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First Post :
Hey everyone! I have been around for a while, but never posted anything or tried participating to a VFX Sketch. But as the theme was inspiring, and I wanted to test the newest version of PopcornFX, i thought it would be a fun way to combine fun and exercise!
So here is my little map of the stars, you can freely navigate inside it (Zoom on specific planet to be added soon) and see all the different stars and the planet hanging around. I spent a lot of time creating the frame, but the bases are settle now. So before adding any level of complexity, the next thing will be integration in an actual realtime game engine in order to be able to work on all the shading and the way the effect appear!
I’ll definitely continue working on it, so i’ll keep you update on what’s going on!
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Can’t wait to see what you’ll do regarding fade-in/out, looks very promising ! 
Also you probably have plans for that, but perhaps having a small volume where things fade out nicely when they’re close to the edges of the base ?
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Small Update : Now we can zoom in! With that, I can expand the possibilities to spawn moons and maybe even procedural continents layout on planets! 
I also smoothed the the fade in/out on the edge of the base as you suggested jbilalte, but as it’s my first posts, I can’t add an other gif, but you’ll see it in the next update 
15 Likes
really cool! how do you control the data and the scrolling? where does the data of the start positions come from and how big they are etc?
Really like this effect. Looking forward to seeing it evolve
Niceeeee, it looks a lot cooler zooming in/out!
Hey thanks for all you’re kind reply! @simonschreibt I need to tied up a bit my nodes before being able to show you how it’s done, but I’ll compile everything today so I can explain how it works!
Otherwise, I kept working on the effect, adding a bit of UI, and, the most important feature so far, a focus on the planet the nearest from the center of the table. It forces this planet to be centered when you zoom in, to avoid zooming-in in the void!
Also, now, each and every star got a random name when generated. But I might have to work a bit on a markov chain to generate more interesting, and, above all, easy to pronounce, names ^^’
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So here is breakdown time! (just as a reminder, I used PopcornFX V2 Beta 3 Patch 1)
If anything isn’t clear, or if you’re interested in any orther details, just ask, always glad to help! 
I explained here how it works so far. But I have some issues with the process right now. The main problem is that the content is generated proceduraly at each instance, so you can’t use it as a map for a game (or you could use a determinist seed, but it’s still not very simple to use). The other thing is that even if the particles outside the bounds aren’t render and don’t create any overdraw, they actually exist and impact the performance of the FX. So I’m actually thinking about spawning the stars from a texture, and killing them when they are out of bounds. Need to test that, because it would cost way less I think if i managed to get it done right!
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Update on how it’s going so far :
So I have integrated it in Unreal, and it looks very cool with some nice shader! I also started a bit of UI, I still have to display information on the selected star system on the left.
Moreover, I started to divide the stars between 2 factions, and I’m working on creating a war system, so the planet can be conquered, and will change color, spawn fleet and so on… Will show you next time, because it’s so wip that I haven’t implemented it yet!
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Worked a lot on creating the car system I talked about in the previous post, it seemed to be a bit too time consumming for such a short amount of time ^^’ So I won’t be able to present it for the challenge itself, i’ll probably need few more days to finish it, But i’ll defenitively will post it here once it’s properly working, and also (cause it’s the biggest problem right now) and it will look nice ^^
So for the challenge itself, I’ve made a proper gif of what was done so far :
Hope you liked it, and will keep you posted of the “random war” system!
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