"Wherever you are, light it up, and I'll find you"
Overview
This project is part of Pawel Margacz patreon tutorials.
The idea of this project was to take the smoke I learned from Pawel and make my own version of it which is inspired by the smoke/flare from the Netflix series (Arcane) specifically the end of episode 6 which is my favorite scene in the show. I know that the effect is 2d so I wanted to try and recreated it in real time.
The idea of this project was to take the smoke I learned from Pawel and make my own version of it which is inspired by the smoke/flare from the Netflix series (Arcane) specifically the end of episode 6 which is my favorite scene in the show. I know that the effect is 2d so I wanted to try and recreated it in real time.
![Reference 1](https://cdn.myportfolio.com/723d4601-edca-4a78-8c09-373cc932d6af/cda3e91c-173f-447a-9591-5416f04066b3_rw_1200.jpg?h=0a4fe28022330852a9f7576bf113d87c)
Reference 1
![Reference 2](https://cdn.myportfolio.com/723d4601-edca-4a78-8c09-373cc932d6af/4ebd895e-eafd-443f-b8d9-918f9a2801c3_rw_1920.png?h=8a72b4a275cec05225574c3a42b3d222)
Reference 2
- Erosion at the start to simulate the holes on the flare that jinx was using
- Erosion at the end to make the smoke fade away
- Also the smoke starts very emissive and gets darker as it fades
![](https://cdn.myportfolio.com/723d4601-edca-4a78-8c09-373cc932d6af/49b85072-6133-466d-9203-eb032f7c643d_rw_1920.png?h=85ea3d68a52d8dc0329f755d06e16745)
Mesh
I used Houdini to create the base mesh for the smoke. The idea is to create a bubbly shaped mesh to give the shape of a stylized smoke. First, I started with the main sphere, scattered points on it and then copied spheres to the points. After that, I used VDB nodes to connect all the spheres smoothly together, did a remesh and reduced some polygons because we don't want that much. Finally I adjusted the scale to fit properly inside the engine and exported the fbx file.
![Smoke Mesh](https://cdn.myportfolio.com/723d4601-edca-4a78-8c09-373cc932d6af/f690176a-96a7-428b-9ff5-72943eabead6_rw_1200.png?h=0dab3b302eae05f1a607b783fb9c4ea5)
Smoke Mesh
Breakdown
I made a simple texture using cells in substance designer to be used as the main texture for the smoke erosion.
![Cells Noise (substance designer graph)](https://cdn.myportfolio.com/723d4601-edca-4a78-8c09-373cc932d6af/68821c75-6f0e-4dd2-97d0-5f178e9230a9_rw_1200.png?h=7b332a7dffc0ce92bb7252bb971ad6aa)
Cells Noise (substance designer graph)
In Unreal, I created a quick material setup. I added dynamic parameters to be used in Niagara, a fresnel effect and an erosion texture controlled by a smoothstep for the smoke (used to give the smoke a cool effect especially when fading away). Also I used TwoSidedSign node to assign a different color to the inside and outside of the mesh.
![Material Graph in Unreal Engine](https://cdn.myportfolio.com/723d4601-edca-4a78-8c09-373cc932d6af/a1eed8fd-373a-430e-be10-5ff149c82c0e_rw_1920.png?h=086d882af8aa0082edbccfdec7160b9d)
Material Graph in Unreal Engine
Then I went to Niagara, created a Niagara system and started building the effect in components (emitters):
- Smoke --> This is the main component which represents the smoke/flare.
- Sparks --> This is the sparks that was emitting after jinx lighted the flare.
- Smoke --> This is the main component which represents the smoke/flare.
- Sparks --> This is the sparks that was emitting after jinx lighted the flare.
![Niagara Viewport](https://cdn.myportfolio.com/723d4601-edca-4a78-8c09-373cc932d6af/af3fb596-e3f7-45c9-9cef-bc848e99aacd_rw_1920.png?h=5439ae7fff768d6349bad6b03371ff1a)