifetime the closer the particle is to the barrel. This makes the particles further away die first. When they die, another glowing particle is spawned (this pow() function is just used to make the burn-motion less linear, i tried getting a better timing):
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Worked a bit on the shield build-up to communicate clearer that there IS a shield 
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- first test with a flipbook for the fire. it’s an older sim i had laying around. i’ll do a new one for further version.
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How did you do that vectorfield in houdini? It looks nice.Thx
So cool ! I think the debris impacts on the shield are a bit too discreet. Really cool
@Teamot thank you! yes, i’ll work on everything. it’s all place holder for now.
@balotrinsky I was watching this tutorial as a base (Volume Trails in Houdini on Vimeo) and then used the vector field node from side FX labs to convert my volume into a vector field. Game Tools | Vector Fields to UE4 | SideFX
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new update. i’ve played around a lot with ribbons. my goal was to have lead particles follow my vector field (to follow the shield) and drag crossed ribbons behind. But it didn’t look good and I couldn’t get rid of the common polygon overlays in thight corners:
So I went back to the particle approach, slapped an older flipbook on it and got this. could be nice later with a proper flipbook and some tweaking:
while trying around i got a funny artsy accident:
p.s. the ribbon research wasn’t for nothing. i created 3 tutorials while learning how to use them:
9 Likes
Did a first sim in Houdini and tested it on the particles. I’m controlling the play-speed over time so that the smoke flipbook is played very fast at the beginning but gets slower very quickly to stay calm at the end.
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Looks great! Is the shield smoke upwards part of the sim or particles moving along?
it’s particles moving along a vector field. so the particle sim itself is a basic looping flipbook and put on particles which move along the predefined vector field generated in houdini.
2 Likes