All Things Art - FX Edition

Energy wings like this.

Here's something else:

18. Non-shaded, single-colour costume items: You know even if you pick matte tights of a very simple shape, the engine will still shade the costume piece and give it light areas, dark areas, shadows, shape and highlights? How about costume pieces that have NO shading at all? For instance, if I pick a black torso, then all you'll see is a black silhouette of my torso with no shape or depth to it beyond the edges of the mesh, but the texture itself would be completely flat. This should make it easier to create ghosts, shadows and energy beings when your body doesn't appear to comprise of physical matter, but just basically has an outline shape.

Calystix the Shaper would be proud.

*edit*
Reference pics time. I'm talking something like the bodies on these guys:




Note how the arms and heads on these guys obviously have a shape, they're not just flat, but they have no shading of any kind on them, so the only way to infer this shape is when they move and you see their bodies from different angles. That's more or less what I want to see.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Okay, here goes.

First, let me echo the following calls:
Aura EVERYTHINGs. Wings, body parts, weapon trails, weapons, etc. Less is more and you can do amazing things with all fx and no geo/textures.
Updated Fire FX. FIRE!
Beehive Barrier shield FX, especially for the FF powerset.

Auxiliary suggestion: Experiment with "vanishing" wings that disappear when not being used, perhaps by having the "rest" frame not call any geo or FX, if you can do that.
Bring back the feather trail for Angel Wings.


Power Customization II: The Hastening.
Basically getting around to customizing all the Pool Powers, including PPP/APP and Epic Archetype powersets.
To that end SPECIFICALLY I'd like to suggest afterimage shadows for Superspeed and Hasten. You can borrow elements from the Super Reflexes set for the shadows, one early power in that set makes you do that.
Super Leap: Impact craters at takeoff and touchdown.

Costume change emote: Phone Booth. You already have the geo assets in-game, now you just need to adapt them for this. Also: Seconding pillar of light.

I like bats.

Expand on the foot trail tech pioneered in the Steampunk pack. Suggestions: Molten footprint, slime trail, frost patches, "Spring in your Step" where vegetation grows up under your feet and dies away in supertime (Excellent reference: the Shishigami from Princess Mononoke)

An aura I've always wanted is some kind of a liquid dripping aura. This could possibly also involve the trailing shown in the Steampunk aura to create watery footprints or color changed to create a dripping slime effect.

Please _Please_ can we get a "Bright" option for dark powers I know that you may feel this violates a VFX version of the "cottage" rule but, there is _already_ a light-coloured darkness power: Soul mastery.

Please let Dark:Soul based players match up their VFX

Thanks for the time, Tunnel Rat.

Please allow a minimal/no FX option for /Energy Aura.

I only ask one thing for VFX: To turn off the annoying HASTEN effect.

It's so annoying to have the perfect costume ruined by the glowing yellow fists. It's not needed. Everyone knows you have Hasten and the sound effect is enough of a reminder it activates. Also, you can look at your status bar for confirmation. I really, really don't need yellow fists to tell me I have Hasten active.

As many people have said before, all the minor effects end up creating an effect goo onscreen that tells me nothing and does everything to obscure the game while I play.

You have a beautiful game graphics wise. There should be a way to suppress superfluous effects to show it's beauty.

Give us the Oracle costume. That would be very popular with the playerbase.

One thing I would like is friendly stealth turned off. You get all kinds of wierd effects that just dont look good. Chests that you can see right through chest details while the rest of the charcter is mostly non transulscent. The angel wings also never look quite right when thier is even a little bit of tanslucent coming from a power. Looks like hard starchy candy that is partialy or mostly in another dimension depending on the amount of invisbility. Its pretty much losses it details for the feathery effect.

May not be exactly the main focuses of the thread but I think its realated enough.

Any chance to revisit Granite so that it can have the Lava and Crystal customizable version? I actually deleted a character at about 10th level when I realized my really super-cool gold crystalline character.... would look *exactly* like everyone else when I got Granite.

Even if it requires changing the *base* Granite so it's not a model swap.

(And please tell me that Kheldian customization, even just color tinting, is on the block. I'm really sick and tired of my Kheldians having no color customizations and looking just like any Nictus.)

Still here, even after all this time!

If for example deciding to change something like Superjump to include cracks in the ground when landing, please make such a thing an option only if possible.

Character themes vary wildly, and using the superjump example, one person's hard-landing Hulk type superjumper vs. someone's light-landing ninja superjumper would make cracks in the ground for all superjump landings frustrating. Which comes right back to power customisation for power pools, oops, sorry. Hard to seperate these things.

1: I'm going to re-post this and continue o
2: Also I know we have the system in place to have costume pieces that animate/ FX on movement. So can we have auras attached t the feet and legs as well as "Flying,Jumping,Running, Flying+Jumping, Running+jumping, Running+Flying" auras so people can simulate jet boots and gloves, flying on clouds, lightning, E.t.c.

Glowing eyes. And I mean a static glow. All we have now is this pulsey sort of glows and while that might look good as part of a super power it's not if you what it as a normal aspect off your toon. In real life that sort of effect would be annoying.
Also please note that some of the eye glows don't realy sit on the eyes but rather in front of them. Like by an inch or so.

Oh yes, that reminds me, is the Glow effec ts as used in Mutation booster costumes an effects department issue or a costumes department? Because either way I'd like to have that technology, just..... Just all over the damn place. As an option for every pattern we currently have. As a full-body texture option. Just for every possible thing.

It might be interesting to have a "hair" aura. Using FX to simulate flowing, moving hair could be interesting. A flowing stringy or hair-like aura could be interesting even if it is not useful as hair.

I think this qualifies as FX so here goes nothing.

I'd really love to see the Model Selection graphic (the bubbles and electricity effect) and the generic Hologram at the Architect Entertainment as costume pieces. It'd be awesome to wear other pieces (that don't have that effect like chest pieces, shoulders, etc.) over the base body pieces with the chemistry and hologram looking effects. They are simply awesome. Perhaps have them as auras if that works instead/in addition to.

Here are some examples of what I'm talking about both in comics and in game.







For reference for the Hologram request:



And the Bubblies request:

1. Darkness powers - feel free to come up with anything. All of the darkness sets look dated. Dark armor looks prettttty good out of all the darkness powers except for maybe Cloak of Darkness.

2. Speed pool - yikes. Whirlwind looks good though, that one can be left as-is. I think making Super Speed like Synapse's blur would be a great start. Hasten - how about an initial 'burst' effect followed by a RED colored animation that matches how end recovery and drain powers look - like a set of dots that spin around your body once in awhile.

3. Another vote for weapon auras. That should take less time than making a new weapon model and then have to add fx just for that weapon across all sets in the long run, but I could be wrong.

This may be an animation request instead of VFX: alternate ways of seeing PBAOEs for melee classes - I can't be the only one that dislikes the jump-and-spin-hitting-the-ground all the time. Feel free to do anything with that.

LOve to have the Epic version of Tonado (you know, the one from the Dom/Stalker etc Whirlwind epic) available under Storm Summoning.

Some ability to suppress visibility of buffs for raids/trials would be great: IE if I can avoid seeing a zillion healing auras going off, that would be awesome.

For my wish list:

A different Hasten effect. Either colorable or much more subtle looking. Preferably something with a full body effect instead of just fire-coated hands.

A non-transparency effect for the various Stealth powers. The fully invisible effect is OK (although I'd like one for invisibility too -- could be a "hey don't notice me" or "perception filter" type power instead of real invisibility -- but I can't really simulate that now), but the partial transparency from Stealth/Cloaking Device/Energy Cloak just looks ugly in my opinion. It's just transparent enough to mess with costume looks and to allow you to see all the layers/polygons that make up the various body sections.

I'll give this a try. Some random ideas I've had over the years:

Magick/Magic:
Currently, there are NO magickal effects for powers. All powers, even if you choose magic origin, allow only a 'tech' look. Devices, for example. Use existing graphics as an option instead of the tech-only look we have now. For example, the various 'drones' floating around our heads: rulaaru eyeballs or dark or light fairy or wisps from Croatoa. You get the idea.

Elemental auras for weapons as already suggested.
Like the trend of magickal auras already in place; please add more: ankhs, pentacles, eyes, fairies, etc

I add my voice to the 'kill the hasten' power effect and update super speed. Hate taking these powers because of the way they mess-up my costume designs heh.

Customizing PPPs and EPPs, of course---if possible.

that's all for now,
Cal