Visual Effects for Games in Unity - Stylized Explosion

Download the project zip, unzip it, and open it in Unity Hub to verify the Unity version (2021.2.11), then compile to review the scene and prepare for stylized explosion techniques.

Explore Unity's visual effects workflow with a look at the stylized explosion scene. Review post-processing in the global volume—bloom, vignette, motion blur, chromatic aberration—and practice particle system color changes.

Explore Unity's particle system with sparks: control looping, duration, emission rate, particle lifetime, shapes, renderer, stretched billboard rendering, color, gravity, and world collision to craft vivid explosions.

Explore pre-production for stylized explosion effects in Unity, from gathering reference and sketching core elements to planning anticipation, climax, and aftermath with smoke and ground cracks.

Create a stylized explosion mesh in blender by building an icosphere, adding a remesh modifier, refining voxel size, and exporting as fbx for unity with proper uv mapping.

Create an erosion shader using voronoi noise to procedurally erode a smoke sphere, driven by the particle system through custom vertex streams and UV data.

Convert the effect to opaque by enabling surface type and material override, then animate the voronoi dissolve with a time-based angle offset and vertex color-driven emission for a stylized explosion.

Learn to animate an erosion Voronoi shader in Unity using vertex offset, driven by a noise-based lerp controlled by a vertex amount, time, and vertex speed for a wobbling explosion.

Finish the explosion body by layering top, mid, and bottom particles with tuned lifetimes, speeds, sizes, and radii, and add rotation for a stylized, dissipating explosion in Unity.

Configure a stylized explosion by creating a burst particle system, disable looping, adjust lifetime and size, use a hemisphere shape with stretched billboards, and add a ground circle for impact.

Create a simple unlit particle shader in the universal render pipeline, using HDR color, texture2d sampling, and vertex color to drive intensity and transparency for sparks and explosions.

Add floating embers around the stylized explosion by tuning velocity over lifetime, orbital x, and lateral motion, then widen radius and extend start lifetime with blinking color over lifetime.

Create a hollow smoke ring mesh from a cylinder in Blender, adjust the top and bottom, set origin to the bottom, then export to Unity.

Create a non looping smoke ring with a particle system, adjust start size, rotation, and size over lifetime, then fade with a color over lifetime and an erosion shader.

Paint tileable, stylized explosion textures in Krita or other editors using soft hair brushes, glow, smudge, and wrap mode for seamless results; export PNG with alpha to Unity.

Develop an erosion texture shader in Unity using Shader Graph, with tiling, time-based offset, alpha clipping, and main texture and vertex color control.

Learn to craft stylized explosion smoke rings in Unity by adjusting start size and lifetime, duplicating rings, creating a quick shockwave, and tuning color over lifetime and erosion curves.

Create stylized explosion visual effects in Unity and seek review to refine your technique for game graphics.

Create fast, bright orange rings by applying smoke ring techniques with an erosion texture shader, duplicating materials, adjusting intensity, and resizing over lifetime for a dynamic explosion.

Create a four-frame impact flipbook in Krita with a bright explosion, use the animation timeline, center the drawing, adjust opacity and glow, and save for Unity.

Finish the impact flipbook in Krita by copying frames, centering them with guides at 1024 pixels, and pushing parts toward the center with the blender smear brush to ensure consistency.

Create the final frame, export a png sequence, and assemble four frames into a 2x2 flipbook. Use Krita and GlueIT, then import the texture into Unity for a particle-based explosion.

Create a flipbook impact texture for a non looping particle system at the base of an explosion, using texture sheet animation in a 2x2 grid to produce a punchy shockwave.

Discover creating ground crack textures for explosion aftermath with material maker, a free node-based tool with 2D and 3D previews for Unity textures.

Use voronoi noise in material maker to generate crack lines, then apply a circle map mask and tone adjustments to shape a circular ground crack with glow.

Explore creating a ground crack texture in Unity using noise nodes, FBM, warp, Voronoi, and tonality adjustments to produce realistic, customizable cracks.

Add glow to the ground crack by adjusting tones and masking, then export a Unity-ready material with albedo, normal, metallic, and ambient occlusion maps, enabling transparency.

Apply ground crack texture to a particle system, render as additive two-sided billboard, and enable alpha clipping with an erosion shader to fade, planning a parallax occlusion shader for depth.

Create depth for a ground crack with a parallax occlusion shader in Unity, using a height map and a single texture, alpha clipping, and shader graph controls.

Create a ground impact texture with burn marks using material maker and Voronoi noise circle map. Mask with gradient and blend to control albedo and transparency, then export to Unity.

Combine ground crack and ground impact particle systems to create a stylized explosion, adjusting materials, alpha blended, additive variants, and random rotation for cohesive ground effects.

Duplicate and rename ground impact materials, tweak value noise and voronoi settings, adjust radius, falloff, and blend, export to Unity 3D, and layer glow and lighting for richer effects.

Duplicate the particle system to create floating crack particles, set a start delay 1–2 seconds, adjust start speed and velocity over lifetime, and shape a spiral around the ground crack.

Model a smoke plane in Blender, export as FBX, and configure a Unity particle system to emit smoke from ground cracks using a scrolling erosion texture shader.

Mask the erosion texture shader's main texture by sampling a gradient mask and multiplying it with the texture, using the alpha channel to create a realistic fade in Unity.

Apply distortion to the main texture using noise and a lerp-controlled amount to create stylized smoke, driven by UV tiling and offset in an erosion texture shader.

Improve smoke trails for ground cracks by stabilizing rotation, repositioning and scaling the texture, and refining the mask with gradient-based transparency; switch between additive and alpha blending to reduce artifacts.

Place multiple smoke trails around the ground crack, duplicate and vary their scale and lifetime, adjust alpha clipping and color over lifetime, and blend modes to enhance a stylized explosion.

In this lesson, add orange floating rings around the explosion, duplicating two rings and adjusting material tiling and ring geometry for a stylized effect.

Create debris with smoke trails for a stylized explosion in Unity by building a custom particle system from scratch, tuning gravity, velocity over lifetime, color, size, and world collisions.

Shape an arched projectile using a cone-shaped particle system to anticipate the explosion with a delayed trigger. Adjust lifetime, speed, and start size for consistent placement and timing.

Learn to create color variations for a stylized explosion in Unity using a particle system controller to adjust color ranges and gradients across prefabs and materials.

Finish the course and explore stylized visual effects in Unity, including shaders, VFX Graphs, explosions, and assets.