Visual Effect Course Project (6991)

This is a project for the visual effects I developed in 6991 3D Graphical and Geometrical Modeling course. If you are curious about the source code, the public github repository is here.

Vertex Dissolve Scene

A vertex based dissolve that collapses a vertex to a central position depending on it's place in relation to the mesh's bounds. Dissolve effect goes from top to bottom, but this could be easily modified to move in any arbitrary direction with some modification.

Fragment Dissolve Scene

This is the same as the vertex dissolve except it is implemented in the fragment shader creating a smooth dissolve.

Lightning Strike Scene

This was a more involved scene that I tried to make, inspired from a  presentation by Simon Trumpler. He created a much better lightning effect but this was a good challenge and way to build some fundamental understanding about making visual effects. There are a decent amount of moving pieces from this but I essentially followed his steps while learning some good tips and techniques. There a multiple effects including erosion of the cloud texture, emission glow for lightning build-up, using gradient texture for unraveling of lightning, and a splash effect.

Material Panner Scene

This is a simple texture panner. It scrolls the texture that is attached to the mesh over time.

Explosion Scene

This scene implements multiple flipbook shaders to give the effect of fire and the explosion. The flipbooks used were obtained from a Unity [blog](https://unity.com/blog/engine-platform/free-vfx-image-sequences-flipbooks) on visual effect design. This requires sequence of playing flipbooks, disabling mesh renderers, and applying forces for debris scatter.

Implosion Scene

This was a pretty cool effect I liked, took me longer to create than it should have but I was messing around trying to create a morph visual effect. That morph code is still in this repository but doesn't work exactly. For the implosion effect, the mesh is sucked into a central point. Groups of vertices move to the central point at different intervals, creating an effect that shows the mesh being sucked into a central point until it is nothing.

Aura Scene

This scenes uses more perspective and lightning then any raw overcomplicated shader. There are couple things happening in this effect: One is the smoke surrounding the castle, the scrolling texture that is the sky, and the general under utilization of lighting to give a spooky effect. At it's core there are just multiple smoke flipbooks being player for the smoke. The smoke flipbook material is attached to a plane mesh which is then strategically placed around the castle. The final piece that sells the aura effect is the perspective of the camera which gives the effect it's depth an believability.