How can I create advanced visual effects like what would result from Unity VFX Graph and UE5 Niagara?

0 votes

One thing that has continually make me lean towards other engines is the fact that they can produce amazing visual effects with their particle systems with minimal effort. UE5's Niagara seems like the option for making advanced VFX, and Unity's VFX graph looks amazing as well.

All we have in Godot is a standard "particle system", which is not very extensible unless you start doing some shader programming. Speaking of which, Godot's visual particle shader editor feels very limited compared to VFX graph's node system.

Basically, I want to know the best approach for making advanced 3D VFX in Godot. If you do VFX, I'd love to hear your workflow. The only good 3D example I've found is Sandfire's VFX.

Godot version v3.4.1
in Engine by (123 points)

Certainly not the answer to your question.
There is such a plugin. The phone didn't work before, now I don't know. But PC works fine too.

https://effekseer.github.io/en/

by (755 points)
edited by

I believe there is no escaping shader language. These other VFX programs may make things easier for beginners or improve worflow for repeatable actions, but are not truely advanced, sooner or later everyone has to get to shading. I don't know about other engines, but I like that in Godot You can convert built-in particle system into shader, to modify its code and learn from it. Also, visual shader sucks everywhere, You will need some maths :)

by (7,743 points)

Thanks for the info @ramazan!

by (123 points)

There is no escaping the shader language.

Yeah, I've never been too good with shaders, as in like HLSL or GodotSL, but I guess I'll need to learn.

Also, visual shader sucks everywhere, You will need some maths :)

Not true in every case; Blender and Unreal Engine have really nice visual shader editors, but it's hard to find them in game engines. I guess they must be limiting to someone used to programming shaders. :) Thanks for your help!

by (123 points)

From what I saw Unity visual shader looks very similar to Blender visual shader. Godot 3.2 didn't support it, but maybe Godot 4 will just be able to import it all

by (7,743 points)

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