Lightning Strikes

Neal “Riot Nailock” Wojahn, VFX Artist:

While we aren’t quite ready to reveal what Volibear’s E does, we are going to show you what it looks like… through its VFX. Let’s break it down!

First thing you’ll see is a Freljordian rune carving its way through the earth. This appears with something known as an “erosion map.” Now this might not look like much aside from rainbow puke, but when we separate it into the respective channels, it becomes more clear.

Basically the way these channels work is that anything that’s shown in black is invisible, and anything white is visible. We then run a graph through these channels, and as the value progresses—or goes from light to dark—it reveals more of the texture starting with white and ending with black. The end result looks something like this:

After these runes glow, the storm begins to gather. This storm is represented with three elements. One is a pretty simple particle of clouds that fades in and erodes out; these orbit and move downward. You’ll notice that there are four different clouds on one sheet—this particle system is set to randomly pick one of these four to help create organic variety.

The second element of the storm is the static that arches up. Those sparks are created by modeling simple meshes and spawning them in a random rotation. Again, we put a lightning texture on them that randomly picks one of four cells.

The last element of the approaching storm scrolls a windy texture over the mesh as it fades in to create the sense that air is rushing downward.

Next we have the lightning, which is represented by this bolt texture that flashes in at high opacity, then quickly scrolls downward to create the crack of the bolt.

Then we have a shockwave that lets us know the storm has struck. This is achieved by spawning in arches of wind and shooting them out in a radial direction as they change scale to fit the circle shape. Little things like this can go a long way to clarify gameplay.

After the shockwave flash, there is a glowing crater that's left behind. This uses the same erosion techniques we used for the Freljordian runes, wiping in the shape of the glowing lightning and cracked earth. This then fades away, giving the feeling of rocks sinking back into the ground.

If you put all those VFX together, this is what you get for Volibear’s E ability!