VFX Study #1 - Unreal Engine 5
Over the past 5 weeks I have done a deep dive into building a strong foundational knowledge of VFX in Unreal Engine 5 (UE5). I have grown familiar and efficient at using features such as the shader editor, blueprinting, sequencer and Niagara systems inside of the engine in order to produce visual effects that are functional and stimulating for real time rendering sequences, such as games and cinematics.
My first 2 weeks were focused on building an understanding of the underlying systems for how all the magic happens. I became educated in shader fundamentals and how they interact with the system to produce the pixels we see on screen, as well as their adaptability and compatibility with one another. I also learned some more technical features, like how UV sets and such are taken into consideration when developing VFX, as well as GPU and CPU capacity to enhance performance during runtime.
The 3 weeks afterwards were focused solely on getting hands on with the engine and its features. Here is where I went into things such as the shader editor and Niagara systems to create actual effects that the user can use to interact, perform or just admire. These VFX will be demonstrated in the visual portrayal of my journey here on the left. All VFX are rendered using the in-engine sequencer.
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Overall, my shift to becoming a VFX artist has proven invigorating and fulfilling these past few weeks, and with my newfound knowledge, I am confident to go forward with my studies to produce top quality effects for games to come. I look forward to the future and thank you for taking an interest in the findings and fun I have been keeping up with these past 5 weeks!
Orb Explosion - boom!
This VFX focused a lot on timing and framing, focusing on making an ability that felt reactive with the attached animation to give the player a sensation of synergy with the character.
Bardic Inspiration... Inspiration! (Slowed for your viewing pleasure)
Too often are musicians in games depicted as medieval bards. With this VFX, my aim was to produce a result that felt fresh and modern, a youthful spin on a fun caricature.
Arcane Comet.
For this effect, I focused on introducing custom parameters such as spawn location and collision events that were determinable via a scratch pad. This allowed me more control over the movement of my system and the interactions in the world.
Material for comet beam.
Learning more about techniques I can utilise to optimise visual effects whilst keeping performance high was my main goal for this, such as curve atlases and noise layering.
Blueprinting & Logic.
My focus here was to figure out how to tie together the shaders and particle systems I had made together, along with how they can react to runtime events, like using a timeline to edit a material parameter!
Texture studies!
Here I learned how to create tiling and seamless textures in order to utilise features like panning and rotating in the shader editor, as well as increasing fluency in Photoshop.