I really liked this version. I would perhaps add some downward motion and more range in the colour palette. The lighting and swirl currently look like they move in and out.
There’s good motion at the beginning but as it dies you can see it fades out and stays static. Follow through would be great here.
Really liking this thread though, keep going, it’s coming along really well
Thanks alot!, I see it know yea that the electric is staying static that’s actually a very important point to keep in mind. And with the colors, do you mean that the colors are just popping between 2 colors instead of actually changing?
I think I’ll do a combination from the V2 laser beam and the recent one I posted, and add some more downwards motion with it then. Do you maybe have some tips on increasing the downwards motion from the beam?
More that perhaps the lightning is blown out. Where as you could keep the same palette but increase the range for the value.
Let me know if you want any pointers on this. I notice a lot of your work is beautiful stylised, hard edge stuff.
V2 has some nice behaviour, I would perhaps lower the tiling. It currently looks like noise that has it’s Y co-ordinates set to something super low and gives it that stretched look.
Along with the lightning having colour range I would spread the range in the filler beam in V2 or animate the spread. So it starts wide and white and then narrows in over time, whilst keeping the edges orange. Along with your downward lightning, noise in the filler beam and the focus narrowing it’ll help pull the eye in.
Also something else to perhaps consider…
@GregorySilva posted a great version of a ‘fire tower’ a while ago. Check out his artstation. Great example of the residual follow through at the end. He has embers that swirl and continue the emotion. A nice way of transitioning as well.
Awesome. I’ll check it out and I’ll definetely reply to you if I need more help 
, still some things Im not quite familiar with so alot of questions will be asked haha !
Because I know minimal about vertex offset and how it works I googled on internet, and watched tutorials and was reading what every node means on ShaderForge there website. This is the outcome when I use the offset on a sphere. The vertices are not connected to each other, does this has to do something with normal maps?
This is the shader itself, right now I’m figuring out how to create the “beam pulses” with the vertex offset.
If somebody has a shader that can show the major steps I need would be amazing if I could take a look into this
Brows through this thread real quick and see if the solution they came up with works for you
Awesome travis, thanks for the link! I’ll check out how the uv’s are in blender 
Instead of running stuck on one effect I tend to always learn alot from doing different aspects. So I’m also watching the videos from Sirhaian’Arts his Unity VFX tutorials, and here’s my take on the sparks tutorial. The sparks with some adjustments could also be a nice add-on for the beam effect to give the impact more power
His tutorials very helpful) But some of them are too old. Like with black hole he used wind zone but you can use velocity over time) And some videos using Shader Forge and it is always doesn’t work properly (for me)), always some errors and at the end i was making crystal reflections and it was ruined by shader forge errors((( I downloaded it from github but i hope some day i will buy amplify shader) Nice sparks!
If you are using a cube which has flat shading (split normals), the normal offset is steering each face into a different direction. You need unified normals (smooth shading) to keep the surface in one piece.
Wow, just gives me the idea to make a tearing cloth effect based on normals blending from smooth to flat (wondering how to do that)
Here some Smoothing Groups ref:
http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Smoothing_Groups
started with a projectile
Awesome, thanks alot :D. I need to educate myself alot more on these kind of subjects !
No worries. Yeah, you can also just keep going and tapping in those traps will teach a lot. =)
Still alot of nice stuff to learn from :D, I never checked out amplify shader. Is amplify shader a better and more updated version of shader forge?
I mostly prefer ASE since I guess it’s a bit faster to work with (not in terms of performance, but in terms of UX/UI) I just press space and type the node name to add that node to the graph. And “shader functions” is super useful so I can create custom nodes for the stuff I use most of the time. For example, I’ve created shader functions for various kinds of gradients and shapes and that’s super handy. I like my schematics super clean and I don’t want to place 4-5 nodes whenever I need an angular gradient etc.
And the most important feature of ASE for me is, the graph window is SUPER fast. You can zoom in-out and pan like surfing through clouds. A fast graph window is I guess the most important feature of ANY node based tool.
IMHO the only thing Shader Forge is better at is the vast amount of online content such as tutorials and sources created by its community. I’ve started shader development by examining Shader Forge schematics and reconstructing them in ASE.
Updated the projectile :), added a buildup and clash sequence. Still need to figure out how to combine the beginning summon together with the ground sprite, but I’m happy how the process of this effect is going
Maybe you could animate the opacity and value towards you as you anticipate and then sling it back across when you fire the projectile 
Oeeh, I really like that point. Im definetely gonna try that !
Easiest way, always think where do you want the eye to lead to. Then find subtle ways to lead and give direction.
New update on the projectile, I got alot of feedback to change up the colors. So I made the projectiles have more contrast with the beginning, still lots to learn about colors :). I recently found the VFX styleguide from Riot Games, already going through that step for step to get a feeling how the people at Riot games do it.
I also did a quick test how vertex colors work in maya, tons of fun and so much ideas opened up for me now :D. Definetely will dive more into the combination of shaders + meshes !
This effects for me brings over a healing theme, so that could be a cool concept to develop further in the future.
I still have to fix the seem for the outer mesh but a fellow friend of mine will help me with this
