Creating Real-Time Rocket Launcher VFX in Unreal Engine 5

Introduction

Hello! My name is Matthieu Michon and I’m a VFX artist about to attend the last year of Supinfogame RUBIKA master's program in Game Art. I decided to specialize in VFX about a year ago after quite some hesitation: on the one hand, VFX was a small part of my school program, so I would have to work a lot of extra hours, and on the other, it had a ton of things I loved working on, like animation, colors and technical art. In the end, I learned VFX with the help of friends, tutorials, and an unwise sleep schedule.

There were mainly two projects that were essential in the early development of my skills. The first one was challenging myself to make one VFX a day for a week and the second was my first game production as a VFX artist. I got to work with programmers and gameplay constraints and I learned a lot about making game-ready VFX. These two experiences were very helpful, as I learned more about efficiency and making game-ready VFX.

Unreal Engine

I picked up Unreal Engine a few months ago after working a lot in Unity. I was getting curious and heard that it was more sophisticated and complete for VFX. Working on UE5 has been a ton of fun, it allows you to tweak every single parameter of your particle systems, you can have a variable be related to so many parameters, even with rather complex math calculations! One of the nicest things about UE5 is that it allows you to code via Blueprint with close to no scripting knowledge. When it comes to Houdini, I actually did not have any experience using it for VFX, only to make tools. The real challenge with Houdini was getting a grip on the physics behind each parameter of the smoke nodes, it was not very obvious, so I had to play a lot with the values to get used to it.

The Green Lantern Artillery Effect

This project actually started off as a school assignment for which I had to make a VFX involving a projectile, but since I wanted to add it to my portfolio, I wanted it to be more personal and complex. Being a huge fan of comics, I quickly thought about doing something fun with Green Lantern’s light constructs. I was very inspired by the source material from DC Comics but also by the series of Injustice games. The final product was also strongly affected by what I wanted to learn more about, like Blueprint, integrating animations, Houdini, etc.

To make this VFX, I started in 3ds Max by modeling the rocket launcher and animating it via blendshapes. I then went on UE5 and began to create the VFX. I usually start by blocking what makes its silhouette, in this case, the main focus was the rocket trajectories. Later on, I would work on the timings and finally, I finish by replacing my default trails and textures with custom Houdini textures and shaders. The explosions and smoke trails actually use the same smoke sprite sheet texture.

One thing I regularly do is to check the Shader Complexity in the viewing modes, it shows you when there are too many transparent shaders superposing. I finished the VFX by setting up an Actor Blueprint that launches it when pressing the spacebar, finds and aims at the closest Actor with the Enemy tag, and finally triggers the explosion VFX upon collision.

Conclusion

My advice to beginners would mainly be to watch a lot of tutorials but to reinterpret them rather than copy them to familiarize yourself with the engine by trying out things, tweaking values, and discovering things on your own. By doing this, you will remember it better, have a deeper understanding of the engine, and be better at finding alternative ways of solving a problem.

Matthieu Michon, VFX/Tech Artist

Interview conducted by Theodore McKenzie