Tiny Tina's Wonderlands - Lava Tools, Materials & VFX

A suite of assets and tools I made for lava in Tiny Tina's Wonderlands. Includes procedural spline based rivers, falling/splashing lava with variable height, lava splash "particles", heat distortion materials, and animated materials. It is all based on a height map and normal map generated in Substance Designer, without any Base Color, Roughness or other textures.

All of the splash "particles" were an experiment to see how far I could push animated meshes/materials outside of traditional Cascade/Niagra particle systems. There is not a single particle system within these tools. They are entirely driven by the material and rely heavily on curve atlases for timing. They self optimize by pushing down under the lava when inactive, and have per animation loop randomization built in with parameters exposed on the Blueprint. You can watch the video for some breakdowns on how they work.