Plant Sentry VFX
Set of VFX conceptualised and then made within Houdini, Substance Designer, and Unreal Engine 4. Fluid simulations were made in Houdini and then exported to Unreal as a baked Vertex Animation Texture, which essentially exports the mesh as triangles and makes use of generated shader code alongside a position map to animate the mesh. Sub-UVs for the particle effects were also made in Houdini. The vapour trail effects were made from a image generated in Substance Designer based off of a post by VFX artist PunnKa on twitter (post: https://twitter.com/PunnKa/status/1122059533033951232). These images would then be fed into an RGB map, which was learnt from a VFX talk about RIME by Simon Trümpler. Everything was then assembled in Unreal through the material editor and its cascade particle system. The vine growth and blooming animation were made in Houdini but were not fully implemented due to processing power limitations.
Compilation of all the effects
Sub UV of Skulls used in the effects
Shader code generated by Houdini for fluid simulations using vertex animation textures.
Plant Sentry Houdini Digital Asset. Could not be implemented due to the processing power required and Houdini Engine issues.
Implementation of Houdini's vertex texture animation workflow to add fluid effects in Unreal
Unreal shader network used for bubble and puddle effects.
Unreal shader network for vapour effects.
Unreal shader network for poison ailment effect