There were three major components the extra VFX I added on top of the finished environment. The first, were simple steam/dust cards rising from the craters with the mud. There isn’t much to mention about those other than they were lit cards so the cost was a bit higher but it helped them sit well in the environment.

The second element I added were my previously mentioned mud bubbles. The bubbles were mesh based particle systems that would spawn various sized bubbles that were colored in a top to bottom vertex color gradient, and textured to fit with the mud they were placed in. Over the life of the particle the bubble grew in size, then expanded along the vertex normal based off of the vertex color mask. At a certain point, they then popped and eroded away based off of a blend map mixing with the vertex color gradient (so they popped top to bottom).

The final element was added at the very end of the project. I’m a big fan of story and mystery in artwork and adding the falling meteor/ship element gave the setting a very small but effective narrative hint at something more than a flat landscape. The particle system for them was actually pretty straight forward. The meteor itself was just a simple velocity facing card with an emissive mask on it. The trail was a version of a trick I saw in the Unreal Content Example project that can be grabbed for free from the Unreal Marketplace. The trails are straightforward ribbons, but the textures on them are world projected. This meant that the ribbon could move with the particle but give the impression of a fading contrail (the fading was again based off of the same world space texture). Over the life of the contrail the ribbon slowly moved left to give the impression they were fading with some slight wind.

Choosing Unreal Engine 4

Unreal 4 has been a very natural fit for me since the day it’s come out. I’ve had the opportunity to work in a few different public and proprietary engines which all specialize in their own fields but to me Unreal 4 comes in strong on every single front. It’s got all of the modern features (and more) that I use to create high end artistic content, and as someone who is interested in using a technical skillset to improve his own art, Unreal 4’s blueprints and material editor make the opportunities endless. Both of those features allow me to truly be creative with what I do and how I work by allowing me to try weird tests and experiments that would in other development scenarios, take serious coding time, or a focused knowledge in those areas.

Alex Dracott, Tech Art Director at Highwire Games