how games animate almost everything 

"... And came across this really beautiful waterfall..." *Looking at a sh*tty png rolling down a wall* Almost every day i am reminded that the average consumer will praise anything if you put a few crappy effects onto it... Genshin be looking like a ps2 game in a lot of areas, but all the mindless consumer can think is usually nothing beyond "It HaS pRetTy GrAsS, aNd SParKlEss!!!11!1" (same as every other game nowadays) I shudder to imagine what this guys other video, titled "Why genshin is an artistic and technical masterpiece", i see in the recommendations to the right will be like... I don't think i could handle that level of bullsh*t... Praising a game like genshin, with the graphical and technical prowess of a potato, is borderline insanity... And i'm saying this as someone who loves simple graphics. The more you can achieve with less effort, the better. I *hate* glorification of sub-par quality though, especially when those games (or any product) set standards for years to come... (And i'm not talking about the gacha at all) And before someone calls me a hater because they can't accept that not everyone agrees with them: This was a random recommendation and i gave it a chance, simple as that. I'm just using the comments to, you know, comment on the content i just watched... The reason the comments exist... Mindless defenders sure like to forget that, so i'll try calling it out in advance this time.

One of the most important things I've ever learned in animation is K.I.S.S. aka "Keep It Simple, Stupid" The best way of doing anything with any level of complexity is to break it down into small, simple parts that are easy to understand and implement. It's much simpler to animate 2 scrolling textures with tweens instead of making a complex fire animation frame-by-frame. This mentality needs to be fully embodied in every aspect of your project in order for you to get anything done efficiently and effectively. Same goes for character animation. We don't animate a full detailed pose 24 times a second frame by frame, that'd be dumb and complicated. Too many factors to consider at once, it'd be nearly impossible to get everything right on the first go. Instead, we get the most basic poses across to make sure the poses work in the first place (we're talking usually less than 10 frames total), then slowly but surely flesh out the poses limb by limb one at a time, add in details and animate them one by one, until EVENTUALLY we get a fully completed animation. It might sound like it takes a long time, but this is actually much faster than the alternative.

"Favorite Gambling Game" 🤣🤣🤣

i remember doing that animation in blender, to do river/waterfall part you need to use Voronoi texture, then add some magic with ramps etc, and animate by moving texture's location by using mapping note. To animate splashes of the waterfall you can use the same voronoi texture, but add some distortion to it and use half of the sphere, so it would be visible Edit: remembered that it was from tutorial i saw by Kristof Dedene

FX in video game are very interesting and simple but also looks so amazing, Thanks for this cool video

I'm so glad I found this channel! And yeah, it's true... I mean, in my experience as a game developer, I've never heard of UV panning(probably because the term varies across game engines), but the general idea is in fact 100% accurate. In unity, we use shader graph to create a shader which accepts a texture(usually a tiled grayscale texture), then we constantly increase/decrease the offset of the texture's UV over time on the x and/or y axis(UV) to create the scrolling texture effect, then multiplied by HDR color. We add the material from that shader to a 3D plane or low poly mesh and voila! Clouds!! There are some neat tricks pulled in the alpha channel for transparency and in the normal tangent to create realism, but yeah, that's how it is done.

So much info in such a short format! Brilliant!

Even Though I mostly know how these mechanics works, but it is always delightful switching to your channel

Your channel is amazing. Every time I come here I learn something new and interesting. Honestly the quality of your content is unmatched 😳🤯

I love your videos from the perspective of a consumer. Just helps me to appreciate gaming as an art form all the more, knowing all that goes into their creation.

Studying game art at uni, this is the bread and butter for a big part of FX and procedural texturing - basically a summary of what we were taught. Really love seeing these things in action. I'm gonna be deep diving into it for my next specialism module with dynamic flow maps and lots of other procedural stuff!

I'm just getting myself set on a path of learning realtime vfx and this video pops up. Great timing :D

It's great seeing more insight into this sort of thing. Square's artists were gods with this sort of thing in FF games back then.

Wind Waker and Mario Galaxy have some beautiful texture work. There are some good RU-vid videos on the topic.

Yes, I always appreciate the simple solutions. Besides, volumetrics can be a pain to get right where scrolling textures is fast, tried and true.

I just upped my Dev skills by sooooo much in this short amount of time. Exquisite!!! Thank you!!

that Vegeta scream caught off guard lmao

Another very cool approach that I use a lot is to manipulate the UV coordinates for a texture (which are basically just a red and green texture) with another texture. For example you can "distort" an image texture by multiplying the UV map used for it with a noise texture to get an water-like effect. This is also a much better way to create a fire shader. Create a ramp (white-yellow-orange-red..) and distort it by multiplying its coordinates with a stretched. noise texture - done. Beautiful fire.

i feel there is far more to this than just scrolling textures, textures can literally be animated itself

Nice job man, seems like soft soft has gotten a lot more complex since the fruity loops days that I rember. Very helpful, thank you.

I honestly would love to see how games make rain. Is it 2d giving off the illusion? Some games have crazy rain physics. I would love to know how it's done

When a couple of scrolling textures looks way better than simulated goop water

"Wait it's all just textures?" "Always has been."

I'm so glad I found this channel I love video games and I've recently started again making projects with Blender Until last month I had no finished a project I've made myself (not counting tutorial, I finished Blender Guru's donut tutorial 11 months ago) I'm just so fascinated to see what video games do and how to do it and it gives me inspiration for my own work

It's a bit funny whenever I play games, whenever I'm going to step on anything I'm always like "wait, is this a solid object or just a 2d texture"

Looking at that traveller makes a Tenno ask themself: well, should they teach him their movements?

this is a strangely cool and really interesting tidbit of knowledge i would never really need to know but still happy that i did, thank OP!

Incredibly informational and enlightening video. Love the format. Hope to see more.

warframe has really interesting inside work on things, many people know that even slow pc's can feel like medium pc's playing in warframe, I wonder how they make thir stuff load so quickly , I'm sure some of it is from this texture vid, just curious for the rest cuz they really do have some detailed maps which take same time to load in as the other ones...

You can see this in minecraft pretty well when looking at lava in the pause the texture is still scrolling.

Allow me to bring back an old meme. "It's all textures?" "Always has been." _Cue music_

Thanks, now I'm feeling more sophisticated than before

2 scrolling textures linked together ... then i hear the kirby power mixing sounds 👀👂

You can also animate vertices using a scrolling texture with vector displacement for more complex, non bone animation.

Scrolling textures rock!

The quality of the Content is Just becoming Superior 💪👏🏼💯💯

Everyone who's been a gamer since before the PS1: "you don't say"

Any idea how they made the moss in Sumeru ? It looks like they overlaid small textures on top of each other to create fake geometry but i might be wrong. It gives an interesting look though. Wonder how much performance it costs

You haven't reached the new region?? That place is a master piece you'll be staring at different scenes for a long time.

I havent heard of scrolling textures. I think the word you are looking for is shaders which is basically code controlled textures that are animated according to a rule. They could have a static behaviour like a water shader that simply applies a flow effect or they could behave dynamically in ways such as footprints in sand where code is able to pick up mesh collisions apon the ground to generate footprint textures as each step is taken. Shaders have so many graphical uses that its hard to really categorize their purposes but for the most part its to create an effect that a regular texture cannot. also its important to realize that textures themselves can serve a different purpose to shaders and can even have bot applied to a game object. For instance my footprint shader example will require a ground texture like sand or dirt. the shader will be applied over the texture but nothing will happen until you walk over that texture. then the shader will make footprints while the texture stays the same. And thats only the start of it because you also get shaders that can change the shape of an object. often used to simulate ocean waves for instance.

Fav gambling game, You sounded like deadpool.😭🤣

.... those are simulations. ncloth Sims and Nfluid if done in maya. The only things "animated" are the walk or run cycles, facial animations etc. Now background stuff unless it's particularly important for their vision

Warzone just did this with the lava coming out of the walls in the new Gulag

This is great answer to the puzzle

When I created flowing water in Unreal 1 a long time ago it always looked like poop, but pretty fascinating for that time period. 😅

Thank you for calling it a gambling game; very important detail many people fail to mention when talking about such predatory games.

I appreciate showing some of the techniques but I do wish I had more resources on the subject to delve into. Just panning two textures in opposite directions isn't necessarily going to achieve all these effects, it's just one part of a greater whole. I'd love to learn how to make two panning textures *look* good. Those lighting marks on the waterfall, for instance (the foam and highlights) are a bit more complex than just a panning texture.

I would really love to learn to do this, especially for water, as that seems to be a very tough one to crack. Specially with having to make it all from scratch. (seeing as i want to be able to sell the enviroments)

You should play Monster Hunter portable 3rd. It's full of these, almost to the extreme.

Animator uses maya: I need to figure out all these blend shapes for this water fall! Discovers this video: his power level is over 9000!

That Kazuha swirl-cide is hilarious

I can't imagine that brain that's sitting in there going: "I want to play genshin impact"

Cloud shadows in genshin aren't simple faked scrolling textures, they're exactly like the ones in the sky and respond to various different conditions, including the position of the sun , time of day and land geography.

I’m an ex-gamer but started doing vfx for short videos. This video gave me so many ideas!!!!!! Thanks for this.

Vegeta's technique!

Dont forget flipbook animations! Used for things like explosions

Very good examples to show how its done! Thanks

"my favorite gambling (video) game" mine too but so pretty

I was really hoping you switch out the texture for the waterfall with the thumbnail I am slighty dissappointed but educated now

Speaking of favorite gambling game, how is the water effect on Tartaglia’s skill/scarf/etc done? I remember the hoyo devs mentioning they had issues with him at first and I’m curious abt it

Super cool tip! Thanks for sharing!

Fantastic tutorial, keep up the great videos!

If you're a complete beginner to soft production then soft is imo the easiest daw that you can get, I started off with it.. If you have a little bit

In the GMS switch the “Program” to Analog app 1 TE

2:20 vegeta's technique™

Cool, always wondered how that worked so optimally

Before this was called UV Panning it was called a motion tween. I self taught myself this in Macromedia Flash MX 2004 when I was 14. Back then high speed internet wasn't established as a common thing. Everyone had Dial up. So that left me with very limited resources to learn how to design games. Even if you posted on a forum you'd usually not even get a response for weeks back then. I basically taught myself how to design games and write action script completely alone. But yeah I'd use motion tweets all the time to create these effects in my my games.

Really interesting insight man, always catch myself stopping to stare on genshin at some of their environment effects

Geshing impact is very up to my ears

the thing nowadays is majority only care about how good it looks, and thats about it. but people like me who cant afford to use the latest tech and are limited to potatoes, really benefit from these kind of games. likewise, what use would a huge sword do you if you cant even carry it? i see the latest AAA games and i cant even afford to give a single care bc i know that at least for a few years i wont be able to buy it let alone play it

Never tough that uv pannin and multiply blend mode could be use for smoke Usually I create a flipbook texture for thoses effects

So informative, thanks a lot!

I still have yet to work out monster hunter worlds water, particularly in the seliana gathering hub

again I am just a beginner. I record so softsetups and a Microkorg, even use it as a midi keyboard. But the problem arrives with content

GDC is fun to watch. For someone who doesn't know anything about game coding.

You can see the evolution of these techniques if you look at the evolution of fire effect in 3D games.

UV panel is so important yet... just a few years back, it was not possible to do that in unity without writing an script... And shader graph is still very barebones

Nice breakdown

god damn kakarot looks so good

Once I heard " my favorite gambling game" , I instantly click the like button.

Thank youuu so much!!!

this video: my mind: LAYERS AND TEXTURES GOT IT

Damn dude your channel is awesome!

What software genshin was made from??? and how do you think they created the beautiful cutscenes there?

Nice tutorial Michael,

So youre telling me water in gta isn't real? I can't

gosh ive been searching SO LONG for that Diablo GDC can somebode please link it to me please!!

Very interesting, thanks!

how ? why you always know what im learning and im searching this is not the first time

I love your channel and this video was great! Why do your ending end? Why not point us to other content on the channel or even other works on social media at the very end?

Genshin Impact's waterfall is done with Unity's Shader Graph.

Hearing OGA sound effects outside of games. lol

now i am in a good mood

Was expecting Valorant to be mentioned here. The vfx in Valorant uses the same technique aswell.

New subscriber earned ! Really like this video

Awesome video, incredibly informative

What would be even cooler is not having to rely on this technique for performant animation. One day..

Luv ur content

Pretty cool video!! Thanks man!

how do people didnt know this? like bruh