Timothy Bermanseder | Technical Artist
Visual Effects
Fell Seed VFX
Created during a 15 week project, this effect is built in the Unity engine.
It is constructed out of four componenets.
The central seed, scales and rotates itself via an animation this is combined with it beginning beneath the ground and lifting itself out.
The dust effect, this is a simple noisy particle effect built to cover the effect popping out of the earth, it covers the transitions of the mesh popping out of the ground.
The roots and rocks, These effects make use of a baked spline IK animation constructed in Autodesk Maya, once the vines were animated, they were implemented in engine and timed via animation.
Finally the magical energy particle systems, these communicate to the player both that this is a magical event and is eyecatching through the use of additive materials. This causes the seed to pop off the darker background during gameplay.
Stylized Fire
This was a stylized solution I developed for Warden: Melody of the Undergrowth which allowed us to have dynamic flickering fire.
The cartoony fire was created through the use of carefully constructed 3D mesh, inverted cloth physics and layered elements. Combined with bloom and an additive shader it creates a lovely stylized effect.
Optimization could happen by moving away from cloth physics to a noise texture for moving the verticies however this is much less dynamic and we required a solution that allowed the players torch to react to their movements.
Originally we expirimented with traditional particle systems but found they rarely reached the art style we aimed for and thus we required a smarter solution.
Bramble Effect
This effect was created for the final boss sequence of Warden: Melody of the Undergrowth.
It makes use of a proprietary event system we built in the Unity game engine.
The effect is built of two simple geometry particle emitters, handling the dirt build up and anticipation of the effect. Following this the bramble is a pre-made 3D asset that picks from three presets. It is randomly rotated and scaled before being spawned.
Finally the camera shake helps ground the effect to the world and lends weight to the player, communicating the danger they are in if they don't move away from the attack.
Lightning bolts
An effect constructed for Warden: Melody of the Undergrowth this effect demonstrates the raw elemental nature of the final boss.
Built in the Unity engine, this effect uses proprietary tools to handle the timing and execution of the effect.
First a mesh quad is spawned and cast to the ground, this quad is spawned small and scales up in both size and opactiy. Not only does this lend weight to the effect but clearly demonstrates to the player where they will be in danger from the attack. Allowing them to know to get out of the way.
Two particle FX kick in, the clouds spawning and the rain falling from the clouds. Both these effects start small and weak but grow in intensity as they near the lightning strike. The anticipation build up here is two fold. First it allows the player to draw their breath in, and second it allows the player time to register and avoid the attack.
The Lightning bolt is the meat of the effect. It is created using the Unity Line renderer with a custom script that randomizes it's points, colour and duration. Using this custom tool to interface with the Line renderer allows us to create dynamic procedueral lightning bolts.
Optimizations could be achieved through fine tuning the particle systems and moving to an additive-blend model for the lightning bolt.
Boss VFX
A collection of visual effects created in the Unity engine for Warden: Melody of the Undergrowth.
These effects make use of our in house event system to control the timing and pattern of the effects.
This allowed the unique effect that imprisons the player in a smaller arena during the final boss fight.
I built this effect completely by expirimenting with our proprietary tools.
The tools enabled the construction of all the in game events ranging from simple level events to complex interactions with multiple agents and scenes.
Stun VFX
This effect represents the stunned state of the enemy to the player, it was imperative that it clearly communicate what the enemy is doing, that they were stunned, so that it did not confuse the player.
The stun effect is built with three key components.
The starts are simple billboarding mesh quads that face towards the camera at all times.
The stars are followed by a simple trail renderer.
Finally the enemy themselves are forced into a stun animation which both immobilizes the enemy, preventing the enemy from acting and the animation opens the enemy up to attack, lowering their defenses.
Smashing Skeleton VFX
A simple on death visual effect for Warden: Melody of the Undergrowth.
The effect swaps out the skinned mesh of the skeleton with a collection of bone shaped physics objects on the frame that the enemy is slain.
This creates a truly satisfying game feel as your enemy explodes into pieces.