Akrius VFX Practice

Akrius

Finally fixed the animations for the unreal import so I can FINALLY start working on the vfx portion

HELLO I'm back from a short break and started importing my model from blender to unreal and setting things up but I fear things became harder than they were supposed too... First I have too many root bones than I get rid of the extra root bones but they ruin the lower half of the animation so I have to reanimate the lower half than when I export it to unreal it's too tiny turns out i had to scale it up because it was too tiny and yah... Long day fixing tedious shit and I'm still not done I fear

Finally finishing up this animation once and for all. It's supposed to be for a VFX challenge and half a month in and no VFX yet 😭  no worries though step by step progress i guess lol

Shoot I missed it, oh well heres my WIP, still not finished yet sadly but it's almost done

Still working on the animation! I didn't get a lot done today but I'm hoping to finish it and polish it up tomorrow

It's been a while but with a mixture of being busy and this little guy giving me a HEAP of trouble it's been a struggle but I'm finally starting to animate!

Yoo I finished my model from last time and he is distinctly less sussy now! Obviously made his model nicer gave him a fresh coat of paint and rigged him so all thats left is to animate him so I can finallt start working on the vfx part lol

Hii working on a beanish model (inspired by bangboo from zenless zone zero not fall guys, very important) and this is how its going so far!! Arms need a lot more work but its starting to shape up!

Been a bit busy since last time I posted but moved on to the particle section of the tutorial and it's helping me learn a lot about how particles and materials work so its been going great!

Hello! I as previously working on my own personal VFX but I feel like while I was focusing on creating textures my knowledge on unreal materials was too low so I wanted to try and learn more about them! Recently I found a tutorial made by a dev from Lost Ark, while not entirely focused on the material, goes much more in depth on them from others! Currently I'm working on the master material for one of the VFX which is... complicated to say the least lol

I didn't really get much done but I've been working on this new texture for my niagra system that was a PAIN to make as I'm still learning how material systems in Unreal works lol

Dragon finished!! Clearly I made a lot of improvements in the jaw law and shape as well as generally making it thicker across the board, but since it's finished I suppose the next step is figuring out the UVs and figuring out how to make it glow different colors in unreal,,, I'm not looking forward to that

Hello! Been a minute but I've recently gotten more fired up to doing serious dev work. Currently I'm trying create a VFX based off this concept art and starting with this dragon head mesh! Only really started working on it yesterday and still requires a lot of work but I like how it's coming out so far!

Hello! I've been off my game recently so working a little at a time and get back into things instead of all at once. Nonetheless this is the start of one of the texture's I'll be making for a campfire!

Hey there!! Finished my smoke particle system today. sadly it didn't come out as well as I would've liked it too but it can get the job done with some tweaks so I don't wanna dwell on it too long so I can move onto the next one

Hello!! It's been a while since I wanted to take a long break to do absolutely nothing between christmas and new years! But now that I'm back on track here currently this is a WIP of a smoke material. For the most part it's done right now as to make any final adjustments I'll have to see it in action first with a particle system so we'll save that for later.

So I know I said LAST time would be the last day I likely worked on the effect but surprise, I'm back and nearly completely reworked the entire effect on some feedback I got from a professional and have to say I like it a lot better than previous versions.

Think I put the finishing touches I liked into it so this should be the last update for this! I added a small hint of green and red to add in a few more splashes of color and mostly changed the yellow to a more vibrant orange as I think it complimented the blue more. Still don't know what to do with the octagon so I just made it more transparent and will leave it as is. Wanted to do something else but I fear I will not be able to until I renew my photoshop lul.

Here we are again with quite a lot of progress since last update. Most prominently I added color and tried to add some darker values in the middle but was a bit awkward with how close it was to the brighter colors. Technically I could call it done but I'd like to tweak it a bit more before I move on as I know I could improve it in some ways

Continue of working on my teleport! So I've unforunately spent a lot of time to get to where I am now. I had to make a slightly curved plane in blender and slapped on the tapered edges that give the shape of a cylinder. I also added in lines going upwards that will end up contrasting the edges. I also spent a lot of time trying to give a satisfying end to the teleport but I haven't found something I like yet so more on that another day

So, I've spent a lot of the day thinking about what I want to do as I felt my design just wasn't that great. So I've decided to split the moves into a teleport and a lightning strike. For the most part I went back to the first half, the now independent teleport, and cleaned it up a bit and thinking about a few more elements I want to add before moving onto texturing

Part 2 of my particle, it's a little awkward and honestly struggling pretty hard with conceptualizing it, so not much interesting to say the gif speaks mostly for itself

Part 2 of my first official particle!! So I've greatly shifted the direction I want to go in since last time and I've got the bare bones of the second part done, but for today I mostly worked on imporving and adding onto the first part, and tomorrow I plan on working on the second part and making it fit more themetically with the first part since they seem like two different effects atm

Started a block in of the first full effect I plan to make without any tutorials. Took me an embarassing amount of time to create this since I forgot a lot of features unreal has lol, but this is the first half of it I plan on working on the second half tomorrow.

More color theory pog!!! Again not much to show since I'm just learning about color theory for VFX and not putting it to practical use right away. That being said what I have learned is temperatures relating to colors, like "warm" and "cool" colors and palates. For example warm colors, often seen in homes, will have a more cozy feeling, where cool colors will be more crisp and promote productivity... apparently, so you might often see it in offices. Also some fun ways to play with colors and bloom!

Hello! I don't have much to show for today, I was hoping I'd be able to to start blocking in some VFX without any tutorials, as well as textures and the like after, however I thought it'd be a good idea to take the small course they had on color theory. So that was fun learning a lot about colors I didn't know before, obviously catered towards vfx rather than color theory in general. Mostly focused around color itself, the value of colors and how they should pop out of any background value, as well as hue and saturation and some fun ways to play around with them specifically in ways to make them pop out when transitioning through colors and how to avoid some beginner mistakes when it comes to color.

I am done with textures!! Or so according to the VFXApprentice boot camp I am lol. From the last time I didn't change much just sharpened some things up made like a few more dark lines. Essentially I was a lot closer to the finished than I realized but got in those last finishing touches

I've made a lot of progress on the texture since last night obviously. Played a lot with shading areas and making some more interesting shape, as well as cleaned up some lines and used a lot of blur. Not entirely done but we're almost there

Hello!! I am now working on a tiled trail and this will be the general rough outline for it, gotta move onto making more interesting and lighter shapes with other brushes next time

Finally finished the tiling texture! Not a huge fan with how it turned out I had higher hopes but I wouldn't call it a failure. Lengthy process but I enjoyed it and certainly learned somethings from it which is ultimately the goal

Not sure how I'm feeling about it right now but gotta trust the process lol. As for what I've done mostly just blended in the shadowy stuff and smudged up some of the main texture to make some edges a little smoother

So the tiling texture is getting closer and closer to finished!! Today I just worked on shading some parts, it looks super scuffed rn but the blending will fix that later

Still working on tileable texture aha... Tiring texture man... Anyways I didn't do that much today besides a lot of cleanup and added a line, I really like the way it looks and finally time to move up to the opacity and smudge time

Hello! Pretty exciting developments. I added a lot more lines moved a few deleted 1 and tried my best to clean up some lines but I feel like I can do a lot better in the next coming days

Tiling noise practice still ongoin. Made a lot more progress today with lines and clean up. Tomorrow I planb on making the shapes they make be a little more varied since a lot of them are the same length.

Hello!! Still working on my tileable texture. Today for the most part I only added a few lines and did a lot of line cleanup. Ngl most time consuming part about this is cleaning up the lines it's a bit tiring lol

Hello!! I'm back on the grind still working on my tileable texture. It still no where close near done but I like how it's shaping up, and how much smoother the lines feel than last post!

On the very very early stages of working on some tiling noises. Not much to say besides the lines are rough and gotta polish it up and add a whole lot more in the next coming days

Today I just spent some time doodling some generic hit vfx or whatever you wanna call these. Just wanted to do some practice without a tutorial

So I ended up finishing my texture for a whisp. Honestly it's not perfect but I like it more than I thought it would. Still don't like it though and it was much more painful than fun so I'll stop here and move on rather than try to mold it to an unrealistic standard for a beginner.

Been slacking a bit but still working on my wisp. Didn't make too much progress but I'm liking how it's coming out more than previously. Not thrilled but maybe I'll come to like it more the more I progress through it who knows.

truthfully, no idea how this is gonna come out
supposed to be a wisp sprite sheet 
not likin how its comout out at all so we'll see how far i continue it

Sprite sheet is complete!! I didn't do much to the textures themselves however I did clearly fix the 3rd lightning zap and combined them all together so I can finally call an end to the lightning project and move on!!

Working on my little zap sprite sheet. obviously got more done today and wanted to finish all 4 of them but I caught a snag on the third one and for some reason... the bottom part doesn't want to act nice. None of the others clearly do this and its only half of the 1 texture so I have no idea what's going on and since it's so late probably won't be able to finish it until tomorrow lol. Otherwise almost done and kind of enjoying how they're starting to look... besides the 3rd one of course

Feels like not much didn't get done but thats cause I spent a lot of time making this one texture for little lightning things. It's going to be a 2x2 lightning sprite texture so... gonna take a while I fear

Hihi I finished the embers sprite sheet from last time!! Not much to say the last 2 got the treatment the first 2 did and  smudged up a few areas and put them into their respective corners. Overall happy with how they turned out

Hello! This time around I be working on an ember sprite sheet with 4 different embers. Obviously 1 and 2 are a lot further along than 2 and 3 but im quite liking how they're turning out so far :)

Sadly... seems I let the time sneak up on me as I was putting the finishing touches on this but I'm pretty happy with how this ring shockwave thing came out. They seemed to have changed radial blur so I couldn't finish the last one and the glow rays you see on this are much more inconsistent than the tutorial I was following but it's not the end of the world I enjoy it still.

So this was done over the course of the past few days but I'm struggling cause tbh the tutorials are kind of failing me pretty hard. Moved onto the next set of tutorials which is making the VFX textures in krita and this is kind of half way done impact hit kind of texture. Struggling cause something they do in the tutorial just like... isn't doing what it does in the tutorial so if ANYONE is very knowelgable about krita I'd appreciate it if you could out and ask you a question.

Truthfully I'm not very happy with how the explosion of this turned out. Unforunately I don't know how I wanted it to turn out and it feels like a mish mash of ideas without a clear goal so I wasn't really sure where I wanted it to end up. So yah next time I'll be making something based off a reference and that should end up with a lot more clear of a goal and I'll be more satisfied with it

I worked more on my swirl explosion thing, currently not sure what I want to do with the last part of the explosion but I'm pretty happy with the start. Gameplay wise it'd suck but luckily it's just to make something I like 👍

Working on blocking in a custom particle, I don't really have that much of an idea I just know I wanted this to be my base lol, so I'll see where it takes me for the moment.

Bwhaha I finished my explosion and it looks amazing. Today I added the later half of the explosion where the shockwave fades out, smoke comes out, and debris comes out as well. This is it for the block-in tutorial series so before i end up moving onto the next tutorial series I plan on making some of my own without a tutorial and see what happens from there

I'M FINALLY GETTING LESS SICK, anyways continuing block in tutorials finishing up the last one with the last of the most common VFX, explosions. It's a long tutorial and didn't want to do it all in one go so only got around half of it. Practically almost done though and liking how it's turning out.

Back again with another block in! This time with another popular VFX of projectilesss

Unforunately I got incredibly sick today and could only do this much, I wanted to hopefully finish a few more tutorials than practice some on my own but that'll be for another day. Onto the more exciting part tho, todays progress equates to some blockin practice with some of the more common types of vfx, healing/buffing and a hit impact FX!

alrighty it's been a while! Had to move and unpack all my stuff so only recently was able to start making stuff again, anddd this time I return with access to a course dedicated to this type of work. So today I just watched two tutorials going in depth on the unreal system for now and created this fire and item pickup particle effect with them!

Didn't get a lot done today unforunately, just made the arc wider and started the VFX part of chipping away and making the insides lighter and lighter

Long day today so really little energy to get much done, just practiced this lightning arc and will hopefully flesh it out a lot more tomorrow

Tried out some different styles for hand drawn VFX practice today, probably won't stay with this specific style but I really liked some of the techniques that led to the creation of this, hopefully will get to try out some more tomorrow.

https://gyazo.com/0a55a516d26e62619ecfc02880a1fc7d.mp4 Made this trail thing!! looks pretty cool i like it, just added a texture ontop of the last one and this happened

Akrius VFX Practice

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