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  title: 'The Heretic: VFX Character (Morgan)'
  sections:
  - heading: Introduction
    text: "This project is centered around Morgan, the vfx-based character introduced
      in the 2nd part of The Heretic short film created by Unity\u2019s Demo Team."
    linkText: Learn more about The Heretic
    url: https://unity3d.com/the-heretic
  - heading: 
    text: 'Working on this character required pushing the capabilities of the VFX
      Graph to its limits. We are releasing the character publicly with the intention
      of showcasing some of the approaches that can be taken when building complex
      vfx-driven characters.  '
    linkText: Learn more about the Visual Effects Graph
    url: https://unity.com/visual-effect-graph
  - heading: Scope
    text: From the story perspective, Morgan had a few clear requirements like being
      able to morph between multiple states, calm and angry, female and male or a
      combination of these, grow in height multiple times over, crumble and a few
      others.
    linkText: 
    url: 
  - heading: 
    text: The appearance on the other hand was less defined so one technical requirement
      was to build the character in a way that would allow for as much real-time
      authoring as possible so we decided to make use of the VFX Graph.
    linkText: 
    url: 
  - heading: Main Features
    text: "\xB7 VFX Morphing: The effects covering Morgan can be morphed at any time
      regardless if other effects like fire or crumbling are active."
    linkText: 
    url: 
  - heading: 
    text: "\xB7 Shape Morphing: The underlying skinned mesh can be morphed between
      female and male shapes independently from the effect which adapt automatically."
    linkText: 
    url: 
  - heading: 
    text: "\xB7 Appearance Tweaks: Many parts of Morgan\u2019s visual appearance,
      including how close the particles stick to the mesh, can be easily tweaked
      from the custom custom inspector."
    linkText: 
    url: 
  - heading: 
    text: "\xB7 Fire: While it looks more like ambers than proper fire, this highly
      customizable effect can be used to add an extra layer of intensity when required.
      It was the last effect built, just a few weeks before the final deadline."
    linkText: 
    url: 
  - heading: 
    text: "\xB7 Crumble: As the name suggests, Morgan can crumble into pieces, with
      several options for how this can happen. After the crumbling effect is triggered
      you need to use either the Reset or the Recompile VFX Graph option to bring
      the character back to its previous state."
    linkText: 
    url: 
  - heading: 
    text: "\xB7 Debug: Being able to debug properties early on was crucial for being
      able to experiment with different versions of this character. Debug options
      were built alongside each main feature."
    linkText: 
    url: 
  - heading: 
    text: "\xB7 Realtime Customization: Each of the features mentioned above has
      several customization options exposed in Morgan\u2019s inspector, totalling
      to over 300 parameters that can be animated over time if desired."
    linkText: 
    url: 
  - heading: Customizing Morgan
    text: "\xB7 You will find Morgan\u2019s controls and customization options on
      the prefab inspector pane. "
    linkText: 
    url: 
  - heading: 
    text: "\xB7 The main features are separated using fold-out menus that can be
      expanded in order to access the options."
    linkText: 
    url: 
  - heading: 
    text: "\xB7 In the Morgan Demo Scene, the prefab is located under Morgan_Root.
      The cloth animated mesh (alembic) is placed under Morgan_Root as well."
    linkText: 
    url: 
  - heading: 
    text: "\xB7 The project has a timeline (Timeline_MorganDescends) that plays an
      animation with the character getting down the stairs. "
    linkText: 
    url: 
  - heading: 
    text: "\xB7 The first track of the timeline has a few of Morgan\u2019s parameters
      animated - this can be muted (select the track and press M) or removed if you
      want to customize Morgan while their animation is playing."
    linkText: 
    url: 
  - heading: 
    text: "\xB7 The recommended workflow for customizing Morgan while the animation
      is active is to lock both the timeline and Morgan\u2019s inspector pane."
    linkText: 
    url: 
  - heading: 
    text: "\xB7 Be aware that changing the particles with high polycount meshes can lead to performance decrease."
    linkText: 
    url: 
  - heading: How It Works
    text: "\xB7 Morgan is made of 17 visual effect graphs each covering a different
      part - this was done for easier management."
    linkText: 
    url: 
  - heading: 
    text: "\xB7 The position, normals and tangents for the base meshes are rendered in UV space, which are then set as texture parameters in the vfx graphs - this allows us to position and orient the particles correctly on the character.  "
    linkText: 
    url: 
  - heading: 
    text: "\xB7 The vertex color and the albedo texture are also rendered in UV space
      - these textures are used to manipules certain properties like size, scale,
      angle and pivot."
    linkText: 
    url: 
  - heading: 
    text: "\xB7 A custom editor centralizes all the graphs making up Morgan - this
      makes it easy to update shared properties fast. There are about 300 parameters
      exposed but there\u2019s no real limit for how many can be added, however too
      many parameters in the interface can make it less practical to work with."
    linkText: 
    url: 
  - heading: Known Issues
    text: "\xB7 Currently there is a known bug that prevents the rearrangement of
      parameters in the vfx graph blackboard. As a consequence, at this point the
      parameters are not sorted and categorized properly."
    linkText: 
    url: 
  - heading: 
    text: "\xB7 Displaying some of the graphs inspector pane can cause a performance
      drop."
    linkText: 
    url: 
  - heading: 
    text: "\xB7 The scene view Selection Outline can cause a drop in performance
      when selecting Morgan."
    linkText: 
    url: 
  - heading: 
    text: "\xB7 The graphs and scripts contain some legacy elements and hardcoded
      values carried over The Heretic."
    linkText: 
    url: 
  - heading:
    text: "\xB7 The Reset button on Morgan\u2019s prefab inspector is your best friend
      if it misbehaves or if you want to bring the character back after crumbling."
    linkText: 
    url: 
  - heading: 
    text: "\xB7 Work on Morgan was started on an early version of the VFX Graph,
      without features like Subgraphs for example. While some parts of the graphs
      have been converted to Subgraphs, they are still not as streamlined as they
      would have been if built from the ground up today."
    linkText: 
    url: 
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