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Elias Ayberk
VFX Artist
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OmenSmoke- Fan Art

So, lately, I've been diving into Unreal Engine as a Unity user.

It's like going from a 24-color box to a whopping 120-color set – so much more to play with!

Unreal is a powerhouse, especially in graphics. The material editor and Niagara system are like a playground for creativity.

But, with great power, comes great res... well, you get it.

Unreal indeed comes with loads of handy tools and options, but it does ask for a bit more time, especially when it comes to shader compilation – a real waiting game :).

For my first Unreal project, I wanted to focus on materials and shaders. Gotta get comfy with that material editor before diving into Niagara.

I chose to mess around with Omen Smoke – my go-to favorite.

One more thing to mention is that this project required the implementation of polar coordination which is common but most of the methods that I found have some kind of artifact except the artist Geodraws method, you can see it through the process + in his channel as well: https://www.youtube.com/@geodraws

Okay, enough talk – let's jump into the fun stuff!

The "PolarCoordinates" material function

The "PolarCoordinates" material function

one important thing when dealing with polar coordinates in this way is to change the texture sample mode, then feeding it with the DDX, and DDY from the "PolarCoordinates" material function otherwise, you might get some kind of artifacts.

one important thing when dealing with polar coordinates in this way is to change the texture sample mode,
then feeding it with the DDX, and DDY from the "PolarCoordinates" material function
otherwise, you might get some kind of artifacts.

You can see we're throwing some Fresnel action into the erosion part. The idea behind it is to give the orb a cool dissolve effect, starting from the middle and spreading out to the edges.

You can see we're throwing some Fresnel action into the erosion part. The idea behind it is to give the orb a cool dissolve effect, starting from the middle and spreading out to the edges.

For this part, a key move is to make sure you set the Y-axis Tiling mode of the build-up texture to clamp. It's a crucial step in getting things just right.

For this part, a key move is to make sure you set the Y-axis Tiling mode of the build-up texture to clamp.
It's a crucial step in getting things just right.

Starting from here the vertex position work will show up like what is in Omen smoke

Starting from here the vertex position work will show up like what is in Omen smoke

Also adding a fresnel to the opacity output was a nice touch to remove the hard edges that kind of broke the effect (at least in my thought)

Also adding a fresnel to the opacity output was a nice touch to remove the hard edges that kind of broke the effect (at least in my thought)

Trust me, there is no vase here

Trust me, there is no vase here

And for the last part, you can guess that the parts are just sprites The other part is about erosion with the ceil function to let it dissolve in steps like limited animation or stop motion

And for the last part, you can guess that the parts are just sprites
The other part is about erosion with the ceil function to let it dissolve in steps like limited animation or stop motion

This smoke decal was the main reason to pick the polar method since the decal can't have a custom mesh (as far as I know yet) so I had to work with the square shape, and that's also why I didn't use a disk mesh with the part from the first

This smoke decal was the main reason to pick the polar method since the decal can't have a custom mesh (as far as I know yet) so I had to work with the square shape, and that's also why I didn't use a disk mesh with the part from the first

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