What the realtime in VFX for games really means | Starting a new Unreal project | Setting up our basic folder structure | Creating our first material | Breaking down an effect, gathering reference | Building our sparks emitter & system | Substance Designer for textures | Understanding collision for particles | Understanding A or B behaviors | Creating parameters, design for future use.

Intro to Embergen for generating our blowing dust | Creating Master Materials and Instances in Unreal | Niagara emitters and systems for blowing winds | Understanding Level of Detail in Niagara | Turning our systems into tools for world set dressing | Taking what we learn to adapt to other uses

Using our dust system in Embergen as a start point for smoke | Creating our smoke material instance | Creating fire spritesheets in Embergen | Adapting our master material for fire | Creating our Niagara system and emitters for fire, smoke, and embers with repurposed spark assets | Optimizing our fire system | Building a campfire blueprint for level designers

Intro to VFX set dressing and how it impacts player decision making | Understanding overdraw | Creating a packed noise map in Substance Designer | Creating a heat distortion master material | Introduction to world position offset/vertex animation | Creating a heat distortion asset | Adjusting our VFX to the world's needs

Creating a player to world footstep interaction system | Intro to surface materials in Unreal | Creating a footprint system in Substance Designer | Creating decal materials (master & instance) | Repurposing assets for supporting VFX | Creating walk and run variations | Adding jump/landing VFX

Breaking down what goes into a weapon VFX suite | Gathering & adapting reference footage | Using Substance Designer & Embergen for assets | Creating a weapon muzzleflash Niagara system | Creating a weapon projectile Niagara system | Creating a weapon impact Niagara system | Creating testing tools (weapon turret blueprint) | Adapting our test map to include a firing range for our tools | Introduction to feedback best practices

Addressing feedback on our weapon VFX | Creating a unique variation of our weapon impact VFX for a new surface type | Adding functionality to our turret tools for surface material responses | Introduction to Player Abilities VFX | Designing our Player Ability, breaking it down into small parts | Creating Functional VFX and understanding the foundation elements | Enhancing our Player Decision Making through shape language and motion | Understanding timing

Addressing final feedback on our Player Ability VFX | No-wake polish tasks (polish without impacting others) | Digging into other types of player abilities and how we can take what we've learned and apply it towards those