00:07Hello and welcome to Inside Unreal, where you can see how to make content using Unreal Engine 4 tools and
00:12technology.
00:13I'm Zach Parrish and I'm joined today by Epic Games Senior Visual Effects Artist Tim Ellick.
00:18Hi, Tim.
00:19Hi, Zach.
00:20You worked on several of the environmental and weapon effects in Epic's Infiltrator Tech Demo, is that correct?
00:27Yes.
00:28Now, can you talk to us about some of the effects that you worked on?
00:31I created primarily environment effects and weapon effects.
00:35Muzzle flashes, impacts, tracers, and then the environment effects would typically include water, smoke, any kind of haze or atmosphere.
00:44Shut down!
00:45Now, we're going to be splitting this up into two separate parts.
00:49We're going to do one part with some of the effects you worked on and then we'll save some for
00:53another video.
00:54So, what are we going to take a look at here in this first video?
00:55In this first video we're going to look at a muzzle flash.
01:02First, I'm going to open the effect in Unreal Cascade.
01:05And here you can see there's quite a few components to this effect.
01:10And I really only want to pay attention to this one element here, which is this large conical shape coming
01:17out of the end of the muzzle.
01:18And I think this is one of the most important elements to this effect because it really helps show the
01:23power and size of the projectile that's probably coming out of the end of this weapon.
01:29Okay.
01:30And then another element that we have which is new to Unreal Engine 4 is the ability to emit light
01:36into the world using our particle lights.
01:39And these particle lights are controlled using traditional cascade modules.
01:44And light properties are all based off of the initial size and color of the actual particle.
01:50Very nice. Now, are there any other elements to this muzzle flare that really start to make it pop, that
01:55really kind of bring it to life?
01:56Sure. Another thing that I really think is important to this effect is the distortion that we're using in the
02:01world.
02:02This is using the refraction in our material, which is a new feature in Unreal Engine 4.
02:08We had distortion in Unreal 3, but in Unreal 4 we have refraction now.
02:11And I really feel like this helps connect the effect to the world and just sort of pushes the pixels
02:17around and really gives you a sense that it's part of the environment.
02:21And so here if I just re-enable all the different elements, you can see the muzzle flash has some
02:27venting coming out of the sides.
02:29And there's several different components that really help show you that this is also an automatic weapon.
02:35Yeah, that just looks like it should be loud and powerful and should be able to stop a raging elephant.
02:41Now, I also noticed that we've got some shell casings flying out of the side of the gun.
02:45Yes, the shell casings are, again, they're being emitted through the effect, which is great because now I can control
02:51those all in one location.
02:53Alright, so you're saying that the muzzle flash and the shell casing coming out are all part of the exact
02:57same effect?
02:58Yes, the shell casings are in local space, so they inherit the transforms of the weapon.
03:03And then I just offset their position so that they eject from the right location on the side of the
03:07gun.
03:08And if I fly up over here, you can see our giant robot here.
03:12And he's just pouring shells out into the environment.
03:16He burns through the ammo.
03:17And using a CPU system, I can track the position of these shells and then emit smoke from each shell
03:25as it's falling through the world.
03:26I see this guy's also got tracer fire as well.
03:29Yes.
03:29Now, is that part of his muzzle flash effect or is that separate?
03:32The tracer is bundled with the muzzle flash.
03:34It helps us show the direction without having to add another component and then track two items in matinee.
03:41And then they can just fire off one effect.
04:06Okay, so these are some of the impact effects that were seen at the very tail end of Infiltrator
04:11when the flying robot is shooting at the ground?
04:14Yes.
04:15And typically when we're creating an impact effect, there's a couple things we keep in mind.
04:18We think about the size of the projectile and also think about the surface that the projectile is impacting.
04:25So here we have concrete.
04:26So the first thing I did was create some meshes that came from this concrete on the ground.
04:32And they have the same material, so they have the same visual qualities.
04:35And I'll emit that concrete with cascade.
04:38And because the concrete has a lit material on it, it's accepting the lighting from the world as well as
04:43the lighting coming from the particle system.
04:45So I notice you're also kicking up a lot of, I guess it would be more dust than it is
04:50smoke as the concrete gets pulverized.
04:52Now, is that actually being lit in the world?
04:54Yes, all the dust is being lit by the lights in the world.
04:57And so you can see here I added a purple light to the side of this effect so that you
05:02could get the effect of the lighting on the smoke or the dust.
05:06You know, it's funny, you had to move the camera over before I noticed.
05:08It looks like there's also a lot of, like, gravel being kicked up.
05:11Yeah, all these little tiny chunks are translucent particles using a translucent material.
05:17So they'll get illuminated and lit just like the meshes do.
05:21And they'll actually collide and bounce along the ground based on the surface normal and the depth buffer.
05:26So those are just little sprites. Those aren't really tiny meshes?
05:30Yes, they're just all small sprites along with the sparks.
05:33And they're all using our GPU particle system as well as the new depth buffer collision.
05:42In the Vista shots of Infiltrator, you'll notice there's a lot of traffic and robots moving around.
05:48In this case, I'm just emitting the robot mesh that the modelers created.
05:52And I'm attaching lens flares and particle lights to the robot so that as they move through the world,
05:58they're actually illuminating all the geometry.
06:00And you can see more of them back here in the background.
06:03We use those extensively in the Vista shots to just add an extra detail to the world.
06:08That is too cool.
06:10Well, thank you very much for your time and thank you all for joining us.
06:13And we will see you all on the next Inside Unreal.
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