Particle FX

The samples on this page show a number of the particle effects I created while working at Lodestone. If you would like to see more of the effects work I've done, please refer to the Games page. Except for Planetside, all of the effects in the products listed on that page were done by me.

Fire and Explosions

These particle effects were created for Driving Force. Click on an image to see a video of the effect and an example of it in the game.

		A real time looping fire effect. The fire uses two 64x64 texture and the smoke uses an additional 64x64 texture. All of the textures are grayscale. The variations in color for the smoke and fire are handled by the particle system and the scripts that control the playback of the effect. Controlling the color via the particle system, instead of in the texture, allows for smaller file sizes and the ability to change and/or randomize the color over time.
		This explosion effect utilizes front facing textures and 3D objects. The objects being thrown out from the central fireball are actually additional particle emitters that are running their own particle scripts. The ability to call particle effects from within particle effects is a very powerful tool for creating interesting visual effects.
		The rocket hit effect is a variation of the explosion effect. Spark ejections and a shockwave have been added for interest.

  

Water Effects

This waterfall effect was slated to go into the Soul Forge project. It uses two grayscale 64x64 textures. The particle effect is fed by a random number generator, so the waterfall never loops over time.

  

Combat Effects

Two 64x64 greyscale textures that are colored red in the particle editor and used on two different effects. The two effect types combine to make a convincing blood splatter when characters are attacked in Soul Forge.

  

Prototype Spell Effects

These effects were created as prototypes to test the concept of path animating emitter objects that were exported from 3ds max. I wrote the LSpiroGraph tool in Max to aid in the creation of the path shapes and animating the emitter points along the paths. The particle effect is created by using two small textures with a white->yellow gradient on them and emitting the particles at a constant rate. The patterns created in each example come from the particles inheriting velocity from the emitter as it moves along the path.

		The path in this example is made up of two concentric circles. The single emitter on each circle is rotated so that it emits at an angle back over its direction of travel.
		Four emitters placed on a path that resembles a line drawing of an eye. The four emitters are placed equidistant along the length of the path. This shape can be recreated by using the "Matt's Eye" preset in LSSpiroGraph.
		The path in this example can be recreated by choosing the "Carnation" preset in LSSpiroGraph.