Hello, I’m new to game VFX and unsure where to begin. I’ve watched some videos where people recommend learning shaders. Do I need to master shaders in-depth, or is it possible to create VFX without diving deeply into shaders? I’m also unclear about how real-time VFX work. Could you please guide me?
IMO you should learn some basic Ideas on how to do things like scrolling, tiling, UV coordinates and then how to controls Dynamic Parameters, with either particles systems or blue prints. If you start there, you’ll then be able to move onto other advanced features.
If you’re new to real-time VFX i wouldn’t start with shaders. Shaders can become extremely complicated (and expensive if you are sloppy with the math operations) and you can fall down a mathematical rabbit hole. I would first start with learning Niagara and try making some simple particle effects. You dont need to create advanced material shaders to make particle effects. Learn how to spawn sprites and meshes and move them around before moving onto advanced materials. Part of using niagara is learning how to create a basic materials, assign textures and flipbooks and how to hook them up to allow them to be controlled by niagara. (particle color, dynamic params etc, which is the simplest shader) There are a bunch of example materials already set up for particles. (ie: smoke textures)
Once you have a grasp on the making particles you can move on to some more advanced particle theory such as performance, translucency sorting and advanced material shaders (uv scolling, uv distortion, refraction, flowmaps, errosion etc) There are tons of great videos on youtube for all of these things.
Material shaders aren’t only for particle sprites, you can also use them for various mesh effects. One of my favorite tests for new VFX artists is to make a simple firework. A rocket that flies up and explodes. It is very simple on the material side (simple glowing dots) but it can have many different params to set up in niagara. Things such as random size and sprite lifetime. Different colors and ways to move the particles around. Spawning particles from other particles etc. Try and layer in as much as you can. Use videos of a real firework and try to copy that, good luck!
This post is a little old now, but if you’re still looking, these are my favorite resources for some very solid, in-depth and well explained Unreal material functions and creation:
Ben Cloward - https://www.youtube.com/c/BenCloward/videos
Tharlevfx - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzyMNIlh7lBQnIagTrEh1ZA/videos
PrismaticaDev - https://www.youtube.com/@PrismaticaDev/videos