VFX Breakdown – Melee Attack Effect
Creating the melee attack VFX series was a great process, and it came straight from our community over at 1mafx.com. This tutorial focuses on building a subtle glow and trail effect to enhance a character’s melee animation.
Here is a Teaser - Watch Video
And also a final effect
Building the Meshes
We began the process in Houdini, generating custom meshes that wrap around the character to create a glow effect during the attack. These meshes form the base of the visual impact and are reusable in other character-driven VFX setups.
For a closer look at the mesh creation process:
- Character Mesh Tutorial: Watch Tutorial
Adding Textures
Next, we moved into Substance Designer to create textures that drive both the glow and the trail from the character’s fist. These textures are responsible for adding direction, flow, and visual layering to the effect.
Supporting tutorials:
- Trail Texture Tutorial: Watch Tutorial
- Rings Texture Tutorial: Watch Tutorial
Bringing It All Together
The final tutorial walks through combining Houdini-generated meshes with Substance textures to build a stylized melee attack effect.
This process ties together:
- Mesh-based glow effects
- Directional trails tied to animation
- Visual polish through timing and texture flow
The end result is a clean, readable VFX setup that can be used across different types of melee abilities.
Explore the Full Tutorial
If you want to follow the entire build process step by step, the full tutorial is available inside the Tier 1 membership on 1mafx.com. It includes all the setup, materials, and resources needed to build this effect from scratch.
You can also join the mailing list for new breakdowns and upcoming tutorials.
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