Main Render
Alt. Angle Render
The Cracks on the ground are two seperate decals layered on top of eachother. The Emissive material variant is used by combining the main cracks AO with a 1-x & power node, and the AO is also used in the dissolve to create its unique look. Cool!
The light effect on the smoke is faked using a technique I found from Studio Tuatara, using World Space Sphere Masking. It makes the smoke look like it has a lot more thickness, and is easier to spot in isolation when viewed from above like this.
Rock Model + Texture in Unreal Engine. Modelled in Blender, Sculpted in Zbrush, Retopo'd in Blender, then textured in Painter. It has a lot of flaws around the edges, but it works for the amount of screenspace it uses.
The sword trail consists of two main components; A "fiery" base and the glowing "holy" highlight. Both elements have a dissolve effect to them as well, but the main intent is to showcase the edge at the tip of the sword with the thin aggressive taper.
Overview of the Substance Designer Graph used for the Ground Cracks. The base of the system is making pixel clusters using circular masks, and turning that into cracks using a Distance Node. Then Flood Fills help create a sense of depth and "progression".
Overview of the two Niagara Systems, for the trail and the actual main explosion respectively
PureRef Reference Sheet I made and used for the project, split between effect and style references. Recorded with ScreenToGif as it contains a lot of video and GIFs, since the default exporter just does image files.
This project is another one of my two-week challenges that I undertook while at Glaucus Games, this time I wanted to try to focus on more physical elements in order to "round out" my portfolio after getting some feedback about it from some of my peers within the industry. To that end, I spent a lot of time working with the rocks, the cracks, and the dust in this effect; I think it came out really nicely!
I'm especially proud of the cracks and the dust itself, I think they have some really nice depth to them and give the effect a great feeling of volume, despite a lot of it just being work with 2D Sprites. It kind of makes me want to consider doing a project that’s solely focused on creating textures or meshes, could be a fun experiment! I also once again want to give big thanks to my supervisor Nicholas, who has been a great help by constantly pushing me to improve and practice my skills.
