#19 - A Real-Time REVOLUTION!💥💣
Hey there,
Today I want to walk you through why real-time VFX is a game-changer and how you can start riding this wave to level up your career.
What Does “Real-Time” Really Mean?
In traditional film or TV, most VFX are created through a process called pre-rendering. This means artists spend hours or even days building and baking effects before the audience ever sees them. The final look is beautiful but static.
Real-time VFX flips that script. Effects are simulated, integrated and rendered on the spot. They also respond to player actions. For eg: shoot a barrel of gas & an explosion happens. However, you can choose not to shoot it and the effect simply doesn’t trigger.
Why Does This Matter?
Mastering real-time VFX doesn't mean just creating effects that are beautiful - to make these effects work instantly, they are quite a few challenges that real-time VFX artists must juggle.
Key Challenges
Platform Differences: Are you working on a high-end console or a mobile game? Each has wildly different hardware capabilities.
Frame Rate Demands: Games often target 60 frames per second or higher. Your effects need to render in under 1/60th of a second.
Camera Perspectives: Is the effect viewed up close in first person or far away in a top-down strategy game? This changes how detailed or simple your effect can be.
Art Style Consistency: Effects must match the game’s overall look - whether it’s hyper-realistic or stylized.
Your Action Plan
Learn The Tools: Start with popular real-time engines like Unity or Unreal Engine. Play around with their particle systems and VFX toolkits.
Focus on Optimization: Challenge yourself to create VFX that look good but use minimal resources. Profile your effects and learn to reduce particle counts and overdraw.
Create Interactive Effects: Make effects that react to player input or game events. Try building a destructible object or a player distance based effect.
Study Multi-Platform Development: Experiment with scaling effects up and down for different hardware. What looks great on PC might need simplification for mobile or VR.
Analyze Games: Watch gameplay videos and pause to study the VFX. See the different elements that make them up and try to recreate them.
Final Thoughts
Real-time VFX isn’t just a buzzword - it’s a full-on revolution reshaping how games and even movies are made. The future of VFX is happening now - don’t just watch it from the sidelines.
Ready to level up your skills and build the future of gaming VFX? Feel free to hit reply as I’m here to help every step of the way!
PS: 🚨 Join TheFXFrontier Discord - Connect, share knowledge, get feedback and grow with fellow VFX artists. Copy-paste this in your browser if the link doesn’t work: https://discord.gg/CRkCKUpH8R
Thanks for reading!
