Particle Effects Work

This devlog is here to showcase some of the effects we have created for our game and giving you a look at how we created them. 

Jelly Trail:

The jelly trail is probably the particle effect you'll be looking at the most so we wanted to make sure it looks good. Here is how it looks in its current state;

The jelly trail itself is simply a blueprint that has a constantly recycling pool of red decals, these decals paint a spot on the surface with a shiny red material where the player is multiple times a second, it also changes size according to the player. Here is some of the node logic used to create this.

The frothy part of the jelly trail is a completely separate Niagara particle effect that runs on loop while the player is moving around. It is very similar to a basic fountain Niagara particle system.

Dishwasher Effect:

The dishwasher effects are built up of two separate Niagara particle systems; one for the steam and another for the dripping water. The dripping is like the fountain Niagara system too, only it spawns from a plane and falls rather than rises. The other Niagara system for the dishwasher is the steam which is also a fountain system, but it spawns sprites to create the steam effect as well as drifting upwards and outwards like real steam. The current dishwasher particle system looks as follows;

Balloons:

For this particle system, it is designed to have a bunch of balloons float around attached to their own ribbons, however, they don't collide with each other at the moment. This is because it is another Niagara particle system. It spawns our balloon mesh(es) with buoyancy and a random color to make it move like an actual balloon, then uses another emitter to spawn the balloon string, which all meet at an origin point and branch out to their individually assigned balloons. You can see the system here;

The balloons look like this so far;

Water Trail:

We haven't shown anything past the backyard level on here yet, so here is a first sneak peek at what we have planned. For one of our later levels, we wanted a splashing water trail for a water involved level. To do this, a Niagara system was made with three emitters, one for the middle and another for either side. This was so there could be little waves on either side of the player that mirrored each other, as well as a less intense splash for the back. This is so it could look like it was reacting as realistically as possible. This water trail can be seen below;