Trevor McTavish - VFX Journal

[McT.Trevor]

Hello Real Time VFX Community!

My name is Trevor McTavish and I am a third year student at Ringling College of Art and Design who has recently developed an extreme passion for VFX. I am creating this post as a journal to document and share the VFX that I am developing this summer and beyond. I appreciate any and all forms of critique on anything posted here. I sincerely appreciate your time checking out this post.

Thank you! And best of luck to everyone on their VFX endeavors

The following video and url to my artstation is my first major VFX particle that I have created. It was a major introduction to VFX and I sincerely appreciate the time of Jason Keyser and Shannon Berke for the tutorials and breakdowns they have posted and shared with the Realtime VFX community. Thank you!

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/AD6Ly

To summarize the particle:
Source - Staff placed in ground becomes catalyst for souls.
Transmission - Player activates ability channeling souls and unleashing said souls
Source - Souls cascade and impact enemy players

[McT.Trevor]

On to Project Two. Below I have supplied my initial project synopsis, reference, and a few trail concepts that I have made. Will supply more progress tomorrow.

Edit On - 5/11/17
Updating concept trail image w/ base colors.

Document Link

Reference:

Initial Concept Pass on Travel (Trails):

[McT.Trevor]

Progress for Today - 5/11/17

Developed a few more trail concepts and will be committing to designs C & J; combining the shape language of trail J. with the outer ribbon design and base bullet of C. If you prefer other designs please let me know! I would love to hear your opinion and value your critique.

Todays video shows the base trail particle. Tomorrows update will include the desired smoke trail effect, in addition to the outer swirling ribbons. Thank you for your time on reading this post today

Progress for Today - 5/12/17

Did not have as much time as I expected today. With what time I had I decided to create the initial release of the particle. I wish to push stronger shape language into the flare and will do so on my next update. Decided to edit this post instead of creating a new one as major changes have not been implemented. However, I wanted to maintain posting material. Thank you for reading this post and your time

Example for initial flare shape language I wish to add for future reference:

[Petrie]

You're stuff is looking really good man. You seem to have a good eye for subtle detail which comes across in your work. Looking at your more recent yellow missiles I like the overall feel of them. Something that catches my eye is the repetition of the same trail pattern which could be broken up a bit. Also there's points where the trails gets a bit crunchy, or small in detail. It might be solved if the camera was placed closer or the details bulked up. Also, the glow is very bright on the front, and then there's no glow for the trail. It might be cool to see some of that glow carry off into the trail of the particle for brighter areas.

Keep it coming man, you're stuffs looking great.

[McT.Trevor]

Appreciate the feedback and kind words Petrie! Once I have access to my work PC come Monday I'll upload another video with changes based on your critique. Appreciate your time on this, and thank you for being the first response to this thread. It means a lot!

[Jason_Chisolm]

Yo Trevor! This is looking pretty awesome, cool to see you've been busy since school ended. I think it would be really cool to maybe get a little bit more directionality in the shape of the bullet itself, to help add the sense that it's moving quickly. Edit: on second thought it might be there, but the glow covers it up a bit too much so maybe adding the sense of dissipating magic through it as if it's burning would solve that. But it's looking great dude keep up the awesome work!

[McT.Trevor]

Thank you! When I get back to this Monday I think I'll be reducing the overall glow effect around the bullet so that it isn't one big blob of glowing magic. I'll definitely apply a material on the bullet itself, appreciate the awesome idea! I'll apply this critique to the updated video I'll post here. Thank you for your time Jason

[Kris_Wilkins]

I love the trail behaviour in this effect, how are you achieving it and what are you working in? (Sorry if this is obvious I am a beginner and fully self taught )