Breakdown #Flame Shrine

VFX Components I Will Cover

Water Domain

Explosion

Paper Talisman

Talisman

Shader

Final Preview

I wanted the overall effect to carry a Japanese ritualistic atmosphere. Drawing inspiration from depictions of supernatural and exorcism rituals, I incorporated paper talismans marked with writings.

In addition to that i wanted to include the flame aspect of the effect into as many elements as possible so i created a burning shader for the talisman.

Talisman Texture

Preview

The talisman’s primary texture was created in Material Maker. I began by generating a square border through the subtraction of two square shapes, then layered it over a soft noise texture to establish the background. Finally, I overlaid Japanese characters on top to complete the design.

Talisman Burn Alpha

A soft Simple Noise node is great for situations like this, when you add it to an existing texture and clamp it to 1 it gives us a nice secondary noise to an existing baseline, which is the inverted Y gradient in this case.

I wanted the talismans to convey strong motion, as if being lifted and flapped by the surrounding flames winds. To achieve this, I instantly thought about sine waves, perfect for seamless back and forth motion. So I applied them to the talisman’s Z axis position, giving them a natural, rhythmic movement.

Sin Visual Setup

I started by creating a Y axis gradient to give the talisman an initial upward tilt, then layered a repeating sine wave on top to add a wave like motion.

Multiplied the sine motion by a Y axis gradient so that the bottom of the talisman remains unaffected, ensuring it stays anchored to the ground. Also set a strength parameter.

Tilt + Sine

Tilt Demonstration

Outcome

Combined the textures, and fed them into a Sample Gradient in engine.

Talisman Colors

Gradient For Tilt

Preview

Talisman Fire Highlight

Preview

To create a fire highlight, I duplicated the Step node and offset its input value, effectively pushing one mask slightly “ahead” of the other. This offset creates a defined highlight band, where increasing the offset results in a thicker line.

To achieve a convincing burning paper look, I needed a dynamic alpha that mimics the movement of a flame, while also allowing precise control over its height to drive the VFX dissolve.

Feeding the texture into a Step node gives both the sharp cut off and the control I needed by playing with the Edge(1) parameter, later animating it with a curve in the VFX graph.

For the sine wave I first needed a repeating scrolling texture to dictate where the sine distortion will take an effect, so I generated one.

Repeating Logic

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Time speed

Reset every 1.9 seconds

Offset 0.9 units to opposite direction

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Flip Direction

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Preview

Implementing Logic with texture

I repeated the setup with varied parameters for the Multiply and Add nodes to introduce additional variation and create a more visually engaging texture.

Having the sine distortion effect only the scrolling area by multiplying with the texture.

Lastly I fed this result back into the object’s Z position to drive the motion along the forward axis.

Preview looking odd due to negative values.

I replaced the Y position in this case, due to the mesh being rotated inside maya being parallel to the ground instead of perpendicular, so Y is the meshes depth.

VFX

Logic / Behavior

I spawned the talismans along a circular shape using a Position Sequential block, which allowed me to distribute all instances simultaneously without randomization. This ensured they were evenly spaced around the circle.

Spawn Logic

Later, I wanted all the talismans to face a specific point, in this case its the center of the effect. To achieve this, I implemented a 2D rotation setup to manually calculate the angle each particle needed to rotate, ensuring they consistently oriented toward the target.

Rotation setup

Render Logic

This method can be used in Update, Initialize & Render phases. Depending on your needs.

Animate appearance and disappearance

Connected to Spawn Burst value as well

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Animate disappearance

Slight random values for distortion variation

Slight random values for rotation variation

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I Used a curve to drive the disappearance dissolvement, as well as added a few slight randoms for a more natural look.

Explosion

Shader

Circle

Flares

Ground Burn

From analyzing ground explosion abilities, I identified three key priorities for the effect: ensuring a clear and readable hit radius, creating visually striking and appealing visual noise, and adding a satisfying aftermath to emphasize the explosion’s impact and damage potential.

Circle Mesh

Main Texture

Circle UV

For the Circle shader Iv mainly used layers of Voronoi Noise, and UV's Y gradients. Each layer was tweaks and altered by using nodes like Smoothsteps, Remaps, Adds & multiply later connected to a Clamp node to keep the values between 0 to 1.

Instead of relying on a circular texture, I used a circular UV setup to make standard textures scroll along the Y axis, allowing them to originate from the mesh’s center and extend outward to the edges. I also added additional edge loops to create smoother easing at the borders, enhancing the motion’s overall fluidity.

Secondary Highlights

Mesh Border Highlight

Fill In Gradients

Final Output

Colored

Secondary Flares Custom Mesh

For the visual noise, I aimed to include an initial glare, as is common with explosions, accompanied by a simple yet eye catching primary flare. To add variety and fill visual gaps, I also incorporated secondary flares that contribute additional noise and detail to the effect.

Secondary Flares Texture

In Material Maker I used noise textures and fed them into a circle map multiplied with a circle gradient that creates a soft sphere, lastly fed into a smoothstep like node to flip the image values.

I repeated this process twice to add depht and variation.

Ground Burn Texture

Main Flares

Glare

Secondary Flares

The secondary flares were generated using a procedural texture based on Voronoi Noise, with their appearance refined through nodes such as Tiling & Offset and Smoothstep. The resulting texture was then applied to a custom mesh to achieve the desired directional flow.

To create the texture I used Material Maker.

Using combined noise textures fed into a circle map multiplied with a circle gradient, lastly fed into a smoothstep like node to eliminate halfway grey values.

Main Flares Texture

For the glare texture, I combined a line texture with Unity’s default particle texture. This layering was handled in VFX Graph, as each element required slightly different timing and therefore needed to remain separate.

Sphere

Line Flare

Glare Texture

Two Voronoi Noises, one is multiplied with Simple Noise to create gradients and the other is fed into a SmoothStep node to create a mask that resembles the silhouette of fragments in the air.

I used UV based gradients combined with Smoothstep to define where the texture should appear and where it should fade out, helping to avoid harsh edges at the mesh boundaries.

Lastly, I fed the result into a Gradient Sampler to achieve my desired color palette.

In Scene Example

With The Shader

First Variation

Second Variation

Final Result

Soft Sphere

VFX

Logic / Behavior

The Circle, Flares, and Ground Burn all spawn at the center of the effect, each using a scale up animation to drive their appearance. Their timing is staggered slightly through spawn delays and adjusted lifetimes to create a more dynamic and layered visual impact.

The secondary flares also spawn at the effect’s center, but use a burst spawn mode with a random Z axis rotation applied to each particle for variation and to fill the space as secondary noise.

Render Logic

Mesh Axis

Used a Smoothstep parameter to animate the texture's appearance instade of using scale.

Shader

Water Domain

Having a large AOE skill, I knew I needed to have a clear indicator where the effect hits. Therefor I made a readable clean ring as a baseline and on top of it I placed a secondary ring for visual purposes.

For inside the area, I wanted to have a nice contrast with the fire elements in both color & theme so I decided to go with blue water.

Spinning Ring

Domain Area

Main Ring

Spinning Ring

Inside Material Maker I made the Spinning Ring texture, starting with a simple line that is warped by a noise texture then layered with different Blur nodes and lastly fed into a circular map node.

Domain Area

Water Texture UV distortion

Secondary Texture To Fake Wind

Premade Flipbook Made In Material Maker

Masked Area For The Flipbook

Add A Clean Ring For Effect Readability

Final Result

Masked Area

Final Result

Preview

VFX

Logic / Behavior

Lastly, for both the Domain Area & Spinning Ring elements I used a simple scale animations for their appearance & disappearance, as well as setting an angular velocity to the Ring to make it spin.