I recently released a new explosions pack and built it specifically for video games content – it’s been an absolute blast (pun intended!) to create and a massive learning experience shifting my workflow away from FumeFX and onto Houdini Pyro.

It is ideal for both indie & AAA developers – the pack contains engine-ready flipbooks, production friendly source assets and will save you hundreds of hours of simulating, rendering, compositing! Suitable for use in any games engine (Unreal Engine 4, CryEngine, Unity, etc…) and easy to re-author the flipbooks from the After Effects source files.

You can purchase the FX pack over at: https://videohive.net/item/explosions-for-games-i/23873239 – please check it out and support it! I hope to make more of these things in the future 🙂

It contains various explosions, their render passes and flipbooks ready to be used in different games engines, along with production-friendly After Effects source assets. For the testing purposes, I’ve used Unreal Engine 4. However, the same principles can easily be applied to Unity, CryEngine or any other engine at your disposal.

You can also check out the preview here:

Additionally, I made a fairly in-depth UE4 tutorial on building the shader for the test. For example, I put some focus on setting up the Blackbody node and creating a motion vectors function. Similarly, with the After Effects tutorial, the examples are for changing the flipbook layouts or adding glow.

I’ve been dabbling in Houdini for the last few years, because it’s so very production friendly. It comes with all the tools in the world and a fantastic renderer in Mantra. In addition, it fits in perfectly with After Effects’ non-destructive workflow.

It’s so easy to create throw-away prototypes, just to prove out an idea. Even better, people share them around all the time! The community is vibrant, which is an absolute plus.

Thanks for reading, hope you found this useful!