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Particle Effects for games. | Locked | |
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Oct 22 2013 Anchor | ||
Im new to creating particle effects for games and frankly dont have an idea where to start. The picture I have inmind is that Ill create, for example, a fire in fumefx, then rendering it out as a sprite so it can be used for games...correct? Can anyone point me to some tutorials on making these effects for games, I would really appreciate it. |
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Oct 22 2013 Anchor | ||
Depends on what level game we are talking about. Some AAA 3D games use shaders and scripted volumetric particle setups that are well beyond a simple sprite that was pre-rendered. I mainly say this because you shouldn't compare the results you get with sprite baking process to these elaborate solutions. How you go about baking an animated sprite in a nutshell: I suggest you use Blender, it's free, powerful and versatile. It has a particle system with plenty of tutorials such as this one. For more tutorials like that you could search for "blender tutorial fire" or last word which ever you want to use. Usually tutorials like that don't cover rendering/baking the animation because things like file format and resolution, alpha depend pretty heavily on your target platform. Edited by: shadowflar3 |
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Oct 22 2013 Anchor | ||
Thanks for the reply. Im already using 3ds max and fume fx. Feel free to post links to some great tutorials!!! |
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Oct 22 2013 Anchor | ||
Okay so you're already familiar with the topic. The other alternative to baking animated sprites is to make static particle sprites with Photoshop and make a particle emitter (an entity which spawns and moves a number of sprites) in your mobile development platform. This is of course much computing heavier setup but allows for particle level customization or even interactive particles so your particle effect (smoke, fire, fog, etc.) can adapt to its environment. Edited by: shadowflar3 |
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Oct 22 2013 Anchor | ||
Lemme give you a fo instance... If I were to render out the front of the explosion and put all the frames on a sprite sheet, from the front it will look ok. Or should the game camera angel be the same as the angle the sprite was rendered at? Or is there way around it without using a particle emitter or should an emitter rather be used? |
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Oct 23 2013 Anchor | ||
Well, that's where the game type comes in play. Most game types, be it FPS, platformer, racing, etc. will mostly view things in similar perspective (pitch wise). So it's either from top down, from side, or something in between and can use this sprite technique. So things like this are also aspects you need to consider when designing your game and how to produce assets for the views you plan to use. But it's not always possible to get away with 1 sprite for something non-circular like for example fire with smoke rising up or an explosion in mushroom cloud style. How you could get around that: 1) Do it anyway if the distortion isn't too much. I remember seeing this confidently used in older FPS games (Doom, Hexen, Wolfenstein ?) but also in newer games where the player isn't supposed to view something from above. IIRC if you cheat and fly around in HL2 you can see this distortion effect in fire sprites because the player isn't supposed to view them from above. Why? Because doing effects this way is efficient. Edited by: shadowflar3 |
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