Unity VFX Graph - Magic Effects - Intermediate Level

Compare the VFX Graph and Shuriken particle system, highlighting CPU versus GPU rendering, particle counts, collision detection limits, shader property access, and platform support for creating sparks.

Install Unity Hub and the 2020.1.14 Unity version for VFX Graph compatibility, then create a visual effects graph asset, place it in the scene, and disable gizmo outlines.

Explore the vfx graph by using the target object, adjusting play rate, and understanding the four core parts—spawn, initialize, update, and renderer—for particle control.

Learn to create looping sparks in Unity VFX Graph with a constant spawn rate, sphere-based emission, gravity, and color over life for dynamic, varied sparks.

Explore collisions in Unity VFX Graph using an AABox collider to make sparks collide and experience lifetime loss; learn how world space and local space govern block and particle behavior.

Learn to trigger events in Unity VFX Graph, spawning flashes on particle die, using GPU events, world space, and inherited color with branch and compare logic.

Set up the Thunderlord project in Unity using the zipped folder and the specific Unity version 2020.1.14, install Shader Graph, VFX Graph, and URP, then explore to prepare magic abilities.

Explore the spawn abilities system to create visual effects by configuring abilities with VFX assets, sound effects, projectile or AOB types, cooldowns, and post-production properties.

Explore how the spawn abilities script supports visual effects, including AoE and projectile attacks, VFX marker system, aiming, and animator-triggered attack sequences.

Create the projectile hammer visual effect with Unity VFX Graph, including glow and warm-up particles, and convert it into a prefab for Thunderlord’s hammer throws.

Build a particle system in Unity VFX Graph to emit sparks from a glowing hammer, using additive blend, z-aligned velocity, and randomized size and color over life.

Learn to build a stylized four-frame lightning flipbook using the pen tool, stroke path, and erase tool in Photoshop, with frame timing and timeline guidance.

Align lightning flipbook frames with guides, adjust each layer using transform tools, and create in-between frames to smooth transitions, preparing for glow and blur in the next lesson.

Apply outer glow in white, adjust size and opacity, and copy layer style across frames to create a consistent glow in a lightning flipbook, with optional motion blur for smoothing.

Learn to create the last frames of a lightning flipbook by fading lighting, refining brush strokes, erasing to smooth transitions, and using in-between frames for a smoother export.

Export the lightning flipbook from Photoshop by rendering a PNG sequence with straight unmatted alpha, then glue the frames into a 3x3 flipbook and save as Lightning02_3x3.

drag the lightning flipbook into the Thunderlord project, enable flipbook blend for a 3x3 frame sequence, animate with index over life, and adjust velocity and orientation for the projectile hammer.

explore using Unity's trail renderer to create a projectile tail, adjusting width and time, applying a texture and material for a seamless, scrolling trail, and preparing for a shader-based enhancement.

Develop an unlit scroll shader in Unity VFX Graph to animate a trail texture with tiling and time-based offset, enabling color control and smooth transparency for magical effects.

add a point light to a prefab via the right-click lights menu, rename it light, set range, intensity, and color to match the projectile, and play to preview.

Build a hit impact using a VFX graph and a dedicated prefab, featuring a one-time particle burst, sphere-conform movement, a bright flash, and a light prefab to illuminate the hit.

Develop a warm-up projectile visual effect in Unity VFX Graph for intermediate level, reusing a hit projectile graph, tweaking radius, lifetime, and attraction to simulate energy gathering and a shockwave.

Use unity vfx graph to create a muzzle glow for the hammer. Duplicate and adapt the glow, apply color over lifetime, and attach it to the hammer for seamless glow.

Create a ground hud marker with Unity VFX Graph as a decal projection. Customize color, texture, size, pivot, and angle, using a single burst for looping visibility and prefab reuse.

Create a hud marker texture for a projectile using Photoshop, import it into Unity, and wire it into VFX Graph, adjusting rotation, pivot, and decal volume for accurate world projection.

Improve projectile impact visuals in Unity VFX Graph by enabling alpha blended and lightning additive particles, using flipbooks with random frames, sphere conform, and a flare star texture.

Create a heat distortion shader in Unity with an unlit graph. Sample the scene color, add noise and a mask, and animate via VFX graph with custom vertex streams.

Create and refine impact flare textures in Photoshop for Unity's VFX Graph projectile effects. Use polar coordinates, texture tweaks, delays, and refined particles to enhance warm up visuals.

Drag and drop throw and hit sounds into the projectile hammer's sound effects, add an audio source for hits, and set spatial blend to 0.8 for 3D audio.

Design and assemble the earthshatter vfx by building a lightning-through-ground particle burst, tuning lifetime, gravity, and offsets, and create a ground crack texture to accompany the effect.

Create an earthshatter texture in Photoshop using lightning guides, frame duplication, clone stamp, and smudge tweaks, then export to Unity as an alpha texture for the VFX graph.

Apply the earthshatter texture to the vfx graph, adjust flare and glow, rotate and offset the texture, and manage render order and blend modes for a polished ground crack.

Create a master vfx shader graph to unveil a texture over a particle's lifetime, using a color and main texture, alpha control, and a mask powered by a curve.

Create lightning and ground particles in Unity VFX Graph to enhance the projectile hammer ability, combining ground crack, flipbook lightning, color over life, and velocity-driven motion.

Apply earthshatter changes to the thunderlord prefab as an aoe with a 1-second cooldown and 3-second freeze, then set a 1.5-second delay and tune amplitude and frequency in vfx graph.

Craft and align the Earthshatter HUD marker by duplicating the marker prefab, editing the texture in Photoshop, adjusting the VFX Graph properties, and testing alignment with Thunderlord.

Create debris with blender using cell fracture, export to Unity, and integrate into the vfx graph for Earthshatter, including set size over life, random rotation, gravity, and color.

Create a smoke simulation in Blender using a particle system and quick smoke, adjust domain and adaptive settings, add noise, and render with transparent film and cycles, including camera setup.

Increase smoke realism by upgrading the domain to 64 divisions, tune vorticity to 0.3–0.4, add noise, bake the simulation, adjust buoyancy, density, and anisotropy, and render 1024 by 1024 frames.

View the final smoke render and learn to build a 5x5 flipbook from 25 frames using Glueit, saved as SmokePuff03_5x5 for VFX graph use with Earthshatter ability.

Learn to build realistic earthshatter smoke in Unity VFX Graph by using a smoke flipbook, alpha transparency, orienting to the camera, and life, size, and color over life settings.

Create and refine the Earthshatter muzzle effect in Unity by building a warm-up VFX Graph, adjusting particle lifetimes, sizes, glow, and trail, then test and iterate in Thunderlord.

Create and refine the earthshatter warm up trail for the hammer, duplicating trails, adjusting width, duration, gradient, and glow, then test and finalize by tweaking spawn and destruction.

Add sound effects and lights to the Earthshatter ability by configuring light modules, adjusting range and intensity, and syncing muzzle and hammer glow with the sounds.

Create a hammer punch visual effect with Unity VFX Graph, refining shaders, textures, and meshes to produce a bright flash, glow, and cylinder particle bursts.

Create a no-top-no-bottom cylinder from the Blender model, map a lightning trail texture in the VFX graph, and animate the z-scale with a lifetime curve and color tweaks.

Master the VFX shader graph to scroll lightning with tiling and offset, then fade it in and out using a mask. Use gradient textures and a white square mask.

Add a configurable dissolve to the master shader using gradient, simple, and voronoi noise with clamped values, controlled by a single dissolve amount, scale, and speed.

Reuse the Earthshatter lightning particle system to add centered lightning to the hammer punch, adjusting scale, pivot, lifetime, velocity, and render order for impact.

Create electric impact flipbook in Photoshop on a black 2048 by 2048 canvas with teal guides. Build nine animation frames using brush dynamics and the smudge tool to convey motion.

Craft an electric impact flipbook in Unity VFX Graph by shaping frames 6 to 9 with proportional scaling, smudge and erase techniques, and frame-by-frame refinements.

Create electric impact flipbook by duplicating frames, applying smudge and white highlights, and adding glow. Export a 2048 by 2048 PNG sequence and assemble 3 by 3 flipbook with GlueIt.

Create electric impact effects for a hammer punch in Unity VFX Graph by importing a flipbook texture, enabling transparency, and configuring flipbook blend, tex index over life, and randomized rotation.

Increase contrast and add smoke for the hammer punch by using a dark gradient cylinder and alpha fades, then fine-tune color over life and multiply.

Apply the hammer punch to Thunderlord and create the hud marker by updating the marker texture in the VFX graph.

Add lights, distortion, and thunder punch sound effects to the hammer punch, duplicating the Earthshatter light and adjusting lifetime and intensity for a vivid, dynamic effect.

Develop the Thunderstorm ultimate by adapting Earthshatter visual effects into a circular aoe, using circle textures and a visual effects graph, and drive its 5-second lifetime with a duration property.

Create a ring mesh in Blender, import into Unity, and drive a lightning ring in VFX Graph with pivot, two-sided rendering, tiling, color, and dissolve tuned by randomness.

Add particles and smoke around the ability radius, convert the circle to a ground-parallel emission, rotate, tune velocity and lifetime, set spawn rate, and blend with alpha for dark particles.

Learn to build a smoke effect in Unity VFX Graph with a single burst cone system, color tweaks, constant spawn rate, and life-cycle controls, plus a ground electric shock wave.

Create a ground electric shockwave in Unity vfx graph by applying a shockwave texture, adjusting dissolve via age over life and noise, and tuning spawn rate and size over life.

Add an electric ground impact using a 3x3 flipbook inside the circle near the ground, animated over life with random size, alpha, velocity, and orientation to face camera plane.

Duplicate the earthshatter vfx graph to create a vertical lightning strike, orient particles to face the camera with a fixed axis, tune debris, smoke, glow, flare, and ground crack texture.

Design a 2048x2048 ground lightning crack texture in Photoshop by tracing zigzag paths, refining with brush, erase, smudge, and adding an outer glow for Unity VFX Graph.

Apply the lightning ground mark texture in the vfx graph, enabling alpha transparency with ground crack additive and alpha blended particles, and adjust dissolve, gradient noise scale, and lifetime.

Integrate Thunderstorm with Thunderlord by configuring a four-asset AoE effect, adjusting delays, duration, and chromatic values, and spawning the storm at a marker position for dynamic, visible VFX.

Create a thunderstorm VFX that spawns hammer projectiles from a start to an end point within a radius, using speed, delay, rate of fire, quantity, and waves.

Learn to customize a lightning vfx graph for the Thunderstorm ability, controlling ground cracks and shockwaves with properties, building a muzzle lightning prefab, and adjusting scale for varied effects.

Create and align a HUD marker by duplicating the Earthshatter prefab, adjusting texture and alpha, zeroing transform, and scaling to match the Thunderstorm size for accurate aiming.

Enable the thunderstorm ability, tune lights, heat distortion, and sound effects for the muzzle lightning, and apply changes to the thunderstorm prefab to create a breathing, epic attack.

Adjusts the projectile hammer visuals in vfx graph, refining the electric impact flipbook, warm-up implosion, and energy-gathering bursts, synchronized with Thunderlord's hammer.

Explore Earthshatter refinements in Unity VFX Graph by adjusting ground crack dissolution with age over life curves, adding blur textures, and enhancing hammer glow for richer debris and smoke.

Refine the hammer punch VFX by adding ring meshes, tuning color over life and alpha, and enabling trail detachment with auto-destruct for smoother, fading visuals.

Adjust the thunderstorm ability by tuning ground shockwaves, lightning height, particle rate, velocity, and texture variations through inspector controls to create a more perceptible, impactful effect.

Explore two project versions—original and course—using Unity Hub to study magic effects in Unity 2020.1.14, and discover VFX Graph, shader graph, and particle system tutorials to sharpen real time VFX.