Here are some visual effects that I worked on here and there throughout 2025. I worked on these whenever I had personal development time at work or felt particularly inspired but for one reason or another put to a stop, be that time, technical limitations, inspiration running out, or all of the above. I might pick one of these projects back up in the future to polish into a full fledged shiny pretty sparkly visual effect but for now they are on the back burner. Hope you guys enjoy this collection! Ill post up a blog post soon that goes further into the details of some of these effects, stay tuned ;)
Tentacle stab effect uses animations from Kevin Animations ARPG Unarmed pack https://www.fab.com/listings/a20a0a00-f4f5-4c38-b068-fca6743eb6be
Starting with the most recent and the effect I placed the most effort into! I wanted to experiment with on character visual effects and animation triggers, and I wanted to make something gross as well! This is a tentacle stab effect!
My first part of the tentacle stab effect was to have a writhing mass of tentacles flow from the character's arm. These are 2 instances of the same tendril swarm effect attached to the character's bicep and forearm.
Possibly the most difficult effect here. A chest tendril burst entirley made with Niagara trails. I feel like animating tendrils manually would do a better job, but ill hold on to the techniques I used here for other effects!
On a much smaller scale, here is a cute little star shower particle system. I was in a Kirby-esque mood one afternoon, but didnt pick it back up after.
Back to the more ambitious projects! Here is a healing effect with a pair of wings bursting out! Each feather here is its own Niagara particle, which overcomplicated the effect's creation and makes the effect break when placed in a level :(
A blockout of "floating swords" that I wanted to make. Once again I tried this entirely within Niagara but had issues as a result. The idea was to have these hover it's user and fire at a target.