Particle & Animation Editor

Project Specifics

Context: Custom engine tool
Time: Continuos
Team size: Just me 😀
Engine: Custom DX11 engine

Background

I started work on this tool at the beginning of Spite: Equilibrium as a continuation of the Modelviewer assignment in our tools course. Now that we were working with a custom engine and joined by technical artists, we needed a way to efficiently create visual effects. So quite early I started work on this tool. While it started as a particle editor and has seen most use as that, I later added on the animation editting aspect.

This tool has been made in parallel with with new developments to our particle system as well as animation features, now having grown to be a staple part of our technical artists workflow, and a final polishing step for our animators.

Showcase

Features

Particle Editor

Editing of all emitter settings
Editing of multiple emitters
Editing of particle, ribbon, beam, decal and mesh emitters
Swapping materials
Attaching the particle system to an animation joint
Saving to JSON (individual emitters and whole particle systems)
Drag and drop loading

Animation Editor

Editing of transition blending settings (in and out)
Editing of layered animation root joint and blending
Editing of other settings (looping, speed multiplier and freeze last frame)
Attaching animation events to specific frames
Saving to JSON
Drag and drop loading

Conclusion

Use

The most important part of any tool, is that it’s actually being used, and this tool has seen extensive use as a particle editor for both P5 and P6. It has been very appreciated by our technical artists. One of them, Keiren Wall, said, and I quote,

“I am more comfortable with our own particle engine than unreals, if I see an effect on youtube or some other random place, I know immediately how to do it in our engine, but not in unreal“.

Which made me very happy. Below are screenshots of all the particle systems and emitter settings they have created throughout Catstronaut, our most recent project.

VFX = particle system, PE = particle emitter.

As you can see, the particle editor has seen a lot of use. As for the animation editor. While it is being used, it has been more forced, our animators prefer just manually editing the JSON file and only ever use the editor as a final polish step. I think the main issue is that I didn’t implement it early enough and therefore it hasn’t been able to cement itself into our pipeline.

I also think I should have been more vocal and persistant in showing it off when I first added it as there has been some confusion about it that I really should have cleared up earlier. That is something I will bring with me to potential future tools.

Now enjoy some cool particle effects from Catstronaut. Created using this tool by two of my incredible technical artists, Elias Bennaceur and Keiren Wall.

I am part of The Game Assembly’s internship program. As per the agreement between the Games Industry and The Game Assembly, neither student nor company may be in contact with one another regarding internships before April 15^th. Any internship offers can be made on April 27^th, at the earliest.