HLSL Tentacles and Corrupted ground substance
Corrupted lake
General view of the effect, combined in the composition of a lake
Top-down perspective, view from the level editor
Idle corrupted puddle
Idle puddle variations: static and dynamic that can be controlled to appear and disappear.
Explosion of the substance projectile
Projectile explosion
Projectile and explosion
For the puddle base I used Houdini metaballs. Then the distorted uvs were baked and in the code I applied the animated texture.
The shader has flexible color values, and the tint can be dynamically changed or set to a constant value
For 2 years I worked on a beloved THQ Nordic IP project that was not released. For Project 5 I created both combat and environmental VFX in pure HLSL code in a proprietary engine.
One of the key features of our game was the mysterious and dangerous infected ground. It should combine liquid surface and creepy tentacles. It can turn into a projectile that explodes and creates more puddles around it.
In a close cooperation with technical artist Adrian Vögtle https://www.artstation.com/exaii and graphic programmer Jan Enders https://aldurethar.github.io/ we programmed the behavior of the tentacles and shaders in HLSL code. This cursed ground is damaged every time the character steps on it and the tentacles tend to catch the player.
The effect consists of several layers: the puddle, the fog, the tentacles and the base of the tentacles.
The puddles are modular and can be combined into lakes or attached to actions.