VFX -how to do

Hi, I'm rather new to VFX and wanted to get some insight into how others would tackle this vfx project:

So, in the picture there's this text that read:

"ambient vfx: soft emitting light rising to the top"

I imagine that means the light at the base of the red/yellow line would start shining up until the top where it would glow very bright, fade, then start again.

Is this a shader thing? How would you achieve this and if there's a .shader you could link, I'd love to see how it works. I think I would easily be able to do this in unreal, with a uv scroll node, but hm, not sure in unity- how would you make it glow too?

Last thing at the top:

"active state: vfx - hologram of planets shoots out from the center"

I think that's just a mesh particle with render trail right? the glow itself of the planet I'm not so sure, but I guess an additive standard shader should do right?

Well, thanks, also...any resources of learning more about vfx in unity would be very much appreciated.

Thanks!

 

There are a variety of ways to do vfx like those. Often it will depend on the situation. For these, the are most likely mesh and texture scrolling/animation.

That first one is probably a either a scrolling texture via shader.
For the glows, again probably just a billboard with an additive shader. Something like this:


The planet could be a particle, but probably just a mesh, as is the light beam (cone). Like this :



Using meshes, small textures (or coloring verts) and additive shaders will cover a lot of ground. The roof glow is probably the same, just a in inverted cone, and the texture is animated either with animation particles or shader.

 

Ah, thanks! Yeah, I figured it was a uv scroll, but ugghhh, unity makes these things hard to do.

Thanks for the planet one explanation too, man...gotta get on that shader stuff.