Unity VFX - Ground Cracks | Fissure | Hole Effect Tutorial

[@GabrielAguiarProd]

💥Let's open holes, cracks or fissures on the ground!💥 *Learn VFX Graph with this powerful UDEMY COURSE* : www.udemy.com/course/unity-vfx-graph-thunderlord-magic-effects/?couponCode=29.99_UNTIL_20-09 OR *With this short VFX Graph Course* : www.udemy.com/course/unity-visual-effect-graph-beginner-to-intermediate/?couponCode=17.99_UNTIL_20-09 Enjoy!

[@sal3348]

thank you

[@yert5035]

I can see this crack through walls and ground.

[@creativecipher]

What a *ground breaking* effect.

[@pluetoe]

this comment 😂

[@mikethegamedev]

true

[@tinemupfacha6051]

*BDM CHING!*

[@qarwill]

it made me go *Through the floor* :D

[@GameDesignverse]

Yeah 😂 literally

[@manolov4074]

I want to say that this is simply amazing. As I said in the previous video , your teaching style is greatly developing. Calm explanations on everything that is going on the screen. Mature and most importantly the things he teaches are nowhere else to be found. Once Again , I want to show my appreciation and just tell you that it was amazing from start to finish!! Great youtuber!

[@GabrielAguiarProd]

So nice of you, thanks for the kind vibes.

[@GymCritical]

I asked for this on the community post, and I’m so surprised you did this! Thank you so much, I’ve had so much trouble finding resources for this!

[@GabrielAguiarProd]

This was a hard one haha but totally worth it! Enjoy ;)

[@magnusm4]

Grant Abbit for everything Blender. Brackeys, Sebastain Lague, Shane Beck and Code Monkey for coding and fun ideas. Jesse J. Jones for Krita animation. And you for insane effects. The perfect combination for anyone to make stunning games. If you could train the will to do anything and do it more with a passion. Then there would be nothing I hadn't done already. And many more. You're the best effect maker and deserves a lot more than given. Only 4500 viewers?! This is the kind of stuff that makes even horrible games into a memorable cult classic on the visual and technical side alone.

[@GabrielAguiarProd]

Thank you so much for the kind words. Appreciate the luv :)

[@magnusm4]

@@GabrielAguiarProd Thanks back. I can already imagine the creative stuff you can make with this. Like unique bullet holes in enemies and players. Or use a standards 2D effect and place this on top and go through it for some really trippy in game journey without it being a scripted cutscene. Stuff like that blow my mind when it isn't scripted or locks you into a path to make the illusion work. I know it's pretty simple. But I love the sky in Quake and in some games you see the shadows of the clouds on the ground. But. What I really love is that shiny moving water floor effect of the water surface shining down on the ocean deep along with the rays of light. Not sure many tutorials go through that as I can't find any and would be a wonderful immersion into world building. Everyone does water shader, water modeling and water mesh manipulation. Everything but no one gives some love to underneath.

[@platinumnoodle]

Awesome tutorial Gabriel. I ran into a few issues whilst I was working on this and found solutions for most of them. 1. When producing the UV map using 'Follow Active Quads' it came out as a flat line which I couldn't stretch on the Y axis. I fixed this by doing a UV map 'Reset' and then doing 'Follow Active Quads' again. 2. When I ran the game the glow/emission was too bright. I fixed this by clamping the output values in the Shader. 3. I could see shadows through the ground on objects below the surface. I "fixed" this by disabling 'Screen Space Ambient Occlusion' SSAO in the Renderer data. 4. I could see edges through the ground on objects below the ground. I "fixed" this by changing the 'Depth of Field' mode in the Global 'Volume' attached to the 'Main Camera' from 'Gaussian' to 'Bokeh'. 5. I found I can't project decals on to the ground layer. I haven't found a solution to this yet, but adding the layer back to the Renderers main 'Opaque Layer Mask' list does allow decals to render again. It also obviously breaks the stencil layer setup. If anyone has a solution for the above, that would be awesome.

[@platinumnoodle]

Update: I found a solution to decal issue (5). I moved all the basic rendering layers into an opaque render object on event before rendering prepass and a transparent render object on event before rendering transparents. Then change the basic rendering layer to ground and set stencil as expected i.e. value 1, not equal, keep. Mask render object doesn't change. This will likely cause some unforeseen circumstances, but so far so good.

[@АльбертЛисица]

u just saved my day bro, thx a lot

[@СергейКиров-н5д]

For all those people who getting weird black halos or shadows on their SeeThrough layer. It's caused by SSAO, so disable it, tweak it or enable "After Opaque" checkbox. SSAO settings can be found at the same place where you created RenderObjects, URP/HDRP-Fidelity-Renderer.

[@bunnybreaker]

2 seconds in and VFXgasm intensifies. Slick effect.

[@guardianoftheledge4966]

I noticed that Fall Guys added this yesterday in the season three update to add visuals when you land on ice and it looks great. What a timely video!

[@joemartins5041]

Hi there! Cool tutorial! Thanks for sharing this knowledge! A quick hint on the PS part is that you can export SVG directly from Photoshop instead of making that Convertio part. Just use your Pen Tool to create Shapes instead of Paths, and if you don't want any stroke, make sure your stroke is set to None. Right-click on the shape layer you want as SVG click "Export As" and select SVG on the top-right dropdown menu. And it's done :) Hope that helps someone, see you around!

[@raigallino]

Awesome video!! Limited dissolve ( X -> limited dissolve ) and merge vertices by distance (shift M -> by distance) is a better method to get rid of unwanted geometry in a plane! Quick tip If anyone is straggling with the geometry

[@GabrielAguiarProd]

Great tip!

[@RiorXD]

Man watching this for the first time your blender usage hurts my soul.

[@dreamisover9813]

Covering how to create the source assets as well, awesome!

[@Inferim]

Really amazing tutorial! Some of the steps and components described here don't translate exactly to what the latest version of Unity has but with a little research, newbies like me can still follow along. I also experimented on making the entire mesh in blender to only have one face each for the Top and Bottom cracks; it didn't seem to affect my result - doing so reduces the complexity of the geometry. Blender mentioned, there's just an extra step to do now which is exporting an .fbx then importing that into Unity but that doesn't really change things much. Overall, awesome stuffs! There's so much to learn from here on and this video really serves as a great steppingstone for a lot of beginners. Great work!

[@solitudeau8188]

Got it to work eventually. Struggled using blender for the first time i kept using maya muscle memory on the keybinds. I had some issues with my CrackWall UVs just being a solid line instead of actual quads like yours were, but somehow it still worked out (even if i put them upside down because selecting verts showed me nothing). Even with the mistakes, i'm happy how it turned out for a first-pass. Can't wait to do the rest of them!

[@canerkaska8355]

Hey, how did you manage that solid line thing? I can't get it to become quads like in the video.

[@bseagull2909]

For anyone who cannot see the effect after applying the zwriteOff material: try to check if your crack top has the wrong normal orientation. It's so simple but took me a while to figure it out lol

[@naolshow]

Found your channel on reddit and its awesome dude ! Thanks for your work

[@GabrielAguiarProd]

Welcome! Hope you enjoy :)

[@J33zas]

i love the way you say "available in my patreon page"

[@serj_1264]

Thanks Gabriel for the tutorial. It's so great to see how beautiful results and how good this complements many of the other tutorials to create some amazing effects. Great explanation of each of the parts! And on behalf on most gamedevs out there, a big big THANKS!

[@GabrielAguiarProd]

It's always nice to read your comments, thank you!

[@josh_swanson]

Such a great tutorial! Love it! But I have to say, it would make a lot more sense to just make the path in Blender, rather than making a PNG, converting it to SVG, converting into path, then decimating ;)

[@ultracapitalistutopia3550]

Yes. If he wanted an SVG file anyway, he could do that in inkscape which is a freeware and can more reliably exported as PNG as needed.

[@iamjohnhult]

I really love your content. I was wondering how some of the effect you do would work on an uneven ground. I know you usually have some sort of placeholder arena with flat ground, but would love to see something like a summoning circle being projected from above on an uneven ground. It feels like it adds an extra level, and many games aren't based only on flat arena like grounds. Anyway, keep up the good work! Good luck with the udemy course as well.

[@michaelkjellander9370]

Thanks a lot, this was super helpful! Exactly what I needed. I know very little about pipeline forward renderers, but they are obviously very powerful.

[@GabrielAguiarProd]

Glad it was helpful!

[@GameDevEFacil]

I would prefer to use a plane mesh (the first one you made) with a shader that simulates deptht but in 2d, avoiding the stencil. you can make a plane really look like the same effect and it will work anywhere with no configuration after it is made. The new Shader Editor is very nice to experiment and it will hand you another great tutorial to make. Cheers

[@toreole5831]

You can also use probuilder for the beginning steps. There is a tool in there that also lets you freely place points similar to the line tool you used in photoshop, but it directly creates the mesh. You can then export the created mesh as an .obj file and use it for the following steps.

[@GabrielAguiarProd]

Interesting, thanks for the tip!

[@Nuwn]

Or if you pay for photoshop, most likely you get illustrator, pen tool exist and is already vector and svg.

[@dauxgaming577]

This is awesome I really like vfx and personally following your unity course

[@goma8167]

Thank you sensei for sharing your wisdom once again. This is amazing and will be so useful!

[@manuelghezzodebadin9898]

Been waiting this tutorial so much! Love it!

[@PyroPhysicsGames]

Wow looks amazing. You are my go-to guy for vfx! Cheers!

[@Lost1nTranslation]

Congrats on 50k subs! Well deserved =)

[@GabrielAguiarProd]

Thanks! 🎉🎉

[@augustogehm7845]

Thank you so much for sharing all this! I always learn a lot with you!!

[@GabrielAguiarProd]

You are welcome!

[@technoo4891]

You can make the mesh you want inside unity using ProBuilder, you just have to edit the UV's and put them inside the little box, if your effect has a different color and you created it inside ProBuilder, the UV is off, that's why. (You can make the mesh using poly shape, then making it have a height you want, then separating the top and bottom faces from it.)

[@GabrielAguiarProd]

Thanks for the tip. ProBuilder can be quite useful.

[@DevGods]

Wow I didn’t know you could save blend files directly into unity and they would work

[@АльбертЛисица]

Thank you so much for such a cool tutorial! Of course, it's interesting how the layer for particles was set up and how the light was made. It turns out that with the default layer, particles passing through the crack end up "behind" and everything looks wierd. If anyone knows how to solve this problem, I would be very grateful!

[@juliette6721]

Thanks for all your tutorials;)) happy new year😀😀🙆‍♀️🙇‍♀️

[@GabrielAguiarProd]

Thank you! Same to you!

[@serj_1264]

oh! that's my suggestion!! This is amazingly great! Now I'm gonna see the video :p

[@GabrielAguiarProd]

Hope you like it!

[@buzzito6643]

WoooW Insane like always sir

[@018FLP]

I wanted this and i didn't even knew! >:] **Smiles in Hulksmashing** Quick tip: Illustrator can export to .SVG

[@NeatGames]

I gotta try 3d someday!

[@TheUncutAngel]

black magic! :) can't wait to try.

[@JustPeterSteel]

You can also draw the shape in Illustrator and export it directly as an SVG.

[@JeskaRain]

Holy shit this is so complicated. Makes you wish we didn't need 30 software to do a simple crack X_X

[@vecastudioindie4027]

Rapaz... que nível de inglês nativo mano... top

[@mikethegamedev]

Great Tutorial! Thanks

[@vmmi8215]

WOWWWW THIS IS AWESOME 👍👍👍

[@WorldWorrier3273]

You are 🥳 really a mind Blower men 🤯

[@torkdevs7723]

So cool!

[@CleisonRodriguesComposer]

Great effect!

[@bigcaka7725]

holy shit thats amazing!

[@LionDev]

Awesome tutorial would be awesome if you could do a tutorial about something like footprints in snow

[@Snweos]

This is so freaking cool!!!

[@sanatdeveloper]

I have problems in URP with GroundCrack02Top. It's Just flat white, and I cant see through it. How can i Fix it?

[@pusadev2001]

I have a problem. When I assign the material to the top crack I get a white material on it and I cant see the crack walls. PLEASE HELP!!

[@canerkaska8355]

Hey Gabriel, great work! Been following your tutorials for my game and actually already made some stuff from your videos! (like slash VFX, sci-fi shield and, dome). However, I couldn't get this one working. I believe it's the shader graph I use, I use Unity 2022 LTS, and there's no PBR Shader Graph here so I used URP-Lit graph instead. When I enable post-processing, it shines like the Sun is on my face, with post-processing disabled, everything looks normal tho. Which shader graph should I use for this to work? Thanks for your time in advance, Have a great week!

[@koam2410]

Your video is amazing thank you

[@shibi6939]

good one!

[@GabrielAguiarProd]

Thanks!

[@eshanjogwar6413]

please make a tutorial on UV in blender which you used in the tornado video and also how to transfer our mesh to unity

[@roukuo]

For some reason, I can still see what seams to be ambient occlusion of the wall and bottom mesh through the ground, and I have no clue why. Does someone know how to fix that?

[@ererbe]

Thank you

[@r.iyushofficial5318]

Very nice 👌

[@cutieclay_j]

After setting up everything for the ground crack in unity, why are there see thru shadows through the cube? How do I fix this? Nvm I got it! the SAAO had to be turned off

[@archangel12601]

it's crazyyy

[@EnricoTosi]

I'm wondering, why not making a raymarching material for this effect than using meshes?

[@salahqx]

Why i don't have "Settings folder inculded Forward Renderer, etc" ? I have imported Visual effect with Additions. Thanks for the tutorial

[@atmyz7860]

Nice!

[@Tomsik999]

It's possible to make same effect ground cracks in unreal engine ?

[@Mikelica69]

THANK YOU GABRIEL

[@halfblue2678]

What is a stencil buffer? Why do we need to change it? Why do I need to make the ground see through? I won't see my ground then. But it didn't make the ground see through though.

[@Syntecoderyo]

Somehow doesnt work for me :/ When I assign the DiableZWrite Material the Top becomes see through but the Cube doesnt have a hole

[@augustogehm7845]

I had a similar error and that was because I had set the crack walls in the SeeThrough Layer and the correct is to do this process with the terrain insted.

[@mrearlragnar3187]

For some reason the override render objects only render as black no matter what I try (using the latest urp on 2022.1.7f1 - Metal for iMac)

[@BlackAngel81]

Did you find a solution to fix so they won't render as black?

[@supersentaimexicano1967]

The Blender part doesnt work in the new version.

[@francfores7986]

Is there a way of doing this and making it be occluded by the same mesh? I'm working with procedural terrain generation and I can see the craks thorugh the walls (As the floor and the walls are the same gameobject).

[@reindogfan]

did you ever figure this out?

[@francfores7986]

@@reindogfan Nope

[@joshetrtg817]

Hi! Do you have a tutorial or a course showing how to create the AoE, projectiles and other skills zones?

[@hyralys]

Hey, I'm quite new with all the custom render pass things, I followed the video and everything works fine, except now the meshes with the 'See Through' layer can't receive decals anymore (I added the Decal Render Feature in the Renderer settings just like the custom renders) Is there a way to fix this ?

[@briandoesstuffnthangs1087]

I am looking for a solution to this as well. Some sort of override?

[@Алексей-с9и4б]

It was possible to immediately export to svg

[@GabrielAguiarProd]

Nice.

[@estebanairasca6435]

Hi Gabriel, I've been watching your videos and the thing that I don't get is this: When you will have to make a 3D model for your VFX and when will you be able to do it without the 3d model? I mean I don't completely understand when to use one or another or both... hope you understand the question bc i'm a little bad at english. Thanks

[@theocarouge7423]

Can this work without turning off SSAO ? In that case how can i do it ?

[@jamesmichaelmahoney]

Great tutorial! Are the particles also masked by the stencil buffer? I'm not sure how to do that.

[@WalrusesAreTheOne]

Do we need the universal render pipeline for this?

[@GabrielAguiarProd]

Yes, this one was done in URP.

[@danielbrophy5752]

Is this possible with HDRP?

[@dechin6144]

Hello! sorry for the question! but my "Disable Zwrite" material is pink no matter what i do and i cant seem to get it to do what yours is doing

[@edulis_exe]

Thank you for your content, they're amazing to learn. But I have a question 🙄 I used this method to see throught a door on a wall and I've tried to bake some lights. Once baked the lights don't came in from the door, even if before the bake I see them in the scene 😅

[@SeninYildiiz]

Can you make a version for unreal engine?

[@lordnurmengard]

Some of the Key combinations you use for blender doesn't work for me like ctrl + tab for selecting faces. Is it an add-on?

[@GabrielAguiarProd]

It's the shortcuts from Blender 2.7. I believe in the normal shortcuts, it's 1,2 and 3 above the letters (not in numpad)

[@mattyou736]

When i import the SVG file into blender all i get is a black square. Anybody know what im doing wrong?

[@tommanninen5971]

Unfortunately it seems in Unity 2021.3.15f at least the cracks' walls are visible through default material.

[@chrisg4816]

any way to add the disable z write feature to the shader graph so we can keep the flexibilty of the graph for the terrain shader?

[@vladsavenco9609]

Hi! I know it has been a while since you made this video but i was wondering if you know of a way on how to do this in hdrp? As i am trying to get a similar effect but it does not work the same.

[@思川木]

Thanks for sharing, I tried step by step. But there is a question, the GroundCrack will become black when it's under Ground, it seems that the Ground shadow shades the GroundCrack. If I turn off the "Cast Shadows" switch on the Ground MeshRenderer, the effect becomes right. Am i missing something？

[@ShadowOrigin28]

How about ground crack animation?

[@GabrielAguiarProd]

Well, I think it's fine to animate the mesh, either in Blender or other 3d software. OR use the shuriken particle system or vfx graph and try to animate it via there.

[@leviathan5792]

I'm using a more recent version of Blender (at least I think so), and there in no Decimate Mesh! Anyone knows how I can get the same effect?

[@Lunatheia]

For anyone trying to do this in Maya and having an issue with the gradient have a look at your uv sets. Mine had 2 and it got me confused for an entire evening :(

[@GabrielAguiarProd]

Thanks for the tip, I'm sure this will help someone out there.

[@okaylobster]

I don't have the PBR Graph option from the shaders list. I Have Unity 2020.2.0f1 and I have the Shader Graph and Visual Effect graph packages installed.

[@okaylobster]

Nevermind I figured it out. 2020.2 has something messing up with the shader graph, going back to 2020.1 still has the PBR shader.

[@GabrielAguiarProd]

Glad you found the solution :)

[@paulbunyangonewild7596]

is this okay to use for an oculus quest (1) level of device. just wondering

[@jhass6878]

Hi,i have some trouble with mask. When i chose LayerMask for LayerMask the GroundCracktop is not visible at scene.Why? Thanks a lot for you answer

[@GabrielAguiarProd]

Hmmm make sure the normals are correct? Try to rotate the object, if you only see it from the other side, then you need to flip normals in Blender. Check out 5:50

[@Exodus-sh5mq]

so how would you import this into another unity project? for example I make this in the render but I want to import this into a game unity file how do i do that?

[@morname8731]

how optimized is this method?

[@nuevostitanes2]

Very interesting, but I am trying to do it in HDRP and I cannot even find something similar to "Add Render Feature" It is possible to do that? thanks in advance

[@GabrielAguiarProd]

I believe it's a Custom Pass in HDRP. Here's the documentation: docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.render-pipelines.high-definition@10.2/manual/Custom-Pass.html

[@SnailSpaceWTF]

Is there a version of this that could be done without mesh, but extreme parallax? Similar to how in UE many induce a false perspective into a buildings Windo to make it look like there is an interior.

[@GabrielAguiarProd]

Yes there is, and it's possible too. Here's an example with shader graph: kzbin.info/www/bejne/gnzLeKSBjrSgmNE

[@TheKiwiCoder]

Man this is super interesting. Thank you! I’ve been wondering how to project decals onto a skinned mesh, and this has me thinking maybe the stencil buffer could be used somehow. Thoughts?

[@GabrielAguiarProd]

I made a video on how to create Bullet Decals maybe it can help: kzbin.info/www/bejne/oISskqFnmKqMiqs

[@TheKiwiCoder]

@@GabrielAguiarProd Excellent thanks!

Pretty awesome! but how would this work with an actual texturized terrain or floor ?

[@GabrielAguiarProd]

Hmm pretty much the same. Probably needs a different material for the "walls" of the crack.