Tech Art • VFX • Unity
This project is a project where i created an explosion effect for a small rolling robot that is part of another portfolio piece. The effect was built in Unity using the Particle System with flipbooks created in EmberGen for the explosion and smoke. The goal was to make a explotion for my robot that feels satisfying to watch and reflect a exploding robot as good as possible.
The final effect is built from several layered particle elements working together.
The explosion is not only a particle effect it also changes the robot model itself.
A breakdown of the different particle elements and supporting effects used to build the explosion.
I created a flipbook texture sheet in EmberGen and exported it into Unity. The texture sheet is 10x10 and is applied to a Unity particle material which is then used in a particle system. The particles are spawned in a sphere with a short lifetime and color fading over lifetime. The particles also use billboarded sprites to always face the camera.
I use the same texture sheet as the main explosion but only the top half where the smoke exists. This is also spawned from a spher, but with a slightly longer lifetime. I added upward velocity and some drag to make the movement feel more like smoke.
Here is a picture of the flipbook that i use for the explotion and smoke. It is made with EmberGen using the default explotion preset but adjusting values like color, fuel intenisty, voxel size to get the desired look i wanted.
I use two different types of sparks one larger and faster type and one smaller and slower type that slows down over time and becomes falling embers. These particles use Unitys default particle system and I stretched them based on velocity to give them a more dynamic look.
I created two types of glows to enhance the brightness and intensity of the explosion. One is horizontally billboarded and the other uses normal billboarding. Together they create both a ground glow and a background glow behind the explosion.
I created an impact decal in Photoshop to leave a permanent mark after the explosion. The decal is used as a particle with horizontal billboarding so it stays flat on the ground giving the illusion of a hole or impact mark on the surface.
To add some environmental destruction i added small debris particles to give the illusion of pieces flying out from the floor during the explosion. These use mesh particles,and unfortunately I did not have time to create my own mesh so i used a default cube.
I created a simple shockwave using a texture made in Photoshop. It is basically a wobbly grayscale circle that is horizontally billboarded and expands quickly when the explosion goes off. This was added to give more life and force to the explosion.
I added scrap or destroyed robot parts flying out from the robot when it explodes. This is done using mesh particles. I attached a smoke trail to each particle using a smoke material and texture. I also added a dissolve material to the mesh with an orange glowing edge to give it more of an exploded feel.
The destroyed robot is a prefab that spawns in with a directional force when the explotion happens replacing the current mesh. This is done in a C# script. The robot has a custom desolve shader to create the feeling of it being destroyed it also has the original textures tinted gray and also has a simple noise texture in a darker gray to create a dirt effect. The dissolve effect works by sampling a noise on the alpha and with tha alpha theshlod controlling what pixels should be rendered based on the noise i use the same noise with a small offest to create a glowing edge in the edge of where the dissolve affects. In the video this is displade by a sine over time to easier visulaize the effect but on defaulkt it is set to a default value. It also has a particle system with a slow smoke rising effect.