Projectile VFX (Tank)

VFX_03_apowell1.mp4

Fire Away

How cool to be able to fire from a TANK!? Well, that's what I thought when I was concepting for this project at least!

Table of Contents

Reference Summary

Overview

Call Your Friends (Blueprints)

Reference Summary

I wanted to mix between a regular tank smoke and burst from the barrel and add a tracer rounds in addition, so the user could actually see where the round was headed before making impact.

Source: https://tenor.com/view/m1a2-abrams-autocannon-foxtrot12-m1-abrams-abrams-tank-gif-2719305628727859375

Overview

The main ideas behind this blueprint are to fire the cannon, play the sound and adjust the tanks movement a bit. Finally, rinse and repeat!

Call Your Friends (Blueprints)

In this section, I had the code above call two separatate particle systems to have them spawn in the level. The below code essentially reads what the tank has hit and performs other actions such as additional effects and even applying decals. I had fun using the mesh renderer in this one.

Makin' Flames

The first part to building out my VFX for the tank firing was to figure out how to make a realistic looking fire and smoke that follows. Typically after a barrel has fired a round, smoke will be left behind so I wanted to replicate that somehow.

Eat More Beams

For the tracer round, it was straight forward. I found this in the unreal template and made a few modications to match the style I was aiming for.

More...Booms

The second-to-last effect was an impact explosion. I figured it would be similar to that of the burst from the cannon but I added sparks to simulate the blast was causing some electrical circuit failure.

Rubble!

Last but certainly not least, let's make rocks fly around after an extreme blast. Makes sense to me!

Material

Ok, here is the actual last part to mention - a dynamic material for the decal! Making it dynamic allows it to understand when the hit has been made and to automtically fade away!

Conclusion

I learned more than I had expected I would working on this project but I'm grateful to have taken away so many useful lessons.

VFX_03_apowell1.mp4

Resources

Environment: https://www.fab.com/listings/474a0598-ed86-40b6-baa1-c801d96ef4ab
Tank Model: https://www.fab.com/listings/52125bbf-dff4-4003-a1b1-1b667a41b795

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