PARTICLE THEATER

Particle Theater

Here we go gang

The particle week  is done with and I was able to roughly follow a tutorial for a Laser blasted, hadoken-esque projectile. There really weren't much resources out on the web to make a pure particle laser blast so I turned to a mesh based emitter system. 

About 90 percent of the actual particle system is comprised of meshes with specific materials that have dynamic movement. Other than that I used simple modules in Unreal Engine 4's Cascade system to have the colors change over the life of the particle and make certain elements rotate. 

I was also able to attach said projectile to a temp gun turret that my professor provided

 (Thank you Scott Carroll)

There was an issue where the projectile would only shoot facing the positive X axis to the world. With some small tweaks to the initial scripting I was able to beat the turret into working a bit better.

PARTICLES

Alright,  it's Particle time.

For my particle system, keeping with the theme of cyber space and sci fi, I've decided to try to create a Mega Man type laser blast. This particle system will be connected to a mesh that will shoot out of my car's side mounted laser cannons. 

I'm not entirely sure how to go about the process but I know I want the blast to have a ribbon emitter, so the blast will have a trail.

 I believe a simple spark emitter will be enough for this blast since I intend for it to be a fairly quick effect. The sparks will probably just be a garnish on top of the actual blast. I am not sure if I could use a GPU emitter for this effect.

I found this video of someone that actually made a real life laser weapon. Unfortunately it is a beam weapon and not a blast...But I don't think there are real Mega Man type weapons out there.

Still this is somewhat the direction I want to go in with added Mega Man type effects.

After I tinkered with Cascade in Unreal I realized that I had roughly zero idea to what I was doing, so I hunted for a tutorial.

Unfortunately after many hours of searching, I was not able to find a tutorial for something close to what I want to create.
I did however find someone that makes great particles and tutorials so I'm going to try and figure something out with the information they provide.

FUSION CORE "BARREL"

I finished my explosive "Barrel" project for my programming studio course.

Here's a short clip of this curious young bronco

 interacting with the ever explosive personality of my fusion core "barrel"

                           

Everything for the Fusion Core Barrel was scripted in Blueprint on Unreal 4.13

Here's the code that makes it all tick.

Overview screenshot

 

Hit Detectors and flow control for each amount of force applied to the Fusion Core

 Burn sequence 1/2

 

Burn Sequence 2/2

 Explosion 1/2

 Explosion 2/2

Finally this is the network that deals damage to the truck

CYBER SPACE RACE

 Here's the brainstorming ideas I came up with for my race track theme and layout.

 ~NARRATIVE~

      The cyber world around you is sick, infested with a virus and on its final cycle. You are racing other cars for the right to escape the infected cyberspace and survive.There isn't enough power to materialize everyone out, there will only be one winner. After the second lap we expect the system to start to crash and the environment will literally start to crash. The last legs of the firmware will break down and the power pads that once gave you helpful routes and power ups will start to malfunction and change the track.

 This is the first draft of what I want the layout to be with some storyboard thumbnails of the track  break down

Also the color palette I would like to incorporate to give the level a cyber feel

I drew inspiration for the theme from two of my favorite sci-fi franchise.

Star Trek's Borg cube for the asteroid debris field

 and the overall aesthetic of Tron Legacy

EXPLODING BARRELS

This is the design of my exploding barrel, that will be used in my upcoming race track level. 

My car is outfitted with super rad light particle canons, powered by magic sci-fi logic. I figured I might as well have a barrel to fit with the style of my car, and eventually the racetrack.

I drew inspiration from the UNSC fusion cores from the HALO series