(topic deleted by author) 1 post - 1 participant Read full topic

Hi everyone! Decided to also start a sketchbook since I’ve just finished the first portfolio piece in quite some time. If you have any feedback would much appreciate 5 posts - 1 participant Read full topic

Im generating a location even from spawned particles that i want to attach other emitters onto. For some reason its spawning a trail of meshes/sprites. Anyone know a fix? Also are there better ways to approach this? I want to make an effect that resembles a minigun, shooting knives. 1 post - 1 participant Read full topic

Hey! Made a Gambit-inspired projectile effect. Would love any feedback and thoughts!! Youtube Link 1 post - 1 participant Read full topic

Sup folks! Found this intheresting article: gdcvault.com 'Agents of Mayhem': Physically-Based Materials in a Stylized Open World Physically based rendering is the new hot trend for more photorealism in rendering, both real time and pre-rendered, but it doesn't have to be. This talk covers 'Agents of Mayhem', one of a new breed of graphically stylized games using the PBR... The goal is to have a 1 single RGB (optionally +A) texture, where we keep “base” part of the texture as grayscale which allow us to tint it to any color we want, but in the same time we add some unique colored details. Here’s the basic logic from the article: Unfortunately the substance graph which they provide as a screenshow are unreadable, and i cant repeat their steps in Photoshop simply because i dont have it. So i make some experiments and It leads me to this graph in unreal: On the left - original texture On the right - texture where “basecolor” was tinted to brown It kind of works, i guess(?) but im not really sure im done it correctly. Honestly im never done such types of shaders, so maybe there’s some other more common options for such tasks which i simply doesnt know yet? Currently the things which i feel are a bit odd and probably a result of my mistakes: I need to really crank up the values in the lerp, where A goes negative, because otherwise there is some sign of grayscale texture (probably compression artefacts?)Also: I run a test with a real case texture which was made in a traditional way. I.e i set some base color, adding slight color variations, addingcolor details such as dirt and dust. Rebuilding those texture to those pipeline shown what such color details as brownish dirt/dust are kind of losted and become simply gray’ish/dark color or start to look a bit wierd with a mask and too sharp. Further tests kind of prove what tweaking all colored details values are almost get me to original texture look, but the new color values for color details itself are clearly odd if we compare them to traditional texturing. So again, it looks like i may doing something wrong or i expect too much from this pipeline.

Making a Sketchbook for the first time! Please give your advice or feedback to any of my works they are truly appreciated! I’ll be uploading this thread bit by bit with my work and I will try to stay as active as I can. Thumbnail: Study of Honkai Star Rail VFX - A RecreationUnity VFX - Butterfly Soul Study Original Work:Unity VFX - White Dawn 1 post - 1 participant Read full topic

I have some translucent embers, they explode outwards. In UE4’s shader complexity view this would be all green, or at the very least a little red. But now in UE5 when just two particles overlap they go straight into the white. I’m not sure how to make a simpler material than a spheremask and particle color, so right now I’m debating Masking any particle I possibly can even though it will not achieve the look I’d like simply bc it doesnt upset the shadercomplexity. So is the UE5 Shader complexity view accurate? does it become more sensitive with Lumen maybe? Is there a way to cheapen materials that only have a couple nodes thrown in? 1 post - 1 participant Read full topic

Second Post here, i have since then been struggling with unreal 5 niagara, i am currently using kisong lee’s coloso course, i am really confused there are a lot of concepts that i don’t even understand, my laptop has a gtx 1060 6gb, worried if it would run unreal 5 properly, smoke sims slow it down a lot, generally just really confused on how to start and where to go, need advice, stick with unreal or go back to unity, i believe that learning unreal makes me more employable. am i wrong?. thanks a lot everyone! 1 post - 1 participant Read full topic

Hello, I’ve been making this piece for a while now, the idea is to make a water-based spell that would fit in an ARPG (Diablo, Path of Exile etc.) or a CRPG (Baldurs gate 3, Divinity etc.) for my portfolio. I’ve gotten to a stage where I am happy with it but I know there’s a ton of room for improvement and I want this to be as good as I can possibly make it so any and all suggestions are welcome ^^

Hello Everyone! I made a tutorial on how you can make your own explosion fireball flipbook texture using Blender! I show you how to simulate, render, make motion vectors and use it in a game engine. check it out ↓Make A Fireball Flipbook Texture in Blender! (Game VFX Asset) if you have any questions, let me know in Youtube’s comments! 1 post - 1 participant Read full topic

Make A Fireball Flipbook Texture in Blender! (Game VFX Asset) I made a tutorial on making an explosion fireball in blender (simulating, rendering, packing into a flipbook, making motion vectors, using in game engine…) if you have any questions ask in the Youtube comments. 1 post - 1 participant Read full topic

So, someone pointed out to me that I didn’t announce the winners of the last sketch, whoops! In 1st place @eaacon Edit with finished work: [Ice Punch VFX] First Post: Hey everyone! I’ve always wanted to participate in one of these, and since I recently finished my portfolio feels like the perfect time. Although like I only really have around a week, I won’t put too much pressure on myself and I’ll do my best! I started thinking about ideas a few days ago and I’m thinking something like ice punch from Pokemon with an asset like Iceborn gauntlet from League of Legends? Anyways for now here’s a… Second Place @Hovl Hi, I want to participate. I don’t have enough time this month but I will try. Upd. My final work: [Ice effect] [Sketch 65: Winter Spell] Congrats to the winners! Thanks again to all our participants, and happy sketching

Is there a way to make a niagara system a template in the editor? 2 posts - 1 participant Read full topic

I am trying to recreate an effect where the slash of a weapon moves part of the image of the current scene. For reference: https://youtu.be/kWXAiU0dpPk Part of the image on screen seems to just be copied, pasted and moved slightly to the side before sliding back to the original location when taking a closer look. It’s quit noticable when looking at the hat and chain. I tried to use a Shader Graph to recreate this effect but unfortunatly my experience is rather limited and I didn’t realy manage to get anywhere. I’d greatly appreciate if someone here could help me recreate this effect or just give some general Tipps since I am new to creating VFX. *the reference is from the game Dead Cells using the weapon Queen’s Rapier 1 post - 1 participant Read full topic

Hello everyone! I’m Luna. I’ve been lurking on the forum and learn a lot from everyone. So I think it’s time for me to step up and show my work :> I’ll be updating my work from time to time and all feedbacks are greatly appreciated! You can check out the HD version at : https://www.artstation.com/artwork/gRBmyZ Thank you everyone. 1 post - 1 participant Read full topic

Hi ^u^ I’m Raed, I dont really know if I can ask for a demo reel feedback here. but I would really appreciate feedback on my demo reel please as I am second guessing my skills at every turn. I’ve been a senior VFX artist for 1.5 years now and the game industry it tough right now This is a vimeo link of my demo reel Demo Reel 2025 on Vimeo I would really appreciate some feedback to help me know where I stand Thank you and Wish you all the best <3

I have not seen any new Sketch Event for a long time. I would like to see it coming back, even if I don’t participate most time, it’s a great activity to come here and see how others think differently, take approaches on the same topic, and get some inspiration form it. 2 posts - 2 participants Read full topic

I’m trying to create a fire effect using a 16x4 flipbook texture in Unity’s Shader Graph, but I’m running into an issue — the image seems to tile horizontally (U direction) instead of animating properly through the frames. I’m using Shader Graph, not code. If anyone has a step-by-step or node-based setup** for flipbook animations like this, I’d really appreciate it!

Animation Sequences and Animation Montages in Unreal is a real life saver for VFX Artists. It lets you sync VFX with animation easily without extra hooks and you can preview it before you even play the game. Unity in other hand has a tool called “Timelines” which is similar in way, but not quite the best solution for a game that needs a lot of character VFX synced. So i decided to make a similar system in Unity to help VFX Artists, Game Designers and Tech Artists to sync VFX with animation easily, without having to make complex setup and no code! You just chose what to spawn, when and how. Bake into a animation clip and the plugin takes care of the rest! (Thats not my VFX in the video BTW)

Hello! I’m Max, a VFX Artist from Italy. I’ve been a realtime VFX Artist for around 4 years now and have lurked a lot on these forums but it’s the first time actually posting here.I’d like to start this sketchbook as a way to show a bit of my works, receive feedback and for personal motivation. I wanna start with my latest piece, I would like to do more elemental/magic stuff like this as personal pieces in the near future: Darkness Spell I break it down a bit more (and have some more of my effects and materials as well) directly on my artstation Feedback is welcome always, thank you everyone for your time!

Hi everyone, I wanted to share an open-source plugin I put together for Unreal Engine: Niagara Destruction Driver github.com GitHub - eanticev/niagara-destruction-driver: Turn CHAOS destructibles (Geometry Collection... Turn CHAOS destructibles (Geometry Collection assets) into very performant GPU simulated destructible static meshes driven by Niagara particles. The Problem: Chaos Fracture tools are great for creating destructible geometry in the editor, but the chaos physics runtime can be too expensive on the CPU to drive a lot of cosmetic destruction of props in your scene. The Solution: Niagara Destruction Driver turns CHAOS destructibles (Geometry Collection assets) into very performant GPU simulated destructible static meshes driven by Niagara particles. SETUP + USAGE getting started info in the github README. Under the Hood (can’t add architecture diagram since I’m a new user… but it’s up on github) Under the hood the plugin uses a niagara system to simulate the physics of the fragments (bones) on the GPU, write their transforms to render targets, and finally a vertex shader to constrain the vertices of a specific fragment to its respective bone using the render targets. Next Steps There’s a rough roadmap up on the github README. Hit me up on here or on twitter (@eanticev) if you’d like to contribute.

I got laid off two months ago from Smite 2 and got the grand Idea of making a realistic VFX reel to show the recruiters that I can do both stylized and realistic VFX. I was planning to spend two weeks on it and start sending my CVs everywhere. Three weeks later, I had to start sending CVs and ended up spending 2 weeks mostly applying to places both in Techart and VFX. And not being able to put in as much work as I wanted into the new reel. I wanted to have a full battle between the drone and the turret, post-process overlays and generally was aiming for a 50-second video. Looking back after spending two months on it, I was only able to get ~20 sec of actual reel in an “ok” state. What went wrong? I spent too much time setting the environment, coding the blueprints, and animating the sequencer events. I didn’t set up source control for this project because I thought it was going to be fast and easy… and it did break at one point forcing me to redo the whole chaos explosion in the beginning.What is the lesson? What is the takeaway? Overscoping is and 50 sec is a lot of time work time for a video. Working on the blueprints and environment was majorly a waste of time as they did not help at showing off my VFX and not even the Techart skills for the most part, yet took most of the work time on the video, same for the sequence animations etc. Even if it’s a small project source control is important. I’ll probably still not set it up for a single effect showcase but… If I ever plan on making anything as long again, I will split the sequence into takes instead of rolling the whole video into one sequence. Working on a long one-shoot sequence creates a lot of domino effects that make one small change require a lot of other changes, and with smaller takes each can be isolated to prevent these issues. https://www.artstation.com/artwork/vbBnRx

In my game, you can fold space into a single line/space rift. Currently, it looks like the white line on the right. I’m trying out some alternate visuals for it. Which one do you like best? The glitchy version is mostly complete with particle effects but I don’t think it fits the artstyle of the game. The ones on the left are botched shader experiments that could look good with more polish. Any feedback and suggestions would be welcome 1 post - 1 participant Read full topic

Hey everyone! Im currently trying to decide between Unity and Unreal Engine for learning real-time VFX, and Im a bit confused. My main goal is to build a career in this field, so I want to choose the engine that gives me better job opportunities in the long run.I know both engines are widely used, but Im not sure which one is more in demand when it comes to real-time VFX roles in the industry. If anyone has experience or insights about which engine is better from a job or studio perspective, Id really appreciate your advice. Thanks!

Hello amazing people,I recently started learning how to paint textures by hand for VFX. Its been pretty tough so far, especially since I dont come from a drawing background. Im using a XP-Pen tablet and Krita to practice, but I still struggle a lot with getting things to look right. (Ive attached what I worked on recently)My goal is to reach a point where I can confidently make any type of hand-painted texture or flipbooks and If someone could shed some light on this I would greatly appreciate it, thank you

Hello good people, this is my first post here, hope I can be as clear as possible!I saw this pic on pinterest a while ago and thought it would be fun to recreate inside Unity using shader graph and the CPU particle system (the old one for reference, not VFX Graph).I already got the effects on the hands pretty well using particles and some trails, but now Im trying to create the hand itself.I modeled a very basic hand in blender, rigged it for animations and imported in Unity, this is how it looks currentlyThe shader for the hand is literally just a fresnel node that goes in a step node and then multiplied by a color, nothing too fancy, but as you can see the cutoff point of the hand is pretty evident.Now my problem is that I would like to fade the hand in a similar fashion as the one from the image but I have no idea how to achieve this effect. My idea was to unwrap the UVs of the hand in such a way that the base of the hand would be around the 0 coordinate on the X and then map a gradient to it so the base of the arm does something.I would love to know how would you approach this problem and if you could give me some advice. Im by no means an expert VFX artist so consider me a complete noob!Thank you!

Hi I did this effect I hope you like it more content herehttps://www.artstation.com/renzosolohttps://www.patreon.com/c/renzosolorzanoVFX3DFull VideoThank you! 1 post - 1 participant Read full topic

Does anybody have any video recommendation to create UI FXs?I mean like when a character get frozen the screen starts freezing, or when a player its low heal it start pulsing, or even a moving widget. 1 post - 1 participant Read full topic

Hello, Im vfx artist using unreal engine mostly.these days, so confuse to chooseDestruction Chaos cache, houdini.Explosion , liquid niagara fluid, houdini, embergen, liquidgen.I prefer to learn in unreal engine as possible as i can.but not sure, maybe Houdini can make more flexible art styleI want to know some opinions

You can download here https://www.patreon.com/c/renzosolorzanoVFX3DHi! This is a FREE Unity VFX package. An Aura Shield! with different versions. I hope you like it!I also wanted to make the gift animation so it looks great. FREE Unity VFX Package See you with more content! Full Video 1 post - 1 participant Read full topic