Hello !
I am currently working on this VFX, I am looking for feedback to improve it if you have any.
The VFX is based on the concept art below made by Geoffrey Amesse.
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Awesome concept to try out!
Hmm I think the most important thing about this effect would be the timing. Usually any damage spells need to happen very quickly to feel impactful and then fade out slower to give you a moment to realize what happened. In your case Fade out is fine, but everything seems to Fade In very slowly. Maybe try to working on that so it’s a bit more punchy 
Adding some elements like flash or dust puff on spear being put into ground might also help with getting that feel.
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Thx for the feedback 
Here is a new version, I tried to make the burst feel more impactful
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Nice! Already feels a bit more aggressive.
Now couple of improvements:
- The damaging part doesn’t fit the area of damage you have in build up. Probably you need to extend this (flame) also to the corners to make it fit.
- Would be awesome to see some play of lights (or additive textures flashes), so a flash in the place of putting spear in the ground and maybe another in the shape of the AoE, to give this half-second brightness to everything.
You can also make the shape of the indicator (the ground thing), also glow very brightly when spear is in the ground. - Maybe would be awesome to make tops of the spears have some glow on them that would fade out with time, to kind of showcase even more danger.
- Timing of the flame (the one on pic)
is a bit off, as it’s almost of the constant speed through out the entire effect. Again, make it start very quickly and then slow it down when spears already appear. - You can also add some kind of purple/blue smoke with very low transparency to kind of fill entire effect with some kind of energy.
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New version, lot of small changes
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Damn! It goes in a really good direction
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I think that build up could use some work too. Spell itself is really powerful, so adding some building up energy on a peak of the spear before it reaches ground would be awesome!
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You could also have the character jumping before hitting the spear on the floor to sell the idea of a high-impact skill. Alternatively, you could have the character leaning backward a bit more.
There’s also adding an aura effect to the spear to make it look like energy is being gathered in the weapon before the character unleashes it when hitting the floor.
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New WIP, I have rework the weapon build up and the character posing, i like the jump idea but i want to stay close to the concept art
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Maybe have the tip of the weapon glow before any of the character’s movements?
Like having the weapon glow for a while, like energy is being gathered, and then have the character slam it on the ground, unleashing the attack.
Right now it’s a bit hard to notice it since the motion and other particles make it harder to notice the change.
Hope this helps.
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yes it’s look better, thank you for the feedback
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No problems, we’re all here to learn.
As long as you come out of this topic knowing the importance of timing and readability, you’ll have taken big steps toward improving your future work. Keep it up!
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Hello, the special effects you created are so cool. I like them very much. Can you share how you make it?
Hello and thank you
Creating an effect like this is quite complex. i sould do a breakdown video if i find the time, but if you want to know the way i work i mainly use 3 software to make this VFX :
- Maya to make the mesh (like the spear or the shape i use for the flame) make UV and make the animation of the character.
- Substance Designer to make all my Texture map.
- Unreal engine to create the shader, the code and the particles system for the effect.
This is the way i make vfx but many people use different software to achieve the same goal, like blender, photoshop and unity. hope it’s help you.
Thank you very much for your reply. I’m more curious about how the flames on the ground are made. Can you show me the mesh model and textures? The flames on the ground look very three-dimensional. I want to learn from them. Thank you!
Hello !
Making the flame look like in volume while kepping the stylized sharp and clean look of the flame was the hard part of the VFX.
Generally people just use plane to make stylized flame (like the flame wall in valorant) but it don’t make a volume effect or use a lot of particle to make a flamethrower look but you can’t realy control the shape of the flame by doing that. I mixed the 2 methods to make my vfx.
For the Mesh I made a mesh who is a lot of plane stack to create a wave looking mesh, i try a lot of mesh to make this look good
and this is the one i use, each plane UV is a square that take all the UV space, all the square are stack on top of each other
this is not perfect because when you look the mesh from de front or the top you see through,
my plane need to stay flat if i want the Material to look good so to fix that a add a small flamethrower effect in my VFX so it kind of fill the shape and we can no looger see through.
For the material i don’t realy use a texture for the flame, i juste this noise and some gradiant math. A also use panner to move it and step for the erode.
In my mesh i also set 2 material slot to add some variation to the flame.
hope it’s help you
could you please tell how spear trail was made? it looks so smooth and hand-painted. Especially erosion tech, looks like something special happening there
Thank you so much, this model is fantastic. I feel very benefited.
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Hello, for the trail erode i use a simple step with this trail texture,
So went i scale the step value the trail become more smaller and thinner and a use a dynamic parameter to make the step scale over the live time of the trail.
I also make the alpha scale down by the life time of the trail so the end of the trail fade away over time.
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Thank u sooo much =) I’ll try it
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