Professional Visual Effects Artists Tutorial requests

[dokipen (Dan 'dokipen' Elliott)]

@Knobbynobbes;97920

It sounds like you not only do effects, but also tools (given the road tool reference).
Idea 1:
So perhaps making a tool for various cloud setups would be nice? Both clouds that you don’t interact with, like those of a skybox, and clouds you DO interact with (fly through in an airplane and such). Big clouds, small clouds, stormy clouds, clouds with lightning streaking through them and maybe out of them, clouds that change over time maybe controlled in blueprint, etc. For clouds that you can interact with, having some sort of short lived trailing cloud/smoke effect attached to any character that moves through it would be cool (like they are dragging some of the cloud out with them as they exit).

Funnily enough, I am working on fog/clouds on a movie project at the moment. We are investigating how to do them in UE4 at the moment. Sandmeister is pretty keen on that. I’m sure he can post in thi sthread about it.

@Knobbynobbes;97920

Idea 2:
A lightning system that connects to objects near its point of origin, as seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rR6aztrOe2s

I think either a beam emitter would get you most of the way there. Similar to the example that’s shown in Lauren’s c++ vids. The more advanced way is using an L-system like what was shown in the latest twitch stream. They can be used to create fractal lighting strikes. Need to do research on that.

@Knobbynobbes;97920

Idea 3:
A flamethrower tutorial that does some of the more subtle effects of actual flame, like how fire sort of ‘curls’ back up and on itself when it hits the ground at force, as seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phlSrFaYNA4

The vid you link to is a fluid simulation. Currently UE4 doesnt do voxel grid sims. It can import a single frame of a vector field from a fluid sim to use as a force for particles but currently its not animated. I’ll definitely look at doing a tut to try and get that look with particles though. My Job is mainly working with fluid sims.

I’ve looked through the source code and there seems to be a reference to an animated vectorfield but not sure how that fits in to the editor yet. I’ve been programming a c++ fluid simulation program which is still wip but would like to get that into UE4 if its successful.

@Knobbynobbes;97920

Idea 4:
A tutorial on how to use the material editor to get the most out of our fx work, like maybe how certain math functions can be used to produce certain designs or patterns, how certain expressions like depth fade can be used in unusual ways to get cool results, etc.

There are some tuts on how to get transparency working nicely with particles so that’s on the list and would probably come under the cloud stuff.

@Knobbynobbes;97920

Idea 5:
Maybe a tutorial on how best to connect variables directly into a particle system from outside blueprints and such, and maybe a bit on particle instancing?

One of the things i’m doing is look at all of the components and how they can be used in blueprints. There is a particleSystem component so it wouldn’t be too hard to put together a blueprint that had exposed variables and controlled a particleSystem.

Thanks for the suggestions. will definitely look into them.