Vector field

The free .fga vector fields work fine with PopcornFX

3D Graphics, Game Effects, PopcornFX / By

Be advised the scale of the vector fields in this pack should be around .01 or so. If your vector field appears odd, try tweaking the overall scale and magnitude of the fields. The orientation of the vector fields may also need to be adjusted, -90 on the x axis should do it. 

PKFX has a very nice vector field visualizer, but some fiddling around is probably going to be needed since each one of these vector fields was built for other purposes and on a different platform.

Once you get dialed in, however, these .fga vector fields are great.

Vector Fields 2

3D Graphics, Game Effects, Houdini / By

While working on a release of 100+ vector fields for the Unreal community marketplace I built a few handy tools to generate vector fields from curves, surfaces etc, and to blend them with constants, noise, various forces, other vector fields and so on.

For example, here is a vector field using a spherical surface and a “pull” force to create a forcefield effect:

 

While this vector field uses a series of curves mixed with flow noise for a “jet exhaust” effect:

In Unreal a single cascade emitter can use these vector fields and GPU sprites to create a very broad range of looks:

So to celebrate and promote the upcoming release on the Unreal marketplace I’ve generated 10 free vector fields in .fga format for download here. Enjoy!

Vector Fields 1

3D Graphics, Game Effects, Houdini / By

Writing custom vector fields is pretty easy in VOPs. You can leverage the multiple noise functions Houdini offers, easily create vortices and whirling clouds, and with just a bit more effort bring in curves and use them as paths which the field can orbit around or follow along. Whip up an additive shader and you can get very nice results… or export the fields to use in Unreal or some other game engine. I plan on eventually offering a number of free static vector fields here on the site for game effects artists, but for now here are some basic test renders, cheers.