For a VFX challenge themed “Colorless,” Elias Ayberk set himself one more rule: he wanted to make a beam. He built the effect around an existing animation and environment. In his concept, the attack weakens colored creatures so their souls can be absorbed.
At first, the character charged the beam with colorless energy. A couple of days in, Elias changed it so the energy starts out colored and turns colorless before the beam fires.
While working on the beam, Elias noticed an artifact caused by its mesh geometry. He wanted to fix it before moving on, but he had joined the challenge just a couple of days before the deadline.
He left the artifact for later so he could finish the rest of the effect. Another element ended up covering it by accident, and the fix was no longer needed.
With the charge and beam in place, Elias came back to the part he had saved for the last day: making the world around the character lose color, as if it were feeding the attack.
His Unreal post-process material uses a SphereMask based on world position to shape the affected area. A texture breaks up its edge, and the mask controls how much color is removed from the scene.
The silhouette looks 3D in the shot, but Elias made it from a screenshot of the character.
He cut the character out and applied a distortion shader to the sprite. If this were made for gameplay, it might need to work from other camera angles. For this shot, the sprite was enough.
You can see the full effect and follow Elias here:
- ArtStation (Breakdown): Nullification Beam
- X: Elias Ayberk
- Bluesky: Elias Ayberk
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