I tried creating a customizable sword smear rig in Blender that can be imported directly into game engines without requiring custom shaders. This way, i don't have to manually add sword slash VFX in the editor and hope they match the animation timing in-game lol

As much as i want to breakdown my process in motion, i just can’t cuz migraine is killing me rn so something i drew from my ipad on my bed will have to do lol… The smear is using copy constraint to the same target bone with progressively increasing influence values.

all bones’ rest position shares the same location. So the mesh also has to be as thin as possible. Pulling the target bone will produce an accordion-like effect. You can also subdivide and smoothen the smear mesh weights to make more rounded arcs.

This method is also a huge timesaver! I can skip most VFX phase in my game animations with this! Just pulling the smear bone instantly draws a slash effect that can also be tweaked to make more specific shapes 🥰

“Can’t you just use dynamic trails?” No. I don’t have full control using trails. Manually tweaked smear/sword trails are always the coolest!

Yooo i didn’t know this would garner attention 😭🙇‍♂️ Follow me and me game’s page @XenoblitzGames We’re gonna announce and reveal something very soon! 🔥🔥🔥

Hi! I'm trying to replicate your idea with the draw you make. It's easier than I thought, but I don't know how polish this. In your video looks perfect! How did you do? Only using keyframes to polish or something?

You’re spot on! I only manually keyframe the smear bone and try my best to draw arcs consistently in between motions

@BryceBucher please god please release this i am begging you

@BryceBucher Check the thread for a quick guide! ☺️

That's such a cool idea, gonna steal 🐱✏️🗒️

Not in my watch! we’re gonna trade jk