VFX & Shader
Go Go-Karts
Trailer:
Development Information
Game: Go Go Kart
Engine: Unreal Engine 4
Genre: Racing game
Development Time: 3 mouths
Team size: 40 people
ROLES
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Visual effect including
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Particle effect for water splash and turbine flame
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Environmental God ray shader
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Flame shader for the turbine on the kart.
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Go Go-Karts
Responsibilities
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Work with geometry provided from another source (such as the background, character team, or outsource), but also have the proficiency to create or correct it as needed.
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Using Substance Painter and Photoshop create the primary texture for VFX shader.
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Using Unreal Engine Material Editor and Cassidy Particle System create VFX Shader and particles.
Particle effect
The drifting effect is one of the most important visual drifting effects for our game.
The drifting effect showing that Drafting has three stages, which is Non-boost stage, Boost stage, and Super boost stage. The color of the particle and the cycle pop up indicating which stage that you are.
The reason why this special effect is important because the vehicle after drafting, its speed will increase for a period of time. So visual persuasion is the key, and players can look at the effects to see if they have reached the acceleration requirement.
Tools
In our team project: Go Go-Karts, my duty is visual effects creation based on level design and visually convincing. Take a level that I participate in as a great example. In that level, one part of our racing track will have sea wave always crossing the track which serves as a deceleration area. We are having the issue which is our racing track do not fit into the level design idea since waves are crossing, the track should feel moist. So, I create a material shader that allows level designer using the brush tool to paint on it, the area which been painted will look like moist, so that player could be aware that this specific area is where they want to avoid.
Shader
Boost effect
I designed 13 types of flame for different Kart in our game. Both the color and the shape of the effect are based on the theme of that Kart. For example, Light kart will use smaller flame compare to Heavy kart.
These special effects will be changed according to the type of vehicle and different stages. Different visuals are needed because we have multiple types of accelerations.
For example, there will be different acceleration effects when our vehicle drifts end, one effect when we use turbocharging, one effect when players get gold COINS, and so on.
In order to meet the design goal, I made this material. The biggest advantage of this material is that it is convenient to have a static picture. The output result of the material function is a special effect with animation.
The Sonic Boom effect
The Sonic Boom effect is Convincing for Kart are at a high-speed situation. When I was designing this effect, the top priority is that make sure that player can recognize this effect as high speed. So I take reference like a Jet-plane when Jet-plane traveling through the air travels faster than the speed of sound, a sonic boom formed.
The Dizziness effect
The Dizziness effect is spawning when a missile hits the player. Player’s speed will go slow and showing this effect.
To achieve the effect that the star is spinning randomly, I made a vector field affecting the star particle.
The coin boost effect
The float kart effect
The light Kart is different from other Kart is that it is floating in the air. When I designing this effect, I making some energy cycle spawn under the kart.
The item collect effect
The god-ray effect
Postmortem
What went well?
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I managed to have a rapid prototype/iteration for game mechanics.
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I always found where the visual effect was needed.
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I can finish the task on time.
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I can prove my idea by showing the visual effect of another team member.
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I learned a lot of new knowledge from my team members.
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I am very interested in new knowledge.
What went wrong?
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Unfamiliar with the debug tool: in the polish stage, I am not proficient in using Jira and my team members told me that I did not write enough detailed information on Jira.
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Unfamiliar with unreal: GO GO-KARTS was the first project I worked on for unreal effects. At the end of the project, I still have a lot of work to polish.I'm not happy with my work because of my inexperience and inefficiency in unreal.
What did I learn?
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I learned how to use the material editor in Unreal.
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I learned how to achieve level design goal by using the material shader.
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I learned how to create a Convincing visual effect.
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I've learned that what I finish can be canceled.
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I learned to learn from and help each other with my teammates.
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Work with geometry provided from another source (such as the background, character team, or outsource), but also have the proficiency to create or correct it as needed.
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Using Substance Painter and Photoshop create the primary texture for VFX shader.
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Using Unreal Engine Material Editor and Cassidy Particle System create VFX Shader and particles.