Tech art · Materials & particles
Dynamic Material
Take a high-poly object, transition its material at runtime through blueprint rather than baking the states into textures, and drive three particle systems through a video sequence. My deepest run at Unreal's material editor.
- My role
- Technical art
- Engine
- Unreal Engine 4
- Particles
- Smoke · sparks · flame
- Year
- 2016
The problem
PBR materials I had used before. The material editor at this depth, and particles at all, I had not — and smoke, sparks, and flame each broke in a different way.
What I did
Built the transition in blueprint, authored the three particle systems from scratch, then acted on peer feedback that the grey model read as mush: I retextured it in an orange the real product actually ships in, so the model and the object could sit side by side and read as the same thing. Rebuilt the UV layout at the same time so further colour changes were cheap.
Outcome
Nine captures of the states, transitions, and particles — first pass and resubmit — and a habit of treating texture work as something to iterate rather than finish.
Mine
- Modelling and UV layout
- Texture authoring
- Material blueprint
- Particle systems
- Capture
Not mine
- Nothing — solo class project
- Particle systems authored
- 3
- Captures published
- 9
