A spaceship sandbox like Star Citizen has got to have all sorts of flashy visual effects. After all, why bother having sexy spaceships and lasers and improbable shielding tech if it doesn’t look cool? Making those pretty effects was the focus of the recent Star Citizen Live developer stream.
The broadcast saw VFX Director Mike Snowden and Principal VFX Programmer Leo come on to the show to demonstrate the creation of a visual effect as voted on by players in a poll. The winning result was for a dome shield, which was put together using a cascading particle effect that spilled out from a central point to form its shape, then given some lighting effects, opacity adjustments, and color effects.
The dome shield in question was primarily put together on-air as a showcase of CIG’s toolset rather than live work of an in-game item that’s coming to the PU later, but Creative Content Lead Jared Huckaby did point out that other devs of the game do see these demonstrations, which in turn could see them added to the game. Still, no guarantees on seeing this dome shield make its way to the ‘verse as you watch its creation below.
