Clouds/Tornado VFX

[pgiacometti_alt (itsCometti)]

I’ve learned a bit of VFX yesterday from Youtube tutorials to make simple ones for some realistic games, but I have small problems:

1. The tornado fades away after 1000 studs (I plan on adding LoD, using MeshParts after the player is enough far away. Got this idea from an old thread).

2. The clouds are Particles and they don’t render from ground below, but I still wanna keep them detailed, not using Meshes. I still don’t know how to go about this.

3. This single tornado has 2 ParticleEmitters: The Vortex has a rate of 200 and the Suction (Dirt Part) has a rate of 300. I’m scared that might be detrimental to performance, although the game is not meant to be played on low-end devices. This is not to count the clouds, that each have a ParticleEmitter with a rate of 500, counting up to 4 clouds for this single, small weather.

I’d like your feedback on how I can fix those problems in a good way without taking away too much from detail.

Video 1 (showcases Tornado disappearing):

Video 2 (showcases current clouds):

[pgiacometti_alt (itsCometti)]

I researched a bit and was able to create solutions:

1. If we use the :Emit(x) function in a script every second, it mimics the Rate of the emitter but without the distance limitation. This allows creation of custom LoD and occlusion systems.

2. Same as number 1.

3. I was able to tune down the Tornado rate, but increasing the size to achieve similar but more performant effects.