I created this example project for a Tech Art Class I gave for SAE School Australia. It is an extension of my previous project called “One Shader to Rule them All”. The basic idea of both projects: (Almost) all materials are based on only one (super duper) shader to speed up the creation of vfx materials. In addition I wanted to learn more about stencil buffers and challenged me by making a magical card with a little interior inside and a dragon being able to peek out of the card.

🔗 Project & Breakdown on Artstation
💾 Download Project Files
📑 Visit WIP Thread

Idle state to show off the dragon peeking out of the card and sparkles & trails which have their origin “inside” the card and can extend into the “outside”.

Breakdown

The use of UV Distortion for fire was inspired by the work of Johan Karlsson: https://realtimevfx.com/t/sketch-10-jqarlsson/4235/16

For a quick setup for these swoosh-trails, I’ve made a Blueprint allowing me to deform a tesselated plane via spline.

This idea was inspired by the Portal from Chris Murphy: https://youtu.be/WzeeXMcui_0

Tutorial about the displayed particle gate: https://youtu.be/h_t0c2J8bBE

The updating is all done via Blueprint events which are called from the sequencer.

A small overview about the many iterations I did for this effect. More details in my WIP thread: https://realtimevfx.com/t/simon-trumpler-vfx-sketchbook/4177/314

Thank you for looking at my breakdown! I hope you liked it :)

Have a great day,
Simon

Class Feedback

fantastic. showing examples in Photoshop (channels etc) and 3D package (UV deform) were extremely helpful for us to understand concepts you are explaining in UE. Thank you Simon. Great pace, explained at a great level (even for this old brain to keep up) Really engaging. Much appreciated

amazing: Going through how to do stuff step by step and explaining everything that is happening.

It was lovely! I feel like I learned a lot. Can’t wait to play with the files. Thank you :) I have so many fun ideas now

It was very interesting! Most of this information is new to me, but its good to get a picture of what the course will look like! Keep up your good work.

Thankyou so much Simon! Great Tutorial!

Sources & Inspiration

3rd Party Meshes

Quadruped Fantasy Creatures: https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/en-US/product/7f7775996f7442b187f6fa510ec9d289?sessionInvalidated=true
Infinity Blade Grass Lands: https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/en-US/product/infinity-blade-plain-lands

3rd Part Textures

Noise Textures by Luos: https://luos.gumroad.com/l/bouSt
Noise Textures by Niels Dewitte: https://www.nielsdewitte.be/index.php?page=Pages%2FVFExtra.php
Noise Textures by 1MAFX: https://1mafx.gumroad.com/l/14Noise
Stylized Meadow Grass: https://www.texturecan.com/details/287/
Sandy Trail: https://www.texturecan.com/details/265/
Sky Photo by Dewang Gupta: https://unsplash.com/photos/aATI6lXTPqE

Inspiration

Simon schreibt.