WIP: Hrakert Rift (from Knights of the Old Republic) in UE4 [Update 1]

Hiiiii... I haven't posted in quite a while. I've been pretty busy with senior thesis, graduating, getting an awesome new job, and watching in horror as the world falls apart, so naturally I haven't had much time to touch my side project. Well, I know everyone's been waiting with bated breath for the video I promised a long time ago, so here it is. This is still very much a work in progress, and just to be clear, I do not claim ownership over the Star Wars IP. It's kind of silly that needs to be said but... there you go. :P

Knights of the Old Republic: Hrakert Rift, Manaan in Ue4 (Update 1) from Kevin Reichwein on Vimeo.

Setting Up a Ribbon Trail in Cryengine

Okay so here’s a quick tutorial on how to set up a ribbon trail in Cryengine (because Cryengine’s documentation is frustratingly nonexistant, and Ribbons are a little difficult no matter what engine you’re working in).

Assuming you have already set up a particle to attach the trail to, here are the few things you need to do to get it to behave correctly:

1. Change the Spawn Indirection from “Direct” to “ParentStart”. This tells the new child particles to spawn at the parent particle’s location rather than the emitter origin.

2.  Check the box next to “Continuous”. This will keep the ribbon alive for the entire time it’s parent is alive.

3. Under the Size options, check the box next to “Connection”, and change the Texture Mapping to “PerStream”.

The Connection step is the most important one, here’s a trail with and without the Connection settings set.

 Hope this helps :)

Ice Shard Spell

Made using Maya Bifrost, Zbrush, Photoshop, and Unreal Engine

Cryengine Particle Test

So there's an awesome company I'd like to work for and they use cryengine, which I've never had the time to delve into, so I downloaded Amazon Lumberyard (pretty much the same thing) and started messing around in it. Here's what I ended up with after a couple hours of poking around in the editor.

Just a simple firework effect (went with an African Lily look), but it served its purpose in getting me familiarized with cryengine's particle editor and asset workflow. There's still a few things I want to add to this though. Today I'm going to add a static mesh for the initial rocket particle (I'd like to make sure this engine handles mesh particles as I would expect so I don't have any unpleasant surprises in the future). Also, I was trying to set up ribbon particles (trailing after the initial rocket and the particles in the first burst. Unfortunately the documentation on cryengine is pretty barebones, nor could I find any youtube tutorials, so I'm kind of just feeling around in the dark. If I figure them out I promise I'll make a tutorial to help share the knowledge. Likewise if any of you could help point me in the right direction that would be greatly appreciated!

Explosion Flipbook

Here's a quick one done in Houdini, meant for use in realtime fx
Explosion Flipbook from Kevin Reichwein on Vimeo.

WIP: Hrakert Rift (from Knights of the Old Republic) in UE4

Here's an environment I've been working on when I have free time away from senior thesis. It is a remake of Hrakert Rift, on the planet Manaan from Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. Note that this is a complete remake/redesign. Aside from the sound effects (which are ripped from the game files) I will be making everything from scratch. Most of KotOR's textures are too low rez to be of use anyway.

 Lit Key Moment Shot

 Lit Overview

 Unlit Overview

For this environment I decided to get all the lighting, atmospheric, post process, and particle effects the way I wanted them first, as that's the part that really sells the underwater feel. Right now I'm moving on to the architecture, starting with the bridge and pipes. Eventually I'll get around to posting a video, as a lot is lost in still images.

Bridge / Pipe Progress

Reference Images from the original game environment:

This Week's Particle WIPs