The system is almost ready for release !!!, i would love to see comments on the coming systems and suggestions for more things and effects to come to the pack.
The Prefab Manager is now handled a lot better too and is far more versatile, which enables the possibility to add a feature that will allow the automatic creation of prefabs and insertion in the library. This will be a priority for the first update of the pack.
The Automated Audio Module is also finilized and allows the easy addition and synchronization of sound in the effects. Start, traveling and collision sounds are supported.
All the particle shaders have also been further optimized.
I already have Particle Dynamic Magic, but this is looking pretty awesome.
I don’t have any particular suggestions right at the moment, but I can see myself tinkering with most, if not all of the features.
This pack is not just about toons, it is more like a “Particle Creation Magic”, focusing on the making phase before dynamic effects are applied, so it is designed to be a complement to PDM, plus offer some tools and shaders that are toon oriented.
Cant wait to see it put to good use and feedback to make it as good as possible.
Dual wave shader applied to a high res plane UPDATE:
A new dual wave mode and a controller for the shader are now ready and will be in the first release. I have also added a script to create planes of any detail to use with this new dual wave shader option (this one requires a single plane, since the randomization breaks the tile seams in a tiling arrangement).
Sprite Sheet Maker in action, the initial particle has played, was recorded and atlased, then applied to a material in the quad to the right and as animated particles to the left.
A real time demo of the Sprite Sheet Maker is ready.
The system grabs the playing particle to a sprite sheet and applies it in a material on a quad and on a particle system.
I dont know if this will go public, but anyone that wants to play with it i can provide a link later tomorrow.
This demo uses the heaviest mesh, so would be interesting to see the performance in other systems. The last scene in the demo uses a lighter mesh version.
The controls in the demo are just a small sample of the possibilities in shaping the ocean.
I am sure the Sprite Sheet Maker can also be used with the water and would allow to setup cool 2D games with dynamic water laters easilly. I will try to create such a sample scene after release and the whole setup how to make it as tutorial.
Another plan is to create some Dynamic Image Effects to apply to the sprites before they are created, like motion blur and more, which would give extra nice results in things like explosions.
The second demo is ready, it needs only a few more things for the final look. This system will record the particle, create an atlas and assign it to a texture and animated it in a particle system. It uses the default options, but there are a lot of choices to control the effect and the background/transparency etc.
I have decided to make the Toon Ocean controller so that will be easy to setup day time transitions and weather conditions. This way will be easy to integrate with the Sky Master system.
The next step is to add to the shader the new Sky Master volumetric scatter fog system and have this variety available too (if it works ok of course). This will come in a later update.
Another thing i will add is a lightning emulation on the water surface, this looks very cool to not have in
The day/night transitions have been implemented in the Toon Ocean and a “lightning storm” weather type is also done and provides dynamic lightning effects on the water surface. A new demo with these will arrive soon.
Some of the icon style particle effects, these can be customized with Shuriken for various effects. I will include many samples and possibilities for each.
I have also create “latency in tail” systems and will apply them to the bats formations etc, a sample is the rotating glowball in the pic.
Sample of using Sprite Sheet Maker with the Toon Ocean, for easy creation of 2D animated water planes. These planes can be further adjusted and painted on with a picture editing tool, for any number of extra artistic features.
Making such effects takes only a few clicks using the Toon Effect Maker interface.
These planes can also have any number of other in between effects and animations or particles, to further enchance the look with things like foam, other waves etc
The pack will offer a lot of new controls for particle direction. The aura effects have been augmented with radial velocity adjustement option, and various orientation arranegments, like radial towards tanget, towards or away from center etc.
Scripts have also been created to control particle axis of rotation, for things like rotating heart systems etc
I am currently adding Undo functionality for the scaling and modifications parts, so it is easy to restore particles to their previous state after a change.
The undo is now working nicely and i have started creating the effect library interface.
The procedure is rather automatic, i just create a prefab of the effect and a similar name icon in the prefabs and icons directories and the Prefab Manager will find them and display correctly in the GUI, so it should be very easy to add your own effects and have them all in one place.
A sample of the library WIP in the pic above, from the Fire effects category.
I am close to finilizing the fire category, i also added a lava effect using the Toon Ocean module. There will be 80+ effects in the fire section alone.
I will post the total effect number for the first version when i am have finished all categories.
I am now working the water-ice category and the remaining are special effects (icons etc), nature (creatures, bats, butterflies, swarms, ground etc), air-lightning-cloud effects and more