My Ingame VFX Demo Reel - General

[video=youtube;49arPhzqHb4]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49arPhzqHb4[/video] I've been doing particle effects for a long while (mostly in Source), and I've gotten an internship opportunity so I pulled some of my stuff together to make a demo reel. Tell me what you think! EDIT: Many thanks doctordarken

edit: op fixed it

Cool stuff. I've always been fascinated with real-time VFX in games. Do you have any recommended resources for learning this sort of stuff, or is it more of a play-around-until-it-looks-good type thing?

Most people in this field are self taught I believe, much like texture artists as schools for this sort of thing are rather new

Wow, It's been like a fucking long time since I touched Half Life 2.

[QUOTE=Pandamobile;39896357]Cool stuff. I've always been fascinated with real-time VFX in games. Do you have any recommended resources for learning this sort of stuff, or is it more of a play-around-until-it-looks-good type thing?[/QUOTE] Yea, like teh pirate said, there aren't many places where you can learn this stuff. A tutorial video might let you learn how to use the tools, but won't teach you anything about how to design effects well. All the techniques I've found out were simply discovered through experimentation and intuition.

For those two shots in the middle of the two explosions, how did you get the 2D images of the smoke and dust? Were they stills from real explosions or are they custom built? If it was the latter, how do you go about making those dust/smoke clouds?

i don't know if you're taking suggestions or anything but something other than explosions would be really cool, employers like to see diversity in your work experience so if you have any sort of particles that aren't gunshots / explosions (electricity / sparks, perhaps? something a bit more subtle) it'd be cool to include

[QUOTE=BrickInHead;39897100]i don't know if you're taking suggestions or anything but something other than explosions would be really cool, employers like to see diversity in your work experience so if you have any sort of particles that aren't gunshots / explosions (electricity / sparks, perhaps? something a bit more subtle) it'd be cool to include[/QUOTE] Or maybe environmental effects like snow gusting over the ridge of a mountain, or the engine exhaust from a car/vehicle/airplane/jet, or the splash of a large wave hitting the side of a cliff face. Spray from a waterfall, dust from a sandstorm floating across the desert, exhaust from a rocket. Those could be pretty neat too.

[QUOTE=Leintharien;39897175]Or maybe environmental effects like snow gusting over the ridge of a mountain, or the engine exhaust from a car/vehicle/airplane/jet, or the splash of a large wave hitting the side of a cliff face. Spray from a waterfall, dust from a sandstorm floating across the desert, exhaust from a rocket. Those could be pretty neat too.[/QUOTE] [QUOTE=BrickInHead;39897100]i don't know if you're taking suggestions or anything but something other than explosions would be really cool, employers like to see diversity in your work experience so if you have any sort of particles that aren't gunshots / explosions (electricity / sparks, perhaps? something a bit more subtle) it'd be cool to include[/QUOTE] Unfortunately I'm limited by the projects I join. Since I'm no coder or mapper I can't make any assets to put the effects in context, and it isn't the same when you're just staring at it through the editor viewport. I've made a couple cool environmental effects for some of the mods i've worked on, but none of them ever got implemented in any of the maps :C [QUOTE=Leintharien;39897073]For those two shots in the middle of the two explosions, how did you get the 2D images of the smoke and dust? Were they stills from real explosions or are they custom built? If it was the latter, how do you go about making those dust/smoke clouds?[/QUOTE] Made them myself, either through hand painting, photo sourcing, or fluid simulations.