From Concept to Final Result: Creating a VFX for the Goddess's Will

Hey everyone! I’m Kseniia, a VFX artist on The Goddess’s Will, and I’d like to open the door a little to my professional kitchen

Final effect

For my very first post I want to talk about my very first effect for the game, which was also my test task

Concept art by our art lead

Houdini and Unreal Engine 5 -- I thought it was a good idea to charm my future team

The brief was super detailed and not exactly simple, but after some thought I chose my favorite combo: simulate in Houdini, cache ribbons into VAT (vertex animation texture), and render the smoke and mist as a sequance (and further into spritesheet)

But that went a bit off-pipeline, so the effect went back for update (I didn’t know back then I’d be polishing it for almost a month and a half)

First, I simulated those swirling ribbons (Vellum solver, thank you for existing), then emitted the smoke, created the cast, and finally the cast effect itself

Some preparation for rendering and sprites

What really surprised me was how the birth of the cast, its life, and its execution turned out to be not just complex but demanding in precision. The carefully timed stages helped a lot, but making them flow seamlessly into one another was no easy task

Two stages: cast birth and loop

It was also a first for me to render not just one camera angle, but 16 (!!) cameras

I came from the film industry, so working with frame sequences for sprite sheets felt pretty unusual at first.

Anyway, I was super happy with the result, but after hearing the final sound design for the effect, I just wanted to dance on my chair (which I actually did

In general, crafting ofgame VFX in Houdini for me is this huge field full of forests, lakes, logs, boulders, rainbows, and mountains
I can create and discover new things every day, and once I bring in my compositing skills I’m simply unstoppable