Thank you for providing constructive criticism and the opportunity to address those items. I have enjoyed pushing this effect forward and I had fun coming up with solutions.
To reiterate, for the sake of security, the navigation has been disabled and you may have to hit the back button to return to the landing page. There are 3 new pages, Effect - Revision, Blueprint - Revision and Material - Revision in addition to the originals.
Below is a link to Dropbox which may be higher quality than the embedded video, also the images on these pages should have annotations when the mouse is hovered above. They are also viewable as a gallery and longer description will be readable when Fullscreen. If you have any additional comments or questions feel free to contact me and I would be happy to go over anything.
Video
Overview
The goal of this revision was to progress the effect based on the feedback provided. Starting with the colors, advancing the VAT / decal assets, smoke scale and revised cameras to eliminate distortion from the FOV and DOF choices in the original. Again all assets were generated in Houdini 20 and updated in Unreal 5.3.2 where I utilized new VATs, Decals, updated master materials, overhauled blueprint logic and tweaked Niagara systems.
The heart of this revision is new blueprint functionality which is capable of running some extra tests to help place and select a more appropriate Slime / Goop effect. For those effects a slew of new simulations were generated with stringiness and slime movement as the focus. The fidelity was also increased with a new shader to provide more variations to texture and color.
Houdini
Second pass highlights several types of assets, VAT simulations, Decals and VAT Dissolving meshes.
Revision items outlined in blue.
Animated Mesh Erosion (VAT)
Each symmetrical mesh that is to be covered in Goop has a rotatable slime that can help with directionality. For example the tire goop can be flipped or spun for variety, the lamp post can simply be spun and the trashcan can opt for 90 degree increments. To generate these meshes each object heavily utilized the procedural nature of Houdini so that I could quickly create a setup for each individual mesh. I used some brushed based solutions and some simulation for these components, depending on each assets needs for art direction. In Unreal I am simply taking this asset and controlling the animations display frame.
Dissolving mesh for the trashcan, the sim is played forward quickly to splat and in reverse slowly to dissolve.
Dissolving mesh for the street lamp, the sim is played forward quickly to splat and in reverse slowly to dissolve.
Dissolving mesh for the tire, the sim is played forward quickly to splat and in reverse slowly to dissolve.
Dissolving mesh for Glorkon, the sim is played forward quickly to splat and in reverse slowly to dissolve.
Dissolving mesh for Trover, the sim is played forward quickly to splat and in reverse slowly to dissolve.
Playblast of the dissolve.
Animated Explosion Fluids (VAT)
Lots of revisions were made to come up with a series of simulations that could be used together to create plenty of variety and use cases. There was some trial and error with developing these components and back and forth testing and these are the candidates that were used. Fortunately, the system is robust and the textures / meshes were not very heavy especially considering how much flexibility can be achieved.
These assets are controlled by Niagara to help with orientation, scaling, lifetime and many other properties not handled by the blueprint section. By using Niagara as a wrapper I am able to extend the functionality through the ease of Niagara's interface as opposed to blueprints.
Animated stringy ejection component for the main explosion.
Animated stringy splatter component for the impact points.
Animated stringy splatter component for the impact points.
Animated stringy ejection component for the impact points.
Animated dripping component for the impact points.
Bottom blowout for the main explosion.
Animated stringy ground impact, the height has been scaled down in Niagara for the final effect.
In-game footage of the slime VAT systems individually.
VAT supporting textures. Several of these sets of textures include prototypes that were not used.
Meshes for DECALS
"Jackson Pollock" style stringy splatter meant to be stacked randomly to make interweaving splatters.
Additional Wall Decal Mesh
Additional Wall Decal Mesh
Additional Wall Decal Mesh
Smoke
Smoke asset has been rendered to be softer and move more slowly to address noisy feedback. Like the VATs assets this was a back and forth effort between Houdini and UE5.
Smoke, Depth, Color, Multi Directional component 1 - 2, Normals and Motion Vectors.
