Lit particles for Unity 5

Lately I've been busy creating lit particles for Unity. Here are the results:

I chose Unity 5 as my target platform. The implementation is currently quite "naive". Each particle is rendered with special shader which utilizes regular N*L Valve's Half-Lambert lighting for self-shadowing. Shadow casting is done via alpha-cutout pass but there is no shadow-receiving. It currently supports only one strongest directional light. And even though it is quite limited in many ways, I am happy with the result.

In the future I'll dig into command buffers so that more advanced and visually pleasing results could be achieved. As for now you can grab the package from the Asset Store for as much as 10 bucks. Here you go.

Dissolve Box

I was recently challenged to create box area which will dissolve intersecting objects. After little thinking I came up with the idea of doing that inside a shader. Here are the results:

Unity3D quick tip - multipass surface shader

If you ever wondered if multipass effect can be achieved inside Unity's surface shaders the answer is: hell yes! It is the easiest thing you can do with a shader. Well, almost the easiest. Easier than space travel for sure.

VFX loop 01

Here is a quick looped vfx shot I have recently created inside After Effects. This effect incorporates camera mapping technique, Element 3D and Plexus 2. Enjoy!

Unity3D 3.5 - optimizing Shuriken particle system

This article is outdated and does only apply to Unity 3.5 and 4.0.

For past two years I have been working on the RTS game in Unity3D. My job was to create tons of explosions, animated bullets, rockets, plasma implosions, shockwaves etc.. The RTS-type of gameplay imposed massive amounts of dynamically spawned objects. Every single bullet in the game is driven by physics and when reached it's destination it spawns an explosion effect. Throughout the production the VFX that I have created simply chocked the overall performance and had to be optimized. This is how I did it.

Unity - useful VFX and shader links

Recently I was trying to learn some shaders and VFX tricks inside Unity. Something more than simple Shuriken usage. Something that incorporated shaders or scripting. I was shocked with the lack of professional resources aviable around the web. Unlike UDK, Unity has a lot of pure quality tutorials and very few in-depth ones. Thats what I first thought. After weeks of searching I stumbled upon holy grails of tutorials.

Alexander Savchenko - great Unity3d VFX reel

I've recently stumbled upon outstanding VFX reel which contains effects created by Alexander Savchenko. Since I know the limitations of Unity3D I am even more impressed by the results this guy achieved in it. Enjoy.


More Savchenko can be seen here http://cargocollective.com/San-oOo