Goals

I was impressed with the high-end results that can be made with Unreal Engine 4. In particular, all related to shaders programming, lighting and, especially, visual effects. I tried to study with some tutorials on YouTube, listening to dev talks, reading docs… but I was feeling that I needed something more than a bunch of disconnected lessons. I was able to follow those tutorials but it was really hard for me to create my own effects. At this point, I decided to enroll in CGMA FX for Games course. Fabio M. Silva is the instructor of the course, and I couldn’t be more glad about the decision I’d made. He always gives a really good and personalized feedback on each assignment during the course.

I was wondering how the whole process of FX creation works. As a VFX artist, you need to have a huge range of skills like modeling, unwrapping, texture creation, shaders, animation, code… My main goals were to improve my knowledge of the visual effects and understand in depth the pipeline, as well as improve my weaker skills.

The last assignment of the course was the production of all environmental effects for a level. It took 3 weeks to complete the task. Firstly, I analyzed the level and gathered references for what I wanted to create. Before, I put some place-holders on the level and adjust the light of the environment. Once I verified that everything was working as intended, I started to create all the effects.

I tried to create a quiet, desolated and sad mood. The original environment was inspired by an Italian village, with a warm light. I tried to transport it to somewhere in the north of Europe. The first step was to change the environment to misty weather, greyish sky and drizzling.