Ashley Lyons begins the workshop by covering how to create a base character-burn material in Unreal Engine’s Material Editor. He shows how essential material nodes work, how to begin creating an emissive disintegration effect, and discusses customizable material parameters. These parameters can later be adjusted to control the burn’s intensity, appearance, and behavior, providing flexibility for refining the final visual effect.

Duration: 17m 16s

This second lesson continues developing the burn material by setting up emissive dissipation and finalizing the master material. Ashley demonstrates how to create adjustable parameters for material instances, giving greater control over customization. These settings provide flexibility when refining material functions, adjusting visual properties, and controlling the player master shader for the final material effect.

Duration: 17m 34s

This lesson finalizes the base character burn material before exploring material functions and parameter setups. Ashley reveals how to integrate the effect into player master shaders, creating a flexible, reusable system. His approach simplifies customization, improves workflow efficiency, and allows the burn effect to be easily applied across multiple characters and material instances.

Duration: 21m 7s

This lesson begins to assemble and time the burn effect in Sequencer using the previously created material instances. Artists will learn how to animate material parameters to synchronize the emissive disintegration with the character’s death animation. This establishes the effect’s core timing and visual flow, creating a foundation for further refinement and polishing of the final burn sequence.

Duration: 18m 30s

This lesson explores texture creation in Substance 3D Designer, guiding artists through building a quad ember texture for the first Unreal Niagara emitter. Artists will learn the essential node workflows and techniques for creating a styled, production-ready texture designed for real-time visual effects, establishing a strong foundation for the Niagara system.

Duration: 10m 46s

This lesson covers how to prepare the ember material using the texture created previously. Ashley revisits key material nodes, parameters, and workflows while reinforcing essential material creation techniques. The result is a flexible, production-ready material designed for Niagara particle systems, providing a solid foundation for developing, integrating, and refining the final ember Niagara emitter.

Duration: 20m 28s

This lesson walks through creating the first Niagara emitter for the Incendiary particle system. Starting from an Unreal Engine template emitter, Ashley shows how to configure essential modules and nodes needed to produce a convincing burning character effect. The setup establishes core particle behavior while providing a foundation for developing and refining the complete effect.

Duration: 19m 14s

This lesson covers how to create the first custom Niagara module to control emitter spawning and burn rate using a grayscale texture. Artists will learn how to build reusable logic with adjustable parameters to control particle placement, timing, and behavior, creating a more precise burning effect while establishing a flexible foundation for the complete Niagara system.

Duration: 21m 20s

This lesson covers how to build a custom Unreal Niagara module that creates a procedural, natural emissive falloff for the embers. Using each particle’s position relative to its spawn point, Ashley shows how to develop a dynamic system that enhances ember behavior and adds more organic variation to the overall visuals of the burning effect.

Duration: 19m 13s

This lesson refines the emitter’s core visuals by introducing secondary and tertiary ember movements. Artists will explore techniques for creating natural motion, increasing particle variation, and improving realism. These adjustments add depth and complexity to the effect, creating a more dynamic, organic, and visually convincing ember system for the burning visuals within Niagara.

Duration: 17m 51s

This lesson returns to Sequencer to create and animate additional material parameters for refining the timing in the Niagara effect. Artists will learn how to synchronize more particle behavior with the character animation, adjusting key values to create a more cohesive, cinematic burn effect with precise control for the visuals overall.

Duration: 22m 39s

This lesson continues with a focus on refining the effect’s finer details. Ashley shows how to iterate on particle behavior, visual elements, and overall presentation. Through targeted adjustments, artists will learn how to improve visual consistency, enhance particle interactions, and polish the effect, making the final result cohesive, dynamic, and production-ready.

Duration: 7m 8s

This lesson introduces Houdini and begins creating the source for the pyro simulation. Ashley shows how to create meshes, control displacement using VEX, and define particle velocity direction through mesh normals with light scripting. These techniques establish a strong foundation for building a controlled pyro simulation source and preparing the assets needed for the final effect.

Duration: 18m 27s

This lesson continues with building the Houdini pyro simulation source emitter by adding additional curl noise detail through VOP nodes integrated into a POP Network. Artists will learn how to enhance particle motion, introduce more organic movement, and create a more dynamic source simulation for the upcoming pyro simulation effects workflow.

Duration: 17m 46s

In this lesson, Ashley reveals how to refine the pop solver node properties to provide the pyro source with the necessary fuel for simulation. Artists will learn how to enhance simulation attributes with procedural noise, refine particle behavior, and adjust timing to align the flame life with the desired animation timeline.

Duration: 21m 27s

This lesson focuses on refining the simulation’s final appearance by adjusting key parameters within the Houdini Pyro Solver. Artists will explore the Fields and Shape tabs in detail, examining each attribute and its impact on the final result to achieve the desired look and behavior for the completed pyro simulation.

Duration: 22m 3s

This lesson finalizes the pyro simulation and covers setting up emissive, scatter, and density render layers in Mantra. Ashley demonstrates how to prepare these outputs as separate channels for rendering, creating organized data that can later be combined into a flipbook texture. His workflow provides a clean foundation for building reusable pyro visual effects.

Duration: 19m 5s

In this lesson, Ashley teaches how to export the final pyro render layers into a flipbook texture, using each layer as a dedicated RGB texture channel. Artists will discover his compositing workflow in Houdini’s Composite View, preparing the final texture asset before exporting it into Unreal Engine for real-time implementation into the particle system.

Duration: 23m 46s

This lesson covers integrating the newly created flipbook texture into Unreal Engine’s Material Editor to build the flame master material. Artists will learn how to utilize the earlier rendered emissive, scatter, and density channels to create a distinct visual appearance while maintaining control over each material element and its customizable parameters.

Duration: 17m 37s

In this final lesson, Ashley demonstrates how to integrate the new fire material into additional fire and smoke Niagara emitters to complete the incendiary burn effect. Artists will learn how to set up a camera in Sequencer, add lighting elements, and refine the scene composition to achieve the final polished render and completed visual effect.

Duration: 22m 21s