In terms of budget, which is more expensive, a group of small dust particles or something like a lightning bolt? And are the effects built differently?asked by Golden Triangles
TL;DRLightning is generally more expensive overall than dust particles because of CPU costs for gameplay positioning, though screen-close sprite dust can cost more in overdraw, and the two are built very differently.
That's an interesting question. Do math? I can't. That's why I have VFX programmers. I just look at pictures. Definitely the lightning would on its own be more expensive than dust particles, but it depends on what cost we're looking at. If we're talking about dust motes, let's just say dust motes for argument's sake, the dust motes might be more expensive if we, for example, had a dust mote that's essentially a sprite. So it's a sprite-based particle that's right up to the screen that might actually incur more of an overdraw cost than the lightning bolt would. But really, the lightning bolt's always going to have a lot more cost associated with it. There's going to be CPU costs because we actually need to know the positioning of the lightning bolt for gameplay reasons, to be able to damage or interact with players and vehicles and things like that. So that would definitely be the most expensive overall. What was the other part of the question?
Are the effects built differently?
Yes, they are built very differently. Lightning effects are a kind of subset of the particle system. So without sharing my screen and showing the fundamental differences, it's probably a little bit difficult for me to describe it. But dust motes would be built in a much more simplistic way to the lightning, lightning regions we call them actually. So yeah, very different.