DarkLine Wings is a non-character member of Darkline series. as other assets in this serie, looks like a black "drawing" with Thin/Smooth lines or Tangled-Bold black tentacles and has many options to change it. This lines can look like cyberpunk wires or like a angelic-seraphim threads depending how you set its advanced material that comes with this asset. Darkline series is counterpart of XENO series. Xenos are more harmonic, nerve like aliens and they highly emissive. Darklines are less emissive, chaotic and dark entities.
Asset pack included:
18 Skeletal meshes: asset comes with 15 wing variations and 3 wing roots.
Ultimate material with really rich settings, masks and options to configure and result very different looks Please see videos.
Texture: Asset is lightweight! uses only 1 texture and its just 1024x1024 px. material stays in green zone in material complexity.
Ready to use/learn features. check the below list!
Character Bp: comes with ready to use or to learn features. this BP build over EpicSK version of wings. please see preview videos for its work and check the feature list below!
Animations: asset comes with wide variety of animations. 73 anims for EpicSk version and 60 anims for isolated wings only version.
Future update guarantee: This asset will be updated after 1 year from release. Until that time, all feedbacks will be noted and than used in that upcoming update. if accurs any situations that needs quick fix, they will be resolved quickly, without waiting for this future update.
Features:
Unique, Smootly moving tentacle-wings with awesome Darkline looks. Separated relax-speed options for different states like fly, ground, fall and attack moments.
Cape mode, Wing mode
Fly mode
Procedural flap for fly mode
Procedural targeting and attacking. Works on both ground and fly modes.
Fall preventing via auto fly mode activation. by fall duration or by ground detection.
Auto landing by spending time near ground.
Auto pelvis alignmen on fly, near ground or fall states.
Random wing rotations
Random per arm rotation(Chaotic)
Wing root offset for overall pose change
Distrubuted rotations: "From roots" and "from tips" rotations and wing arm spread for shape-pose change
Quick change of wing mesh, quick change of mat and quick random mat change for quickly getting different looks.
Physical arms and legs for fly mode. strength adjustable.
NO to event tick!. Instead of it, all continious work goes on timer with FPS variable. so you can choose to how fast it should tick. default value is 60.
Anim Based regular attacks.
Light source spawn. It gives light source on wings root and casts volumetric light rays. You can also drop it and respawn at wing roots.
Also added many variables for pre game stat setting. like speed, relax, mpc values and other things.
Also included many small features like: spawn SM on proc attack result, time dilation, simple menu, mesh, anim body selection pre game and settings.
No custom functions or subgraphs. all in one graph. its specially done to making it more easy to learn and understand. nodes grouped-commented.
All features above uses and build over epicskeleton version of wings. This includes both full epicSK of UE5 manny and Wing bones. if you prefer other locomotions, frameworks or Systems, you can use NoESK verison of meshes and anims to build own abp, ctrl rig. NoESK versions are bonuses to build yourown BP, ABP and CTRL rig.
Update v 1.2:
-Added new Attachable version. BP, ABP, BS and CR for NoESK version to use wings with other fly systems. (as customer request.) Wing related features from main ESK version are supported. Procedural target and attack, Procedural flap, regular attack, random pose and random per arm motions and other features for posing wing arms.
How to use:
add BP_DarkLine_TPS to scene. select it and go to details window. find its settings and locate "body mesh" option. Than drag and drop your UE5 Epic Skeleton character SKM to this slot thats it. Bp adds your Character SKM to wings bp. for using other anims you can retarget them to wings skeleton and use like i did in this project (retargetted manny anims in demo).
for v1.2 attachable bp usage: Open example char and copy node group that shown in video. put them to your characters Bp and create variable for gray nodes. connecet begin play to spawn node. thats it. fly flap anims or proc flaps will be automatically activated when character movement switches to fly mode. its will work with any fly system. if needed to set settings on wings, drag from wing variableand set needed variables on wings. or open attachale wings bp and set directly in there as default.
Usage note:
UE4 EpicSK will also work but it will look like stretched because wings uses UE5 EpicSK. if your asset is uses UE 5EpicSK it should Work seamlessly.
if you need to use other anims, you can retarget them to wings epicSK. than you can check ABP and Blend space assets and change animations with your custom anims. all should work. its already uses retargetted Manny anims in demo for both manny and quinn.
in my setup, you will add your character SKM to my wings bp. if you not like this way of bp setup, you can use "wing only" version of this wings. its included in asset pack. same meshes and animations provided with this isolated skeleton. it has only wings skeleton and not have epicsk. So you can use it and build own version of wing bp, abp and control rig.
ALS or other custom frameworks, locomotions are not tested and not used. after some changes on wings abp (importing your build to Wings ABP, retargeting anims to its skeleton) they should work. but it maybe confusing and tricky to do if you not experienced. if you cant handle it, but also want to use wings with them, you can do it with using isolated wing skeleton SKM version that provided in this pack as a bonus. (this meshes and anims has _NoESK Suffix) with them, you can build your own system with copying from my bp's or building own from scratch. All meshes and anims also provided for this bonus NoESK wings version.
Xeno Series and Darkline series materials are both a lightweight and highly optimized vertex shader. This material gives you many settings like MPC, Noise movements on branches, scaling, rotating, bulge waves, thickness, pulse, opacity, emission, hue and more. All features use 4 type-mixable masks by growth, by length, by line, and by segment. Even using and combining all of these features, Xeno and darkline materials still remains a lightweight and green color in in shader complexity view.
Pre-Release update v1.1 Preview (new features only)
Update v1.2 and how to attach wings to any character.
Material details Darkline serie assets uses this material.
For questions before buying and Support After buying:
***Please Notice: this asset has many features and i make them with my own logic. Making changes on it, adapting your locomotions to it, or any other workarounds can be tricky for beginners. maybe it not cover all your needs, maybe it cant work on your locomotions. so, please ask all your questions before buying. via discord and forum links above, or via support email.
Important to know:
Asset comes with control rig plugin enabled and uses it.
All previews are rendered in Unreal Engine 5.5 and screenshots were taken in UE 5.0