Hot dang that looks good! 
Are you using Bump Offset, or the actual Parallax mat function?
- reworked yellow rings on the ground
- reworked slow falling burning debris
- added quick spiky sparkles
- added blue shockwave
- improved distortion wave
5 Likes
Calling it finished. 
- Added dark border ground decal
- Added glowing edge to the ground decal
- Added embers
- Improved Trail coming from the robot
9 Likes
Good job, Simon! I would like to thank you for letting me lurk while you were working on this effect. It’s awesome to see the amount of dedication that you put into each detail. Really well done 
2 Likes
Finishing strong! The flare effects on the Hit ready very satisfying to me, and I think one of the most important changes you made was improving how the inner-glow faded out in the top of the smoke cloud. Inspiring stuff!
1 Like
Prototype #1
First rough draft/test with some energy/smoke swirling around a bright core like in the concept.
25 Likes
hooo nice!
say, how did you made this texture ? I always struggle to make a gradient that follow a specific shape. is there actually a trick ? Or did you just spent a lot of time painting / testing / tweaking it ?
Hi, I can’t go into too much detail because this part of the course, but I totally understand the struggle. Painting is hard in general but height maps are the worst 
In the course they show how to create a basic pattern and then paint over it. I also overlayed a blurry cloud pattern to get some global differences.
Prototype #2
I’ve worked on the readability prototype as the last one was too noisy for me in regard to all the motion happening. now everything moves with the same force and also the inner glowing faces of the smoke are less bright so that the core can shine more. 
20 Likes
We’re can I find out more information on this course?
Thank you. It looks like the Unreal section focuses on Cascade, any plans on updating it to Niagara?
oh wow! great to hear that my concept was an inspiration. the effect looks super cool! <3
yes that is correct. i don’t know if @Keyserito plans to update the course to niagara but the systems are not super complex. it should be no problem to port them to niagara yourself. or you can also still use cascade. learning about shapes, colors and timing is tool-independant and should work whatever you use.
wow, that looks smooth and delicious, great work so far!
- Another reminder that I got to take that course…
1 Like
A small next step:
- top of the smoke-shell is not deformed anymore
- the outward going smoke has now a spiral form (instead of just growing circles)
- some rings are rotating at the bottom near the floor
13 Likes
A small test: I thought about using SceneColor in combination of Screen Position which I offset a bit up and down and masking this out with a radial mask. Gives a nice ground distortion. Here I spawn this material on some particles:
Another test using bump offset to simulate something coming from below the ground (and then break through?). The texture for this is almost black with a white dot in the middle (and set to clamp).
11 Likes