Meri Mattila Visual Effects for a 3D Action Game Bachelor of Business Administration Spring 2018 Tiivistelmä Tekijä: Mattila Meri Työn nimi: Visuaalisia Tehosteita 3D Toimintapeliin Tutkintonimike: Tradenomi, Tietojenkäsittely Asiasanat: visuaalinen efekti, tehoste, VFX, peligrafiikka, Unity Opinnäytetyön tavoitteena oli tutkia teoriaa visuaalisten efektien takana sekä kehittää osaamista visuaalisten efektien luomisessa. Opinnäytetyössä tutustuttiin visuaalisten efektien taiteellisiin pe- rusteisiin. Teoriaa sovellettiin visuaalisten efektien toteuttamisessa 3D toimintapelin prototyyppiin. Opinnäytetyö on koonnut taiteellisia periaatteita visuaalisten efektien tukemiseksi. Teoria käsittelee efektien yhteyttä pelattavuuteen, väriopin perusteita, muotokieltä ja efekteille tärkeitä animaation perusperiaatteita. Tämän jälkeen opinnäytetyössä haetaan esimerkki efektejä markkinoilla olevista peleistä. Viimeisenä käsitellään efektien luomisprosessia, työkaluja joita käytettiin opinnäytetyössä ja käydään läpi visuaaliset efektit, jotka rakennettiin aiemmin opitun teorian pohjalta. Näin opinnäy- tetyötä varten syntyi viisi efektiä: miekan huitaisu, indikaatio osumiselle, teleportaatio, laaseri sekä power-up indikaatio. Opinnäytetyötä kannattaa käyttää yhtenä ohjeena visuaalisten efektien maa- ilmaan, koska aiheeseen löytyy monia muitakin lähestymistapoja, joita tämä opinnäytetyö ei käsit- tele. Opinnäytetyö auttoi kehittämään graafisia taitoja visuaalisten efektien parissa ja opitusta tulee ole- maan paljon hyötyä tulevaisuudessa. Vaikka lopputulos ei ole yhtä hiottu kuin alkuperäisen suun- nitelman mukaan, on opinnäytetyöstä ollut paljon hyötyä peligraafikkona kehittymisessä. Abstract Author: Mattila Meri Title of the Publication: Visual Effects for a 3D Action Game Degree Title: Bachelor of Business Administration, Business Information Technology Keywords: visual effect, special effect, VFX, game graphics, Unity The goal of this thesis was to study artistic principles behind visual effects and improve on creating them. The learnings were tested and applied by creating visual effects for a 3D action game’s prototype. This thesis has gathered artistic principles behind visual effects and covers topics such as how to visually effect gameplay, basics of colour theory, shape and animation princi- ples relevant to visual effects. After this the thesis gathers some effects for reference, and covers the tools that were used to create the visual effects for this thesis. Five effects were created: a sword swing, hit particles, teleportation, laser beam and an indication for powerup. The thesis also covers some techniques behind these effects and how they were created. It is best to use the thesis as a guideline for getting started with visual effects, because it covers the basics of making them and there are many other ap- proaches to the subject that the thesis does not cover. The thesis helped develop the author’s understanding of visual effects and skills required to create them. The theory and skills learned here can be used in future game projects. While the end results are not as polished as the author had originally planned, the thesis was very beneficial. Contents 1 Introduction .......................................................................................................... 1 2 Principles of visual effects .................................................................................... 3 2.1 Gameplay .................................................................................................. 3 2.2 Value ......................................................................................................... 5 2.3 Colour ....................................................................................................... 6 2.3.1 Basics of colour theory ................................................................... 6 2.4 Shapes ...................................................................................................... 7 2.5 Timing ....................................................................................................... 8 2.5.1 Animation principles and visual effects .......................................... 9 3 Effect references ................................................................................................ 13 3.1 Melee attack ............................................................................................ 13 3.2 Hit particles ............................................................................................. 15 3.3 Teleportation ........................................................................................... 16 3.4 Laser beam ............................................................................................. 17 3.5 Powerup .................................................................................................. 18 4 Execution of effects ............................................................................................ 20 4.1 Tools used .............................................................................................. 20 4.2 Melee attack ............................................................................................ 20 4.3 Hit particles ............................................................................................. 22 4.4 Teleportation ........................................................................................... 24 4.5 Laser beam ............................................................................................. 26 4.6 Powerup .................................................................................................. 27 5 Conclusions ....................................................................................................... 29 References ................................................................................................................... 30 1 Introduction Visual effects have a similar role in both movies and games. They give information to the viewer or player and communicate what is happening in a scene. There are some key differences though. When creating visual effects for movies, rendering a single frame can take hours. In game development everything must run real-time. Control of the camera brings another difference. When the player has full control of the camera, visual effects must look good from any angle, any distance and in changing lighting conditions. In mov- ies, visual effects have a specific shot where they need to shine. (Tokarev 25.5.2017). Visual effects play two crucial roles in video games. They communicate actions happening on the screen and create a believable world for the player to explore. Visual effects can tell the player whether something is dangerous or friendly and how important the actions happening are. Visual effects also play a crucial role in making the world feel lively and dynamic. Without environmental effects the game would only feature static objects. (To- karev 25.5.2017). The difficulties between these two roles arise when you don’t have a coherent design for the game. Using a certain colour when creating effects for all the in-game enemies can be good practise, but if you use the same colour on something that is friendly later on, the player can get confused. Filling the game with particles is easy, but creating visual effects that clearly communicate everything is hard. (Tokarev 25.5.2017). Getting into visual effects generally requires a few skills: being able to model simple or fairly complex meshes and then unwrap them, ability to create and modify textures, un- derstanding how particle systems work in a game engine and basic knowledge how ma- terials work and are created. Understanding basic optimization and being able to include it in the creation process also helps. (Henderson 17.9.2017) Creating visual effects is not all about particle systems though. Quite often you can achieve interesting and beautiful effects through meshes and different unwrapping tricks. There are a few key differences between stylized and realistic visual effects. Realistic effects try to simulate real-world behaviour and aim to display the same level of detail as the world around us. Stylized effects tend to use fewer small details and focus more on strong shapes, colours and motion as seen in picture 1. This leads to different texture creation techniques. It is common to hand paint textures for stylized effects, while realistic 2 effects benefit greatly from photography and simulating real-world phenomena in a 3D program and creating textures from that. (Tokarev 6.2.2018). Picture 1. Gigantic features very stylized visual effects that don’t use too many details in their textures. (From arcgames.com, 20.5.2018) When creating animated textures from real-world footage, you might not be able to tweak the source material though and there can be issues where you get noise in your textures if the original footage doesn´t have a high enough dynamic range. These animated tex- tures are quick to create though, and can get an effect into the game quickly. Simulations take longer to develop, but are more flexible in terms of quality and style. (Tokarev 25.5.2017). This thesis focuses solely on stylized visual effects, though some of the principles and techniques can be utilized when creating realistic visual effects. 3 2 Principles of visual effects When I read multiple articles and interviews where different senior position visual effects artists discussed their design principles, workflow