Simple Explosion in UE5

Personal Work
#1

Here is a simple explosion I made in UE5 any feedback or suggestions on improving?

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#2

Nice job :smiley: I like the style of the smoke especially and a good use of dithering.
There are couple of things I would suggest.

  1. The timing and dynamic of the effect is a little bit off. It looks too linear and because of that it loses the power the explosions have. Try making the explosion grow rapidly and then slow it down in the end of it’s life. Same with those rocks?, make them get more velocity during the explosion and then drag it so they follow the momentum.
  2. Would be awesome if you made some kind of a mark on the ground after the explosion so that it indicates some damage done. This way your effect will feel like its actually dangerous.
  3. If you want to have even more power in it, I would suggest adding a additive very bright sprite behind that would appear for only like 0.1second to simulate the flash that usually there is after the explosion.
  4. You can add some smaller rocks with a collision with the ground that will also show how your effect affects the environment.

VFX Apprentice - YouTube and always great to check out VFX Apprentice tutorials as they might give you a lot of idea what to improve.
Awesome job tho!

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#3

Hey there thank you so much for your help and kind words! Here is an updated version I tried to take into account your suggestions.

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#4

Awesome! It already feels much better imo.

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#5

If you would like further improvements then probably it would be nice to:

  1. Make the smoke change color over time to greyish/black when it’s fading, as that’s what happens in normal explosions too.
  2. Add some delay to the mark, so that it doesn’t appear before explosion and maybe make it slightly bigger, so that it fits more to the range of explosion.
  3. Add little camera shake to make it feel more impactful.
  4. And add that flash I’ve mentioned, if you would need help with that then lemme know :smiley:
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