VFX for the Outcast Engineer

Hello, 

My name is Alina, and I am a Visual Special Effects (VFX) artist at Fatshark.

I have been working at Fatshark for just over a year, and I help create the VFX for Warhammer: Vermintide 2.
What is VFX? It is all of the explosions, sparks, fire, gas clouds... I could go on forever.

When I am not working, I like to cuddle with my dog 'Buffy' and play DnD and video games. Some of my current favorite games are Hollow Knight, Hades, and Psychonauts. 

Today I want to talk about the VFX I created for our newest career: the Outcast Engineer. If you don't know about the new career for Bardin Goreksson, I suggest you read more about it here.

The Idea.

Before my job started with the VFX, we began talking about the idea that it could be interesting to have a ranged only career, and the new weapons and gameplay mechanics we might use for this career. Now we know that the Outcast Engineer is not a fully ranged career, but that is where we started.

The concept was an Engineer who essentially made his own weapons. One of the challenges for me was in differentiating the engineer weapons from the Skaven ones. The key was having just enough sparks to hint at a weapon built with cogs and machinations without confusing the player with the haphazardly constructed Skaven weapons. 

The Search for the Perfect Effect.

To create the perfect effects, I have researched how bullets travel through the air by watching videos, gifs, and any interesting bullet trail images I could find. Some of my favorite resources for this were slow-motion videos of bullets shot from various weapons. Another element I was interested in for this career were sparks, mainly from the friction of gears and metal on metal. 

One of the effects I was focusing on was the bullet trail for the Steam-Assisted Crank Gun (Mk II), as it is the star of Bardin's new career. Something I found particularly challenging about making this effect come to life was the fact that while it has the physics or the general idea of a bullet-weapon, the weapon itself is steam-operated rather than dependent on gunpowder. In other words, the bullet trail needed to show that air is pushing the bullet as it is fired and leaves the barrel. This was important because it is not a gunpowder weapon or an electrical weapon that e.g. could create a beam. This took a lot of experimentation and continuously looking back to the reference material of how air moves around a fired bullet. If the trail was too shiny there was a risk of it looking far too sci-fi for Vermintide 2. 

Teapots, Irons, Steam cleaners & Humidifiers

Another fun effect I got to work on was the Steam-Assisted Crank Gun (Mk II)'s venting mechanism that happens when the ability bar is fully charged. We had to create a way of telling players that it was time to stop cranking. Here we thought more in-depth about the functionality of the weapon and how it would work in battle. It had to clearly show that the weapon was ready to be used again, fit with the Outcast Engineer's theme, and ensure that it helps with the pacing of using, recharging, and resting the MK II. There were several options we considered: would it overheat? A cog stuck in the mechanism? Pressure building?

We agreed that the steam-operated weapons’ pressure builds up and will need to be released in some way. 

I looked into different items that produce steam in daily life. Some things I studied were teapots, irons, steam cleaners, and humidifiers. Sadly, those items are not steam-operated, but they helped me to better grasp how the effect would look when the steam vents more aggressively, how fast it would be, how far it reaches, and at what point it would dissipate into the air. 

We eventually went for the concept of the pressure from the steam being too great and requiring venting. The overheating/venting mechanism also appears when a player has cranked for too long. Build up too much pressure in a machine, and it will eventually not be able to build any more pressure. This helped us create a mechanism where we force a break and limit how much a player can crank and, ultimately, for how long Bardin can use the gun.

Working on this career was so exciting and engaging, I hope you all have a lot of fun playing it as it was for me taking part in creating it.