Category Archives: Shard Master

VFX Graph is a modular system much like shader graph, here the particle system is initialized. For our purposes we only want one particle to be spawned, Capacity doesn’t really matter in this case as we only want one particle this indicates to system how many particles this system can spawn at any one time.Continue reading “Visual Effects Breakdown Part 2”

Ill discuss the Wind/Gust and effect as an examples of how all the shard visual effects in the game are made, there two components to these effects first is the shader and then the actual particle system itself. the shader does two things, first it samples a twirling gradient noise over time using the TwirlContinue reading “Visual Effect Breakdown Part 1”

I’ve had a look at the VFX Graph to make particle effects for the game, as an exercise to up skill with the way VFX Graph works I have followed this tutorial, it covers a lot of the fundamentals. Especially how it can be integrated with Shader Graph to make more complex effects. VFX GraphContinue reading “Shard Abilities VFX”

I have begun thinking about the visual effects for the shard abilities, i came up with a structure to which ill start making those as well, earlier i have been looking at cutting geometry with alpha transparency, i came up with this structure that will form the bases for any magic effect in our game,Continue reading “Research And Analysis”

 I had a look at different styles of lava effects as research for our level, it has to fit with the toon style look that we are going for, i have made an attempt at doing lava though it didn’t turn out the way i thought it would. i had a look at this TutorialContinue reading “Lava Shader Breakdown”

the main graph combines all the sub graph together to complete the effect, the final touch i added to this effect is the outline shader. that uses another custom node to run a sobel algorithm sampling the camera depth texture and normal, but instead of applying it as a post processing effect its applied asContinue reading “Environmental Shaders Part 3”

Another major component of the toon shader is the Light Ramp node that is is used to calculate the shading over objects in the scene. the node samples a gradient texture to determine the shading, for Shard Masters i used the gradients below, it doesn’t have to be these gradients specifically it can be anyContinue reading “Environmental Shaders Part 2”

there are a some environmental shaders that are used in Shard Master, the level that was shown in first post has shaders for lava and the toon shader for the level it self. This post will explain how they were made. so the starting node here is a custom function that run HLSL code toContinue reading “Environmental Shaders Part 1”

The rest of the shaders for the creatures are very similar to each other with some differences in their noise patterns and how they are applied in the main graph. below are the graphs for Buried, Apex, Nautical. The thing to note here is Apex does not use the custom noise sampling node, the reasonContinue reading “Shader Breakdown Part 2”

The first sets of effects to be made are the shaders for all the creatures, in this game there are four elements that represents fire, earth, wind and water, in our game we call it infernal, buried, apex and nautical. It took about three weeks to design and produce them. below this main part ofContinue reading “Shader Breakdown Part 1”