setting up a simple weapon effect /advanced cascade
polycounter lvl 12
Hi, so I'm throwing together a quick VFX portfolio, and have hit a wall with how to approach showing off a certain effect.
Essentially, I wanna have a plasma/energy ball shooting out of a source (in this case a generic turret i modelled for demonstrating weapon fx ) with a trail behind it.
I figured I could get away with specifying init. velocity for the particles and just have the whole thing shoot out periodically - that way I wouldn't have to bother with blueprint or whatever.
To help visualize what I mean, here's a shot. Basically for the purpose of this demonstration I want the energy ball going in a straight line from point A (the turret) to point B (the vertical panel). I am also going to built a trail behind it.
The problem is that when I specify init. velocity on the axis I need the ball to travel in, the 'ball' effectively falls apart, since none of the particles live long enough to travel the distance that I need (it's like a quick jittery lightning-ball like effect where all the particles have a very low lifetime).
So basically the entire emmiter needs to move while preserving the position of the particles locally in relation to one another.
At this stage I guess I can either keyframe emitter location and 'fudge' the projectile effect that way (which I imagine will present a whole new slew of issues), or actually figure out how to get the particle system to 'shoot out' properly via blueprint.
So my question is - how do I do the latter easily, just like get it to shoot out every time I left-click or something like that? I don't wanna get inundated with a whole bunch of coding, since I just wanna get this out ASAP, so literally easiest way to do this would be great.
Also, if I am doing this via blueprint, do I need to create a separate particle system for the trail, and for the collision event (basically an energy wave that disperses out on collision). Not sure that since the emmiter is only gonna be moving in world-space, if things like trails or collision will work as intended.
Essentially, I wanna have a plasma/energy ball shooting out of a source (in this case a generic turret i modelled for demonstrating weapon fx ) with a trail behind it.
I figured I could get away with specifying init. velocity for the particles and just have the whole thing shoot out periodically - that way I wouldn't have to bother with blueprint or whatever.
To help visualize what I mean, here's a shot. Basically for the purpose of this demonstration I want the energy ball going in a straight line from point A (the turret) to point B (the vertical panel). I am also going to built a trail behind it.
The problem is that when I specify init. velocity on the axis I need the ball to travel in, the 'ball' effectively falls apart, since none of the particles live long enough to travel the distance that I need (it's like a quick jittery lightning-ball like effect where all the particles have a very low lifetime).
So basically the entire emmiter needs to move while preserving the position of the particles locally in relation to one another.
At this stage I guess I can either keyframe emitter location and 'fudge' the projectile effect that way (which I imagine will present a whole new slew of issues), or actually figure out how to get the particle system to 'shoot out' properly via blueprint.
So my question is - how do I do the latter easily, just like get it to shoot out every time I left-click or something like that? I don't wanna get inundated with a whole bunch of coding, since I just wanna get this out ASAP, so literally easiest way to do this would be great.
Also, if I am doing this via blueprint, do I need to create a separate particle system for the trail, and for the collision event (basically an energy wave that disperses out on collision). Not sure that since the emmiter is only gonna be moving in world-space, if things like trails or collision will work as intended.
Replies
Shot ball, trail, impact. Though you may be able to get the trail effect from the projectile particle effect also, depending on the look you want etc.
You can do it via blueprint, but you'll basically need to code the basics of a projectile,
but you probably can do it in matinee instead. Cutscene style. Look up the Matinee documentation to get a good start on setting that up.
There are key press events, which you can link behavior to. So you'd need some blueprint for the launcher to say "spawn this thing in this direction when I press this button"
Then you'd need the thing to spawn, which would be your particle emitter(s) and a collision sphere, then you'd need to hook some "on collision" event to spawn a particle effect for the explosion effect, and destroy the spawned projectile instance.
Really, that's a whole weapon, even if its simple.
Ah fair enough, I just freak out anytime someone mentions 'coding' but I suppose blueprint is visual coding system so yeah
Anyways, from what you're saying it sounds like I wouldn't be handling the collision within cascade then? My plan was to at least have the collision (explosion/energy wave) be in the same system as the projectile, and just have a collision / kill module for the projective emitter and collision/spawn event for the resulting blast emitter. Or is that not a good way to go about it if using BP?
It also depends on what your end goal is. If you're showing off effects, then having them be separate pieces makes more sense from an end gameplay perspective, and that's what (I assume) you're going for eventually with this, to do in game effects.
Its more work, and more time, but it will be worth it to have the additional knowledge of how to set up simple things in Blueprint, or in matinee, as they would be in a real environment. It would make you all the more valuable to a studio to be able to actually implement the effects you build.