Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.

• The effect visual and reference was centred around the direction of space and a black hole, but in the final effect, this didn't come through very well. The energy and power of the black hole didn't translate neither did it's gravity. The stars were present but didn't really take up much screenspace so got kind of lost. The key principles to making a complicated effect like this would be to storyboard it, understand what elements are required and when. How would you initiate the effect and build anticipation, when will the bulk of the effect kick in, how powerful do you envisage the area of effect to be? Is this a minor or major effect that does a lot of damage? By understanding it's function you give yourself clear guidelines and direction for the overall effect. Asking these questions and really understanding what you are building will help you understand how to approach it. Learning key principles of animation will serve you well in visual effects. Research showed good understanding and direction of what you wanted to achieve but it could have been a little more detailed and focussed as well as include a rough storyboard of the effect you wanted to achieve.
• The concept and idea of creating and AOE black hole sounds exciting but the execution requires further development outside of watching tutorials and replicating what's seen.
• Good effort to throw your hat into the ring. Try presenting your work in a more suitable context. Very hard to read distortion on an even coloured grey backdrop. It would help a lot to have some generic props/textures on the floor to see the extend of the effect. Look into connecting timing and forces of your different elements, right now everything has a disconnected feel to it. Shapes, colours, motion, detail - all those things seem to be not from the same realm. Good start - improvement comes with practice!
• Hey, nice job on this effect! It's definitely off to a good start. Here are a few things I noticed: Black Hole Movement: The movement of the black hole seems a bit too much. I'd suggest toning it down a bit. In the video you referenced, it looks more like it's creating a hole in the environment, which is the vibe you want to go for with a black hole effect. Shader Quality: You might want to focus on improving the shaders to really make the effect pop. Some of them seem a bit too intense like the distortion getting sucked into the black hole. Maybe start with the particles centered and then gradually expand them to size 3 over time. Timing is Key: Keep an eye on the timing of the effect. Getting it right can make a big difference in how it's perceived. Brightness Levels: Also, watch out for the brightness levels. Some parts might be a bit too bright. It's all about finding that balance. Keep up the good work, and don't forget to tweak those details! Looking forward to seeing how it evolves.
• Unfortunately I wasn’t able to have a look at the assets (missing project files) to give feedback on the technical side of things. From the visual perspective – it was a good attempt at creating a grenade effect. There are many key elements to the effect which is great to see, however, in my opinion they lack cohesiveness. Some parts of the effect have more stylized approach, some are more realistic looking. The color scheme and saturation could be a little more unified. I would also suggest revisiting the timing of the elements to make the effect more punchy and give it more impact. In addition, I think the final presentation could benefit from a little more polish, to make sure that the effect is showcased in the appealing way with a high quality render or screen capture.
• This effect has some interesting elements, however it does not read well and is quite hard to understand. I think some of this is due to the distortion effects used in a lot of elements. Initially you have the black hole opening which has a lot of distortion and ripple so its hard to see the details. It also confuses the readability of the pulsing before exploding. I think this effect needed to last longer, with the portal opening, with a bit more "pop" initially quite fast and then slowing, expanding for a second or two, before pulsing and exploding. During the expansion having dust, smoke and light elements pulling in front around the effect. You have some sparks pulling in, but they are hard to see on the background and against the distortion. Having some darker smoke elements would help these brighter sections read better. During the expansion the centre of the blackhole could start to glow or change colour slightly showing the build up of energy. The explosion is confusing as the size of the debris coming from it is a lot bigger than the hole. We dont really have much bursting shapes with outwards spikes to convey the energy of the burst. Finally the bursting dust and sparkles should have a very fast initial velocity, you can use a high drag to rapidly slow these elements, you can create a curve for the drag that starts high and rapidly declines to a much lower value over perhaps 0.05-0.2 normalised lifetime which will rapidly slow the movement and then alow it to move without so much drag afterwards. https://www.youtube.com/@VFX_Apprentice/videos You will probably find some videos on this channel very useful for your continued development.
• First of all, well done for completing and submitting your project on time that is an achievement in itself! Things that went well: 1. The timing of the stages really nice, the build-up for the payoff feels right and a few more elements to sell the scale of the explosion will really help 2. You look to have a good understanding of the material editor in Unreal- That's really important going forward as you'll rely on it a lot with complex effects There are a few areas I would look to focus on in your future projects/ if you wanted to work back into this piece: 1. The presentation doesn't feel professional- setting up level sequencers, creating a nice simple backdrop (checkerboard ) and working the lighting will help sell the piece. The blue hex on the white floor is hard to see and I am unable to view the refraction properly as the flat white background doesn't give it any information to work with 2. I would look at improving the visuals of the black hole by making it feel more radial (like your references) - using disc meshes, and vortex velocity for particles to help sell the idea of the black hole sucking stuff in- using rocks that are being sucked in it could help tie the effect with the end 3. Would be useful to gather more references before you set off and even create simple sketches to get your ideas down and give you something to work towards. 4. Making the colours more consistent will help with the visual appeal- you currently have a very dark centre piece with very hard-to-see purple and cyan outside it whereas your refs generally stick to one colour with varying values and opacity to help portray motion and draw the eye to the centre. The brightness around the core also helps give the sense of power with the black hole, which I feel your effect is lacking. 5. Your explosion looks to have a lot of nice elements but I just feel the scaling is a little off: The rocks feel waaaaay bigger than everything else. For me, the lens flare and the supporting sprites need to be bigger to help show the impact of the explosion Overall, I hope you are proud of what you made and were able to learn a lot in the process! With a little bit more attention to detail and practice your effects will improve a lot as I can see you have the fundamental skills down for making VFX! If you would like more feedback on this or future projects you can reach out to me on LinkedIn: ‘Ethan Gangotra’ and I will do my best to help! Best of luck with the rest of the university and with the rest of the competition!🙂 👏
• Little care given to the documentation and overall presentation of the project, a great concept with some good references to begin from but the final effect feels very disjointed and incomplete. Would love to have seen more effort put into this.