SFAS Rising Star VFX 2023 Weatherbender Winning Submission

Search for a Star is run by Grads in Games, it is a competition where students produce an artifact for one of the categories that follows a set theme, I applied to the Rising Star sub category for Students in their second year of Uni, For the theme I chose Weatherbender, on this page I will outline how I created this effect.

Before taking on this project I had no previous experience with Niagra or Games VFX

Firstly I created small storyboards detailing different ideas I had regarding the theme

Character throws a ball of lightning at the ground that pools and summons lightning bolts to hit it.
Character summons a circle of frost and shoots rain though it is turning it into deadly icicle.
Character powers up with frost on their right side and lighting on their left
Character created a fog cloud and electrified it with lightning.
Character turns into water and disappears into a puddle.

I then created a PurRef file and gathered some references on how I wanted the water to look so I first looked at games with art styles that matched, firstly looking at Pokémon (top left) I really like the caustics and ripple effects in those games and would love to try and add them into my effect somehow, looking at the water landscapes I 100% intend on having a vibrant blue water colour. I also had a look at how water creatures are drawn and portrayed in games like World of Warcraft and Dungeons and Dragons, I really like the idea of having rushing water cover the player at some point and also like the puddle effect on the bottom right image.

I watched two tutorials on how to create a water material in Unreal Engine one on how to make realistic water and the other on how to make stylised water then combined them to create this Material Instance

I then applied the texture to the 3rd Person blueprint and created a short animation, if I knew how I would've liked to mask the effect with a gradient so the transition looks like its running up his body however I lacked the technical skills to do so

After I created a basic Niagra sim to act as water droplets falling off the character, if I had more time and knew more I would've made the meshes merge and conform more to his shape

I then created a puddle effect using a meta-ball like shape and utilising distance fields to create a gloopy guy, I also added a decal that made the floor appear wet when this effect was active

I then refined the animation added some more splashes in niagra and then handed the project in for judging

Link to Submission Page

For more information open this production document where I outline every stage of the process in high detail

Open Design Document

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