Forest Creek

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/nGyD1

A creek in the middle of a deciduous forest. Water flows by the mossy rocks as it has washed away the ledge to reveal the roots of surrounding trees.

Modeling done in both Maya and ZBrush
Materials done in Unreal, Substance Designer, and Substance Painter
Baking done in ZBrush, Substance Painter
Many Textures done in Photoshop
All Assets created by myself
Participant of CG Trader Awards

Rail Slide Mechanic Adventure Game

Within my Adventure Game, "#Sliding into Your DM Like..." I have coded a core mechanic for rail sliding/grinding. I mix this with breaking walls, attacking foes, and pushing buttons for an experience seen many times before.

The game will open up with the player falling onto a rail and sliding along it into a small hole in the wall. From here the player breaks a piece of the wall to infiltrate the building. The next gating mechanism is to push a button by hitting it like a civil person. 

From here the player will drop down a ledge and see 2 hovering Roombas that look like they can spout lasers, because they can. Players, having been introduced to breaking walls will put together the fact that they should whack these guys as well. Having broken their hearts the player will utilize the rails above to slide into an exterior space with a large door ahead. 

Between the door and the player are 4 enemies that the player must attack, they will do this. The large door must be opened by pressing 2 buttons on either side of the door. This cannot be successfully done by running from one side to the other, the player must take the rail across. 

The doors open to a subway system for carrying cargo. As the player gets on the rail a cargo train will begin running through, beginning a 'be faster than the train or die' situation. As the chase goes on the player will have to crouch, hop, and break obstacles getting in their way without going too slow. Half way through a second set of rails will appear and a second train, providing the player with 4 rails to navigate. 

The rails will break off launching the player into a circular room where the boss battle will immediately begin. This battle will utilize the attacking, rail, and breaking skills the player has learnt. 

Once the boss has been destroyed the building will begin to shake, opening a hole in the wall. The player will run and jump out onto a rail for their grand escape. This rail circles around the building presenting many obstacles. Falling hurty things, broken rails, walls to break or avoid. 

The play-through ends with the rails ending, sending the player flying with a flash to black and the title of the game "#Sliding into Your DM Like..."

Boss Battle - The Giant Evil Rainbow Monkey

A boss battle that I'm taking a lot of inspiration from is the Old Iron King from Dark Souls 2.

This boss is stationary for the whole fight, however he is large enough that he is always able to hit any part of the arena with either his fists or his flames.

Different attacks he has are Swiping and Smashing with his arms, and using his fire breath to scan the arena with flames.

In order to attack the big guy you must wait for his arms to be on the ground, or as a ranged character just hit him and dodge attacks.

The arms would easily be a Begin Overlap cast to the Player Character to do damage whenever the player comes into contact. Add some 'Move Component To's and you've got some swiping and crushing arms. The flame I would be replicating with a Laser that comes out of his mouth.

It'll be a big Laser, it's gonna be huge. You've never seen the likes of this Laser before.

This sketch of the boss battle I have in mind, The Giant Evil Rainbow Monkey, shows a quick visual. He will be big, He will actually have arms, He will be in front of a large rainbow. 

The player platform will be a large solid cloud. 

His attacks will consist of his Giant Laser, Giant Hands, and the ability to summon Skull Heads.

The laser will move at a medium pace across the platform in a zigzag pattern that the player will be able to dodge. This will be done by rotating the head. 

His hands will have two primary actions, possibly a third. Smashing down, Swiping across, and Punching from below. 

His battle will change at 30% health by making him Enraged. This means I will have him do a short animation of bursting his veins which are filled with rainbow blood and speeding up the duration of each Move Component To.

This is the attract video I created for mt racing level, "Castle Chaos."

The scene in which the car jumps from a high ledge and comes close to the camera is an attempt at emulating one of the scenes from my the Forza trailer I analyzed.

Race Game Attract Trailer Research

This is the trailer for Forza Horizon 2. The things they demonstrate best here are their two main objectives. Beautiful environments and lots of cars.

The trailer starts with establishing shots with a few cars driving through the roads below. Then we're immediately shown the vast number of cars available. Straight tracks, jumps, sharp turns, and destructible obstacles are all demonstrated to show the viewer the vast amount of content the game has.

My Smarticle Particle

  
This here is a video displaying a particle system i created for my car's weapon, a crossbow. The arrow trail consists of 2 ribbon emitters, a sprite emitter, and a GPU sprite emitter. The two ribbons are used for their one and only use, trails. One of them is very straight and solid so that it emphasizes to the player where the arrow is going and the other one has a lot of random movement for a little less rigidness. Those hold the bulk of the visual. The sprite emitter is used as a way for me to have small spark like things coming out of the arrow. This is to get some color value in there emphasizing the fact that this is an explosive arrow. Then there's the air distortion which is done with a GPU sprite emitter. The material is simply a refractive plane with normals in it. These are left behind with a changing rotation so that it looks like an arrow has shot through extremely fast while spinning and distorting the air for a short time.
   I also used Blueprint to add in a cylinder that quickly comes in and out of vision with a spinning spiral material on it. This further emphasizes the arrow shot and gives a nice immediate satisfaction to the shot of the crossbow.

  The explosion had less time put into it, but it was mainly a lesson in creating SubUVs that came out well in the end. I found a high quality slow motion video of an explosion and Screenshotted at specific intervals of time. This gave me 16 shots of the explosion to play with in Photoshop till I had my grid.

That about sums up my first in depth usage of Cascade. It had it's hardships but I'm overall quite happy with my result.

Particle Effect Research - Explosive Arrow Trail

I plan on creating a weapon that acts as a crossbow. This will be a highly powerful crossbow with 4 arms that shoots large arrows that contain explosives on them. Appropriate for car destruction.

The particle effect I want to make for this is a trail in the air following the arrow, as well as marks of the explosiveness of it.

This will include a visible air trail, as well as a refracting air distortion. To further show that it is explosive I will try to create a redness to the arrow trail. On top of that I will have sparks and possibly a light smoke. The light smoke will only be implemented if I feel it doesn't distract too much.

The air trail will be a Ribbon Emitter. No initial velocity, just a short life span and a fast moving object to follow. I may have a panning texture on my trail as well to make the ribbon more unique.

The air distortion will be a mesh emitter following the arrow. The simple mesh will be completely transparent, but have a bump added to the refraction. Unreal's refraction isn't extremely reliable, but for this need it fits the purpose well.
Click Here for a link to how I plan on creating the refraction material.

The sparks will be a sprite emitter. I may make this a GPU emitter if I feel it would be nice to have more without it being too expensive on the CPU. If I were to implement Light then it would be with a normal sprite emitter.
Click Here for a link to a Sprite Emitter tutorial I used.

There are a range of options for the smoke. I could follow the path the makers of Dishonored did and make this a ribbon emitter with an upward velocity. This would have to be tinkered with in order for it to not interrupt from the visual of the arrow trail. Otherwise it would be a SubUV material using a flip book that I would create for myself.

Here is some visual inspiration from the Archer classes of Dragon Age: Inquisition.

These images show a sequence of aiming, initial firing sparks, and what follows the arrow so that the player see's where it went.

 These images show the arrow trail much closer. There is a short cylinder suggesting the spinning of the arrow, and three ribbon emitters that follow the arrow in a spinning motion.