VFX
I am skilled in several programs and can make game-ready assets quickly and effectively; here are some examples of my VFX work in Unreal, Unity and Houdini.
VFX Reel - May 2024
Lightning Breakdown
The Lightning Strike effect is one of my most recent and I’m still super proud of it! Its made of a few emitters all controlled through a summoner blueprint, which causes a strike with a mere click of a button. That said the effect’s construction is relatively simple…
Line created
Minor jitters
Major jitters
Extrude into planes
The texture was then made in Substance Designer. This was a slightly more complicated process of eating away at rectangular shapes to create the crackling, twisted shape of an electric beam. Merged all together with plenty of blur to smooth out the edges.
There are two major portions going into making the strike itself, the model and the texture.
The model was made in Houdini, it basically boils down to running a point jitter over a line and extruding it into a plane, giving us that gnarled shape we run the texture over.
The material graph ended up quite complicated in the end. Taking the previously displayed texture I made the edges transparent while adding a mechanism for retracting the opacity dynamically. Ultimately this lead to a material that was easy to control and looked great on the lightning model.
VFX Overview
With professional tutelage from a dedicated class at the University of Utah as well as experience from my own personal projects, VFX is an area of game development in which I excel. My history is mostly with the built in Niagara particle systems and material editors of the Unreal engine. I have experience both making effects in a vacuum, as well as effects designed to be used in a greater project.
Along with my expertise in the particle and material systems, I also have experience making usable textures to act as particles or material bases, such textures being equipped for effects like fade-ins and erosion.
I can proficiently use Unreal, Unity, Substance Designer, Maya, Houdini as well as other programs like Photoshop to make game ready assets quickly and efficiently.
Houdini
Similarly to particle based effects, I’ve learned to use Houdini for asset and effect creation through a dedicated class at the U of U. Through this class I’ve learned to use procedural modeling, destruction effects, fire generation and even terrain gen. I also have experience bringing HDAs and other Houdini assets into Unreal 5.
I am actively working on improving my Houdini skills and am excited at the progress I am making. I do, however, have a firm grasp on the basics, and applications of this incredibly versatile program.
I will be updating this page with more examples soon.
