Tutorial: Dynamic Effects Animation for Games
The Gnomon Workshop has released Dynamic Effects Animation for Games, a guide to creating a VFX sequence in Unreal Engine, recorded by games artist Antonio Cappiello.
The workshop, which is aimed at beginners and mid-level artists, provides over two hours of video training in Unreal Engine, Houdini, and Photoshop.
Create a VFX sequence of a character dissolving in Unreal Engine
In the workshop, Cappiello explains how to create a VFX sequence of a character dissolving in Unreal Engine, creating assets for the effect using Houdini and Photoshop.
In Houdini, he sets out how to create assets using low-poly procedural modeling techniques, and how to set up RBD (rigid body dynamics) simulations to fracture them.
He discusses how to import the fractured models into Unreal Engine and place them in a level, how to set a dissolving material, and how to create environment particle systems in Niagara.
Finally, he imports flipbooks rendered in Houdini into Unreal Engine to create materials and emitters, before creating the final level sequence, animating the material parameters, placing and animating the particle systems, and applying camera shake and film grain.
The workshop also offers a brief look at frame-by-frame animation in Photoshop to create smoke, showing how to work with the Timeline, the Lasso tool, filters and effects.
As well as the training videos, viewers of the workshop can download all of Cappiello’s Houdini, Photoshop, and Unreal Engine files.
About the artist
Antonio Cappiello is Principal VFX Artist at Yuga Labs. He previously worked at Riot Games, Reply Game Studios and Elodie Games.
His resume includes multiplayer titles like Valorant, VR games like Theseus and the hack-and-slash game Soulstice.
Pricing and availability
Dynamic Effects Animation for Games is available via a subscription to The Gnomon Workshop, providing access to over 300 tutorials. Subscriptions cost $54/month or $499/year.
Read more about Dynamic Effects Animation for Games on The Gnomon Workshop’s website
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