Hey everyone! i REALLY want to learn how to do this type of effect.
I’m currently following this tutorial but it’s very hard without the breakdown of textures and in depth details on the emitters!
I’ve had a go at creating some textures and materials within UE4 but it always feels or seems so weak compared to the above example. I know most of this comes down to timing and secondary effects showing impact but one of my main issues and things i need to learn is how the slash comes down and on impact of the ground fizzles out. If there is anybody who can give me any advice at all, even on where to begin i would appreciate it so much. thank you!
This is what i’ve got so far… i’m not sure how i can slow down the mesh rotation like the tutorial shows though, i assumed a drag would work but as you can see it doesn’t which i think is because the rotation rate is so fast but i don’t know how else to achieve this!
You can use the graph for the rotation and plot points onto it and adjust your curves the way you’d like it to play!
A fairly less painful way to do sword slashes is using anim trails. @LilSpence is doing some cool stuff with them if this is a result that interests you!
Oh I’ve never used a graph for rotation I will look into this!! Thanks!! Also that video looks really good I love it, do you know of anywhere with tutorials for this style of effect?! Thank you again!
Heeeeey, it’s me! Yeah, trails can be a bit strange but they’re a lot more straight forward over all. If you want the sword slash that I got here: Resource: sword-swing animation
I didnt really follow any tutorials to make this effect, simply looked at sword slashes that were already made to understand them then worked from there. The trails are essentially just a collage of different noises layered onto each other with masks with particle effects to help emphasize the effect they have.
You can also look to Luos’s tutorial, the one Veer just posted (you quick lad), and use that to get an understanding of animtrails. They are pretty simple over all.
Here’s an example of the main portion of the fire trail, the brightest and quickest part of it. https://i.imgur.com/ZrbVs7A.png
I do have another question though if you could help i’d be so grateful! i’m trying to create something which mists off the weapon, something similar to this image.
My first idea were to try ribbons and it kind of give me a nice effect but i had to have a few different emitters attached to the sword, i’m sure there must be a better way to achieve this kind of thing, any ideas? thank you!!
Looking good so far! You should probably make the trails a tad larger for a little more impact though, they arent too noticeable even from that distance.
As for the misty effect, ribbons would probably be a good route to go with but you could also do some alpha erosion to get a similar effect. The best looking approach, although not particularly optimized approach, would probably be to use flip books. But those arent exactly all that great considering how hefty they can be. Give ribbons and alpha erosion a go and see what you can get.
okay i’ll give that a go and see how it looks, right now i put the two sockets at the start and end of the sword, i’ll try pulling the end socket out further to see how it looks!
and i’ll give ribbons a go more, think i just need to figure out a good way to make a nice material for it too, if you have any pointers that would be awesome! thanks for the help
What spence said! He’s right about using quads with alpha erosion. I used it as mist on a sword piece (what seems to be) year(s) ago. Pretty cringy to look at now because I’ve learned so much since I had just begun learning VFX lmao:
Compression kills the quality but I followed this tutorial by Bill Kladis:
You can paint the required flowmap in photoshop using tools found here:
