At the moment, I am working on effects for the ARKTIKA.1 project. This is a sci-fi VR Shooter with a, traditional for the company, focus on immersing audience through story and high-quality visuals that make it possible to talk about it as an AAA product.

To begin with, I would like to note that making effects for VR is essentially no different from producing them for ordinary games, with the exception of few nuances that I have noticed during the production.

1.The first and the most important one – player’s freedom and as a consequence, the unpredictability of almost all his actions.

2. Focus on performance. The requirement of constant 90 frames damages your technical and creative freedom, forcing you to constantly balance on the verge of game quality and player comfort.

3. The final checkpoint is a headset. Due to the difference in resolution, gamma and the features of the virtual reality, what looked wonderful and beautiful in the editor might not look so good with a headset.

Based on these three rules, we can start analyzing the production. So, let’s begin with some core things.

Weapons

Since we are talking about VR, we don’t have fixed camera, animations, timings or other constant values, which means we can never know how the player will shoot and from which side he sees the weapon. And the only way out is to make the effect work beautifully from all sides.

And the first standard mistake is trying to make one mind-blowing sequence, which unfortunately will work only with a classic fixed camera, becoming ridiculous when turning the weapon.

The solution is quite simple – no matter how complex the effect is, break it into simple fixed parts using all three directions. So you get not only volume, but also a visual randomness that will make a shot unique.