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. 

When a Pot is Smoked

This is a video showcasing my final exploding pot.
It's been good using our previously learned skills to create one object that had a lot of freedom to it. I have the necessary smoke, and explosion. But I wanted to work on personalizing the particle effects so I went into cascade and added a green overlay over the explosion material we were given. On top of that I created my own liquid spilling particle effect which happens upon impact at the same time as it burns. Lastly I created a parameter in my clay material that acts as a mask for the cracks having the green liquid spilling through them. This gives it a very noticeable "I'm going to blow up" effect.

All in all, it was a fun short project and I hope the video is enjoyed.

Blueprints:

Castle Chaos - A Race PrePro

For my race track I want to follow in the theme of my car. My car is meant to look like it's been decked out by a knight enthusiast, hence a Castle themed race track. This is a castle in the hills that is currently under reconstruction leaving it prone to destruction when a group of misfit street racers decide to use it as a track.

I took a lot of inspiration for the general map from Dragon Age: Inquisition's Skyhold Castle.

 I plan on having this be a very muted blue scene. With cool colors being the dominating feature and warm spots to guide the player.

I have drawn up an Isometric view as well as sketched some Events in game that affect the track.

This Isometric shows how this will be a very edged course, as it takes place on the walls of this castle in the mountains.

Here I attempted to sketch out the 3 big changes to the map. Lowered drawbridge, breaking through a large window, and a tower falling destroying part of the track causing a dangerous route to occur for the second and third laps.

I also wanted to try to story board my race level, see it from the players perspective in order. It shows the order in which I introduce skills tests like tight corners, pillars blocking paths and holes in the track accompanied by ramps. I would also like to try and code a canon that shoots the pots I posted about in my recent post.