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Explosion ripple effect

Discussion in 'Editor & General Support' started by Disaster, Feb 25, 2012.

  1. Disaster

    Disaster

    Joined:
    Oct 31, 2009
    Posts:
    43
    I'm trying to figure out how to go about creating that blast / explosion 'ripple' effect you see in a lot of games these days. It's hard to describe, but the ripple kind of distorts everything behind it to give the impression of an explosion. I attempted to take a screenshot to illustrate the kind of effect I mean:



    Is this kind of thing possible with Unity? I imagine it is craft shady work, is there a specific term I should search that might help?
     
  2. Krobill

    Krobill

    Joined:
    Nov 10, 2008
    Posts:
    282
    you can search for terms like refraction or displacement effect. There's basically two ways of doing this kind of effect :
    - using a fragment shader with a grab pass or a render to texture (both require Unity pro). The concept is that you grab the rendered image with your 3D objects or sprites and you apply some kind of displacement on each pixel to create a distortion.
    - using a vertex shader to displace vertices of a plane grid. You can also do it the hard and 'slow' way by modifying the mesh geometry of this plane. You'll only be able to distort what is actually mapped on the plane. To distort the entire render with a vertex shader you still need render to texture, hence Unity pro.
     
  3. Disaster

    Disaster

    Joined:
    Oct 31, 2009
    Posts:
    43
    Thanks Krobill. I assume the 'pro' way would work on iPhone pro too?
     
  4. Krobill

    Krobill

    Joined:
    Nov 10, 2008
    Posts:
    282
    Yup, I'm no mobile specialist but I think so.