Making Layered Water VFX Inspired by Avatar: The Last Airbender
Daniele Ellimah breaks down a water-bending VFX inspired by Avatar: The Last Airbender, discussing layering shades of blue, adding foam and dark patches, and creating a smooth dissolve effect.
Hello! My name is Daniele Kofi Ellimah, and I am a graduate and VFX Artist for games. I have been learning VFX on my own for the last couple of years. However, I wasn't always into VFX. I went to university wanting to do VFX for movies and texturing. As time went on, at the end of my first year of university, I had the choice to switch to games or continue with films, and as we're talking games right now, you can guess which one I chose.
Having just graduated, the world opened, and I was presented with so many variables that were overwhelming me. Finding a job, thinking about what to do from there on, etc. After taking a vacation, I came back and decided that I did not want to stay there doing nothing during the summer, as it's a great time to get myself a head start and not lose the drive I had during university, so I got to work.
I wanted to continue a series that I started regarding making VFX inspired by element bending, like in Avatar: The Last Airbender.
As I have previously done wind and earth bending, I decided to make water bending next. Water is quite a difficult concept to grasp initially, so I had to gather lots of references online and watch videos of flowing water over and over before even starting; however, it was something that was not getting into my head.
Therefore, instead of staying and trying to figure it out straight away, I started practicing by drawing 2D animated FX.
I think my first attempt at drawing water was not too bad. The hardest part for me was understanding the water's flow and timing. So I went to VFX Apprentice, a resource I am very comfortable with, and started asking for feedback. Luckily, a kind person named Sage gave me the feedback that I needed. This gave me time to reflect on what I actually wanted to portray with the VFX. I realized I didn't have a clear image of the VFX I wanted to make, so I dropped the 2D animation aspect and focused on what the VFX would look like by creating concept art.
The concept art allowed me to understand the various layers that water has and how to make water feel like a fluid instead of a block of semi-liquid color. Making the concept allowed me to slowly figure out how matter feels like it. Existing VFX, concept art from people, and video references allowed me to achieve the result in the image.
As the concept developed, I thought at the same time about how I would be able to achieve the fluidity of the concept art in 3D. As you can see, the concept can be broken down into sections, which I then used to compose the meshes for the 3D VFX.
Water is often portrayed as one block of "blue" color. However, to make water feel more complete, it requires various layers of shades of blue to feel alive and have depth. As I was creating the texture for the VFX, I kept in mind those principles while also taking into account how each layer was supposed to move in the engine.
For the material, the most important part is knowing the layering of the various materials. Instead of having the texture directly dictate the color of the water, I separated the layers into an RGBA map and added a slight offset for each layer of the water to give it the natural feeling of imperfection. To make the water feel more natural, I added extra layers like foam where the water mixes most with air, a gradient to break up the water's uniform background color, and patches of darkness to make it feel thicker in certain spots.
The dissolving of the VFX is an aspect that can break or make the whole feeling of water. It was important that I made the dissolving of the water feel as smooth and not disturbing as possible. To do so, I created a separate Noise Map and HLSL code that creates an edge thickness for the dissolving section as water is slowly mixing with the air.
As all the elements have been created, I then created the first iteration of the VFX starting from the final burst (as it is the most important).
In my head, the FX was looking good; however, it is very important as an artist to ask around for feedback to see if you are not delusional, so I went back to the VFX apprentice Discord, and every Wednesday they had a feedback session led by @Hallzy.
During the live feedback, he pointed out something that I did not catch, which was how the water flows at the beginning of the FX and how the water fades out. At the time, I had my doubts regarding the fading, but I did not consider it to be that apparent. But after the feedback, I should now stop seeing it. Therefore, I rolled up my sleeves and started working; below is the look of the FX after the round of feedback.
Now that I had the base look of the final splash, it was time to start working on the channeling and dash section of the FX and finally polish it.
For the channeling of the VFX, I took the material I had made for the final splash and changed the UV tiling, speed, and foam sections to give it a projectile look. Then I attached them to a ribbon based on distance, added the little splashes, and it was done.
For the dashing section, I did not really know how I could have approached it, so I went on ArtStation to see if there was someone who had done something similar, and I saw this wonderful FX done by Vadim Akhmetzianov (VFXA – Water Wave Spell), which uses world offset with a scrolling texture to mimic the wave-like motion. So, I used those principles to create the dash FX while still reusing the material I previously made.
Finally, after animating it and putting everything together, here is the final result!
