My contributions

Created light fixtures using existing workflow

Light fixtures were an important part of the game. Players were able to interact with them physically by throwing objects towards them. They were also a tool used to colour the world of the game. Thus, creating new light fixtures while keeping their intended functionality was important.

Created VFX by creating custom shaders and emitters using Unreal’s Niagara system

Although it could be argued that creating VFX is a job for a VFX artist, we didn’t have a colleague specializing in this domain. Thus, it was my manager and I who primarily worked on creating VFX for the project.

Notable VFX that I worked on included ones for laser beams and smoke. Through this process, I grew interested in advanced Niagara exploration. That interest fueled the creation of a bug VFX, where mesh particles were able to “crawl” and scatter on surfaces. A further iteration of the vfx included functionality where the particles disperse when a light source is near, and followed the player character as they pass by.

With rejection sampling using Niagara’s built-in Move to Nearest Distance Field Surfaces GPU module, I was able to instantiate particles with a cube but delete the ones that weren’t spawned on a surface.

A lot of how the system worked relied on distance field checks. This is generated from the mesh’s source size, so scaling the meshes up too much in-engine would result to inaccurate sampling.

Researched and prototyped more optimized methods in creating VFX

This was an area of the project wasn’t explored much, and as I was getting deeper into creating VFX, it was easy for me to discover that this would be an important aspect of the project to look into.

My research focused on using simulation stages and grid2D to create volumetric vfx for effects such as fire or smoke. Traditionally, volumetric vfx isn’t something that is “cheap” to implement. For vfx to look convincing and react in real time to other meshes, each particle would require a calculation per frame to check what’s around it and respond to collisions.

Grid 2D is an option that allows 3D particle systems to be projected onto a 2D render target that is bounded to face the camera at all times. Combined with simulation stages, each unit of the 2D render target can calculate the colour and opacity it is supposed to display.