Time: 8 weeks (20h/week)
Team Size: Me!
Engine: Testing Besting Engine
Language: C++
About a year ago, my class and I started learning about graphic programming, which got me really intrigued about the subject. I started developing my own game engine, adding features like drag-and-drop texture and mesh systems, and optimizing mesh loading with threading. Recently, I specialized in VFX and particles, initially aiming to recreate the Shang-Chi ring effect. However, inspired by other peoples VFX portfolios on YouTube, I shifted my focus to developing a tool for creating similar visual effect
The VFX System is not more than a glorified contatiner that holds onto all the effects while what i call a base does the logic that is specifically tailored depending on what effects it contains. The system uses a sort of botched component system where all the effects, movement and what triggers them are all components and the “base” can be looked at as a sort of entity/empty object. I opted for this approach to streamline the creation process within the editor, enhancing efficiency and ease of use.
VFX System
Effects
The particle emitter utilizes a simplified and inspired version of the PhysX simulate function to progress forward in time. Their mesh or sprite are based on it’s parent. Their rendering is also instantiated to support more particles.
Meanwhile, the trail effect gathers its previous positions to generate a ribbon-like mesh, dynamically calculating UV coordinates at runtime. Furthermore, both effects are designed to orient themselves towards the camera in real-time, enhancing their visual appeal and realism.
Movement Behaviours
Shoot
Go To Position
Orbit
Hurl
These are a few movement behaviours i’ve made for the VFX. Every behaviour depends on the user to create the effects in the origio. Or else the spawn of the effects will have an offset. The “Hurl“ movement specifically uses my own PhysX inspired physics engine.
Animated Shaders
I've developed two shaders that utilize Voronoi Noise to generate animated textures. Instead of generating my own noise, I opted to use an image sourced from Google for sampling to make it simple and see if it’s even anything im capable of. The RGB values of the noise are then employed as offsets when sampling from the actual VFX texture to create a kind of wobbly animated visual effects.
Timeline / Triggers
My VFX uses a base where i load different effects. I’ts basicly a sequence of effects that happens depending on what their trigger condition is. In this gif i use three different stages.
Stage 1: Throw a particle with a collision trigger.
Stage 2: Collision happens, throw a star onto the collided point with a time trigger.
Stage 3: After a moment play a exploding particle emitter.
Meshes
I use both 3D meshed and planes used for sprites.
While meshed are simple static objects, my sprites always look at the players camera.
Drag-n-Drop
The editor can recieve DDS and FBX files. If you would to drop a FBX file while editing a sprite the program will change the sprite to a mesh but not vice versa. Instead it expects it to be a texture.
The editor utlizes the component factory to create and tweak my effect. These components makes it easier to write to and load from a JSON file.
Please watch these two clips to see my editor in action!
