Oops wrong button; should probably read forums before deciding to stay awake for 30 hours.
My resolution is to learn a bit more about the technical aspects of engines and hardware. No matter the system, my goal is to always be able to tweak something to it’s fullest potential.
Also, they’re great tutorials. It’s actually how I found this website and in turn, how awesome VFX creation is.
I want to further my technical knowledge and improve my teaching abilities. I want to get better at sharing knowledge. I often get crippled by performance thoughts. “Ok, I could show it this way, but what if it doesn’t look like the best thing they have ever seen?! They will think I’m a joke”. I’m a very rational person and I know that art is an artform 
and takes time and iteration. Something that’s not usually part of a tutorial or demonstration.
I want to get better at the buisness side of things. I still have a hard time swapping from my artist hat to “deal closer” hat.
I want to meet more VFX artists. Both veterans and students. I want to hear how people view our little piece of the industry.
There’s so many things i want to learn! I really want to play around more with using material driven VFX especially with thesis coming up. Personally i would love to delve into making VFX for VR which would be incredibly helpful for potential thesis projects. But most importantly i just want to continue improving in all the fundamentals, and creating a more disciplined schedule for next semester so i can still make time every day to practice.
I’m personally wanting to delve more into the graphics and calculation side of VFX simulation and rendering this year. Been working on some pretty cool software to try and generate FumeFX quality renders in real-time for VFX artists, as well as a vector field generation program.
I’d also like to learn more about VFX related shader creation and hand painting textures for UE4!
I am currently aiming to make a few assetpacks for the unity asset store, which I hope will be worth the effort, I am learning a lot and its surprisingly fun.
I also want to explore more fx elements for the style I am working with but I also need to look more into making more realistic FX, mainly explosions.
I will be starting in a new studio as a FX artist (+ animations) instead of generalist-artist.
So I hope I will take the opportunity to learn more about optimizing shadercode from Shaderforge or similar, because that is something I feel that I am currently lacking at.
I also need to learn more about the math parts about shaders to mainly optimize and learn new tricks.
Really interesting to hear everyone’s thoughts and ideas on the upcoming year! I really salute those who are and aim to make tutorials.
Here’s some tutorials on Houdini if you ever get the spare time. Houdini tutorials is pretty hard to find for free, I find. Some basics some a little bit more intermediate.
Other than that, I think mostly workshops and schools teach it. cmivfx.com has some really great tutorials, but it’s a paid type.
This as well, but I’m not sure how much use you’d get out of it since they used their own Py tools. There are some threads on exporting here if you just search Houdini. A bit of it is more advanced than my current knowledge, so hopefully it comes of some help to you. 
Really appreciated! thanks for that!
hugs
I’ve never been part of a project that does really stylized effects, especially ones that draw inspiration from 2D, so I’d love to experiment with that a bit. I also want to focus on getting better at UE4 materials so I have a better understanding of all the possibilities for FX creation. I also want to find what my “style” is, something that explicitly says this was created by me. Honestly, no matter how much I learn, I feel like there’s always more!
Also, I want to go to my first GDC and meet some more VFX artists!
Haha. It’s really interesting to see a lot of folks want to dive more into stylized and drawn effects.
VFX: I’m no different! I really need to up my art game and I think diving more into hand drawn effects could help me build my eye better. I can get by with realistic-type stuff (simulated textures), but I definitely fall short adding that bit of magic that really makes the end product pop. My drawing skills are severely lacking, but we all gotta start somewhere 
Tech Art: Build up my coding skills! I’m building a Max plugin now which has been quite the experience. I can build some helpful tools with Python, but I’m really throwing things at the wall. If I can build up a more logical mindset to building tools, I think I could really improve my user experience and better help the other artists on my team.
I really want to learn how to make fire and plasma effects. It’s mostly learning fluid simulation I think. I’ve been trying to find tutorials for a while, but I haven’t found much yet. I also want to improve my timing, especially when it comes to explosions. I would love to see what you learn about those ground decals, so pretty!
It’s not quite as inky as the video you posted, but maybe this helps?
I’ve used that method a few times for shockwaves. The guy mentioned they used fume to make the ones in the pack they sell. That’s the kind of more abstract use of Fume I want to learn this year, so I can make stuff like that. That was mainly what I was getting at when I said I wanted to learn Fume better. I know how to do realistic fire and smoke, but that kind of wispy life-of-its-own style smoke is what I’m hoping to learn over 2017.
That’s an absolute killer link. Thanks!
For me, its Neural networks, more FumeFX, just more FX art in general!
I’m looking at really diving into Substance Designer and hoping my poor brain will hold up for Houdini.
-Wm
I bought Substance when it was on sale a few months ago, and I’ve yet to dive into it yet either 
@ShannonBerke ok, partner.I said in my work to make this type of map method.
no.1:max
I use first max rayfire:
no.2:Photoshop
With the Photoshop layer mode.The two pictures together
no.3:After Effects
modulation glow
General method is like this, as for some of the details, but also patience when do adjustment.The hope can help get you
I’d like to get deeper into mesh deformation for trails and such. Things like the trails on Junkrat’s main weapon in Overwatch would be fun to do in Unity.
I really need to work on my timing and if I can further my stylized vfx too that would be great.
I begun work on an effect like this trail a little while ago. What it appears to be is a simple ribbon emitter (Trail renderer in Unity) with a fancy shader for the smoke.
I suspect the shader is simply world projected UVs and a series of panning textures to give it volume.
Good luck
That’s really cool!! I have little knowledge of after effects aside from the off tinkering, but it’s always SO COOL to see other FX uses for it. I’ll have to try this out and see what I get 
