There are a few basic special effects I want to add to my project, the art style is 3d futuristic mixed with retrowave neon styles similar to blood dragon and Hotline Miami
Warp speed effect. When lightspeed boosters are applied the ship goes really fast and I’d like to add an effect that distorts and stretches everything but doesn’t demand too much processing power. Maybe add some neon streaks or pixelation if that’s possible.
Retro grid effect, when playing the game in the editor you can hit F1 to get the game in debug mode where only the polygons remain with no light rendering. I really like the look of it and would like a special ability to activate the debug mode so for a short time people see things in debug mode. I also need advice on what would be a pleasing way to transition, I’d like a fade in fade out so people don’t have seizures.
When warp speed is activated I want the screen to shake a small amount for a few seconds
When an in game vehicle is destroyed I’d like it to be a retro pixely warp out where the mesh slowly fades to nothing before being deleted as well as a particle/visual effect that indicates it was destroyed. Emphasizing art style over destruction I want the game to look artistic and not realistic.
I know it’s a lot so I’m open to whatever small advice anyone has. Regards
Its’ postprocessing and visual art (fx) to create such looks. Shaders can be optimized towards performance as well, it’s up to the programmer who implements it. I have found that visiting websites such as shadertoy can teach great many things regarding optimal solutions to numerous visual ideas, but the web and the forums here also have a significiant amount of knowledge base present that you can search and learn from. Also, because marketplace items are available from talented producers there really great many ways to gather some information and learning material from.
As for the 2. i believe that replacing the materials of all assets on the map (or visible area) can be an easy to do (i’ve seen this as a solution to a rather similar problem in a marketplace item) and the replacement materials can ommit the response to lighting, therefore they can be made to appear similar as you’re expecting. The 4 is also kind of sounds like a dissolve material effect, there are a couple of tutorials and ready made implementations both exists for that too. The 3 is likely a camera shake effect, you can do that from blueprints to wiggle the camera object using a sine wave or maybe a little more natural looking pattern, eg perlin 3d noise. 1 is sounds a bit complex and might require multiple solutions to work together in order to present that distorted look of everything.
For 2 I should have been more clear, simply want to activate wireframe mode that UE4 already has while transitioning smoothly between so it’s not jarring. So like an activate viewmode wireframe for 10 seconds then transition back to viewmode lit. It’s a really cool effect to play with and looks like Tron/80’s pc games. I’m all about the artstyle and gameplay experience and like the idea of blending the artstyles into the gameplay.
Dissolve material is nearly exactly what I need thanks for that, will add some retro style particle effects to it and it should look really cool.
To create a material that is wireframe only just tick the checkbox. This should be applied the same way, as a replacement material which you can apply on the individual meshes when needed, and later you can just revert back to the original materials. Dynamic material instances will help you doing this.
Well that’s a bit tricky and i’m not sure what could be an efficient way to implement this. Pry the material LODs would help but it’s not a thing just yet.
It’s good, then you must understand that this shader art is a form of art that do the styling with decent understanding of mathematics (and shader coding as well), and usually you end up creating only the illusion of (imitate) something that you have originally planned to do, which takes time to figure out! Just don’t rush ahead. The web is full of great articles explaining how and what can be achieved, and where the boundaries step in (which usually gets expanded by the talented ones), and it takes some time and learning (and patience) to get to it. Similarly, to learn the proper usage of the pen while you’re drawing your first things on a paper.
Appreciate the help, agree on the art process and fully admit I have a lot to learn but I do learn incredibly fast. My process is accumulating as much info and critique as possible. Created a fully functioning physics based space combat game with massive space battles and destructible meshes in 4 months with the help of the Unreal community. I’m at the point where I really feel like I can do this for a living so I’m open to every opinion the community has.