anacjmauro

[anacjmauro]

VFX slash + hit

So, I've been working on a few assets for the Unity Asset Store and decided to share things are going so far. Hopefully I can finish all the assets by the end of the month and then upload them :) I decided to create some variations when it comes to different types of hits (directional, radial, looped etc).

This time I wanna share the looped slash and hit:

The elements that compose the hit are

Main shape

Sparks

Rays

Dome and glow

In the particle system, I added three loops to match the slashes.

I used the same elements with a few changes to make the directional hit:

There are other varations, but I'm still working on the shapes.

I wanted to learn more of After Effects, so I used the software to create the shapes, flipbooks and gradient maps for the effects. For the shapes, I used diffferent channels to add emissive color and create a dissolve gradient, so it does like this:

R main shape

G emissive

B dissolve

Well, soon I'll finish the other variations and post this pack in the Asset Store, hopefully it's of good use to indie devs :D

[anacjmauro]

VFX Sketch 2024

Working on some new vfx and decided to share here some of the process.

This hit effect has five elements: the hit itself, some sparks and rays of light, a dome, and a glow. For the main texture, I used a RGB pack in which the main mask is in the red channel, the emissive is in green, and the dissolve direction is in blue.

Here are the individual elements:

For the gradient map, I used Substance Designer to add colors and then the Transformation node to make the final texture have the size of 64 x 1 px, so it's better for performance:

For the sparks, I used the Tile Sampler node and the paraboloid shape to cut the shape and create variation:

For the timing, I wanted something snappy since a hit effect is always fast and lasts just a few milliseconds on screen. I'm pretty happy with the result I got so far, but this is still a WIP, so I'll work more on this

[anacjmauro]

Ana Mauro completou 1 ano hoje!

[anacjmauro]

2023 recap

2023 was the year that I decided to learn more about VFX and this whole new universe. I'm grateful for everything I've learned so far, all the incredible artists I've met and this amazing community. This highlight is one of the VFX I'm most proud of, because I was able to do a good job in a limited time frame. Hopefully good news comes up next year

#artstationrecap2023

[anacjmauro]

Ice VFX

I started my VFX journey this year and I'm excited about everything I've learned. So this is my first post here and I intend to use this blog to record what I'm learning/creating.

This is the breakdown of an ice VFX in which I tried to include stages of anticipation, impact, and dissipation.

Anticipation

Five particle systems were used to create the anticipation: bluish light, glow, rays, and snowflakes.

The particle systems individually are:

Hit

The muzzle was composed of three elements: a spiked shape in the back to create shade, the impact shape with a white high value, and a blue ring around that grows in size.

Projectile

The projectile has a trail with dissolves and a light on its "head", even tough it appears very quickly on the screen.

Additionally there are tiny snowball particles with the trail, steam, and snowflakes to add more strength to the burst

Impact

On impact, there is a frozen sphere mesh, a broken ice texture on the ground and some particle systems to complete the impact. Here all the elements together

Explosion

For the explosion, I used a mesh of stylized rocks that I created in Blender with variation in size and rotation in the particle system.

The frozen sphere mesh disappears and is replaced by a burst of small ice rocks and snowballs that are thrown by the impact, with a bit of dampen in the Limit velocity over lifetime module

Additional animation

For readability, I added an animation for the attack and impact, with a fresnel effect to indicate that the target was hit.

In the next post I will talk about the textures that I made in Substance Designer and the shaders.