Hello again Martha fans! It's time for another behind the scenes look at development, this time with part 2 of our visual FX focus, once again written by Lorenzo Cardile from LKA.
We'll be taking a look at how the mysterious White Lady from the lake was given her ethereal appearance, and then a small peak at how the worms quite literally turn. Enjoy!
Smoke On The Water
Let’s go on to talk about particle effects!
Creating the smoke seen amongst the White Lady was a challenge. We knew what kind of effect we wanted but it was tricky to get right. An effect was needed that would render the aura of mysticism and ephemeralness of the Lady; I did a lot of rehearsals without success.
Using Niagara, the first attempt was to make the mesh emit a lot of GPU particles. These particles had to be the same colour as the vertex from which they were to be emitted from, in such a way as to simulate a kind of trail using the curl noise node. I helped myself by dividing the linear trail to give it a smokier effect, similar to the movement of smoke from a cigarette.
We immediately realized that we didn't like the result, where there was more density of vertices there were more particles, so her head was full due to the hair, while other areas such as shoulders and arms were practically empty.
In an attempt to make the effect better, I added some particle systems that emitted from the empty areas of the mesh, but even then, we didn't like the result at all. By removing the very first effect I created which was emitted from the whole body and then adding other emitters instead, the result already seemed more in line with what we wanted.
I tried adding a map on the refraction channel which improved the result a lot, the model even occasionally disappears and reappears thanks to the refraction map which was exactly what we were trying to achieve!
In the end we were undecided which system to use. In some scenes the version in which involved the whole body emitted worked better, in others it worked well when there were only the specific emitters. In the end we optimized everything by lowering the size of the textures and we used both solutions by dosing them according to the scenes.
Finally, I tried to make a flipbook (a texture that contains a series of looped images, that if run one after the other, simulates an animation) using Houdini by mixing a smoke effect and a fire effect. Applying it to the material of the emitters, the result that was unnerving with an even deeper break in the reflections and an interesting play of colours and opacity. So thus, the key to the White Lady's smoke was born!
As The Worm Turns
As a teaser for the final part of my trilogy of blogs focusing on FX, let’s completely change area of focus and talk about… the maggots which appear on Martha's corpse!
For the maggots, the pipeline was quite simple. Using Maya I modelled a cylindrical ‘worm’-like shape, I then created some horizontal extra loops and scaled them to achieve that classic maggot texture seen on their bodies. This would be familiar to those who like to go fishing! I then applied a ramp to create the classic colours of the worm finishing the model, time to switch to the rig.
To give some variety I created three different versions of the worms and therefore three different rigs as well. The first which allowed the worm to move in a serpentine manner, the second which allowed it to twist at both ends and then finally another that could do a mixture of both animations.
I animated them and then inserted them into the game (In a scene which won’t be available until the games release). The result is really disgusting to say the least!
If you want to catch more Martha content across the internet, then hit the links at the bottom of the blog! And as always, make sure Martha is on your wishlists - and tell your friends!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/515960/Martha_Is_Dead/
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