I work for a large company with very talented artists, I work on design and have access to all of their art assets. So models, textures, materials, particle emitters, and whatever else you can think of.
I have recently started learning about particle fx and trying to recreate them myself. I’m finding it difficult to find resources at my level to learn from, but I also have access to looking at how all of the effects are set up from scratch.
If you had the same opportunity, how would you go about aiding your own learning with these resources at your disposal?
While I have my own ideas on how to learn from them, I was wondering if anyone else could think of ways to take advantage of this situation that I haven’t thought of.
personally, id pick an interesting one. recreate all the textures for it, then all the materials, then set up the particle emitter.
every time I dont know a node, module, setup… I’d google search for information/reference or ask around.
do it over and over untill there is nothing more to learn
I’m fairly confident in cascade and setting up the individual particles, it’s more so how to recreate the textures and the blueprints, the random functions and figuring out what they do is confusing. This will come with time though correct?
Look at the textures and try to figure out how they made them, and how I can get something similar. 90% of the time I see an awesome effect, it ends up just being a really good set of textures combined together
I am definitely going to try. I don’t want to bother them though, they’re the best in the industry, and I’m just a junior designer. Thanks for your comment though
While digging through their blueprints and values…to help understand easier / faster, change some of the values around. Start off one at a time, see how the change the VFX.
Trial and Error learning.
But at least you have a base to start from.
If you make an effort to pick things apart and recreate them yourself, they probably won’t mind you asking questions about the things you couldn’t figure out (unless they are crunching). Just ask, you’ll figure out who’s up for helping you out or not.
And you can always ask here, just do some legwork on your own first!
Don’t hesitate!! I’m positive they would be more than happy that someone is taking interest! There are so many benefits for a designer in particular to learn FX Do it!
This is written for people who may not be using Unreal, which is relatively robust in eating all assets. Unreal has tons of tutorials. Most proprietary beasts are cruel to fx artists.
I’d trace all the assets. The main questions you have to answer are:
-Where did they come from?
-What do they do?
-Why are they here?
Assets that come from external tools probably come with restrictions or formatting for import.
Are they hooked to actual game mechanics in a way that make them difficult to test if they’re different? You may need to make something and swap it out. Game systems are notoriously exacting.
If you really want to contribute, you’re going to need to follow someones file structure and naming convention. If you get discouraged by this, just give up. Nobody wants you dumping your magic_tree_fart_v2 in a character folder.
Then, find out what tools are used, including internal tools. You don’t have to go through an entire tutorial to find out what tools are being used. They’ll break down into two categories. Internal and external. Ask someone.
The external tools are a given, you’ll be able to find tutorials outside your company without asking anyone to invest their time in your development.
The internal tools are where you’ll want traction with people who can help. Don’t ask someone to spend time with you unless you’re serious about respecting their time. Look for projects that will apply directly to work you’re doing. You want opportunities that will end up in the game if at all possible. It won’t just be rewarding to you, it will be rewarding to the person who helped you. The things that will stick in your head are the ones that lead to something real. You’ll forget how you made the internal exporter put files someplace after checking some vague boxes after testing something; and why isn’t it working now? Pipeline will waste everyone’s time if you lean on someone for answers.
So once you can trace the roots of all the hard assets, you’re ready to start changing them. Duplicate them to a safe area and see if they still work. If they don’t, then you have more to learn about your engine and pipeline. If they do, start changing things, play around, have a good time. This is the point where the things that stick with you will be the things that are most fun. Find your particle system tools, or material tools, and just mess around! Fx is the ball pit of video games. It’s all fun until someone pees in the pit.
