Sjors de Laat has gathered a list of most useful sources to help you master VFX production. Let’s study it!
Recently Sjors de Laat did an excellent breakdown of his FX workflow showing the way he works on texturing, shaders, particle systems, meshes. Today we are publishing the list of most useful sources Sjors recommends to help you master VFX production. Let’s study it!
Find Sjors‘ article on FX workflow here:
YouTube Channels
Jason Keyser
On his YouTube channel, you will find breakdowns of numerous League of Legends effects. Also, check out Jason’s fundamentals series. All amazingly well explained.
Sirhaian Arts
Sirhaian’s YouTube channel has great tutorials and scene breakdowns forUnity-based effects. Definitely worth checking out!
Yoeri Vleer
A tonne of resources can be found here, breakdowns, tutorials, going in depth on specific Unreal Engine related topics, and workflow guides. A true treasure trove of information!
ImbueVFX
Filled with amazing tutorials. The UE3 ones still cover a lot of concepts that you can easily apply anywhere else.
UnrealSimon
Focuses mainly on Unreal related tips.
GDC Presentations
Visual Effects of Diablo 3 by Julian Love
Some excellent concepts explained here. One of my personal favorite talks.
The Visual Effects of InFAMOUS: Second Son
The Rendering of INSIDE
Sand Rendering in Journey
Websites & Blogs
RealtimeVFX
From now on this will be your new home. Simply the best community for realtime VFX. Don’t hesitate to join (on Discord as well)!
*Video is taken from the thread Smoke Lighting and texture re-usability in Skull&Bones by Mederic Chasse.
Partikel
Andreas Glad focuses on the combination of Houdini and Unreal and these work together with making VFX.
Simon Schreibt
A really cool blog, also by Simon Schreibt (UnrealSimon), focused on breaking down how certain games achieved a certain effect. Excellently explained and really interesting. Check out Simon’s Rime VFX talk as well!
Other Sources
Kakky’s Unreal Marketplace
Helped a great deal with understanding some concepts behind how certain effects were achieved. Definitely get one of the packs, highly recommended. But I must say it might be a bit intimidating once you open up the shaders. They are quite simply put, complex to say the least. But break them down step by step and see what you want can learn from them.
Paragons Free Characters
Get them all. The amount of FX in here gigantic, so there is loads of stuff you can break down and learn from.
Miscellaneous Resources for Related Stuff
Shadertoy
A website where everyone can share their HLSL shader work. The most usable resource you can get from this is that you can tweak and break down the shaders right on the website. Simply a great reference tool.
Codeacademy
For everyone who wants to get a start in coding.
Codetrain
Great YouTube channel with tutorials focused on the software Processing and more stuff. Processing is a 2d based, but a lot of concepts it embodies could be easily carried over to other languages as well.
Abduzeedo
A website that is focused around graphic design. A great inspiration source to broaden your horizon, with some excellent tutorials as well.