Explosions

Explosions are the core of juiciness in games and add extra drama to the death of enemies, the destruction of objects or if you’re Michael Bay, you can use them for anything.

In this tutorial series, you’re going to create a stylized explosion.

You will learn to:

• Break down complex effects into separate particle layers
• Create a smoke cloud that dissipates in the air
• Animate sparkles
• Design smooth fire trails with particles
• Use the animation player to nail the timing of visual effects

What we’re going to create

We’re going to create and layer four particle effects:

1. An explosive ball of fire.
2. A large cloud of dark smoke. Together with the ball of fire, it will shape the explosion’s body.
3. Trails of fire that spurt from the explosion’s center.
4. Sparkles that come after the explosion to give it extra detail and appeal.

Each lesson covers one effect on its own. We’ll then assemble all the particles at the end of this series and use an AnimationPlayer node to control the timing of each effect and build the complete explosion.