[2021] A PBE preview went out on the LoL KR facebook page! It shows off new skins for Annie, Aphelios, Darius, Alistar, Jarvan, Fiora, Talon, Syndra, Zyra, and Swain!

Originally posted by Mr_Simba

That's not really how animations/VFX work. Many animations don't have VFX tied to them, and many VFX can be reused across animations. They don't have to "make VFX" for every animation like that.

I'm not saying he's not more difficult than average but it's not like it's 10x the work because of his animation load or something.

edit: Seems I was oversimplifying it, see Sirhaian's reply. tl;dr he does have tons of VFX since each ability combo (e.g. Infernum + Calibrum vs. Infernum + Crescendum) uses custom VFX, so at least from a VFX standpoint he's certainly far more involved than seemingly any other champ.

Originally posted by Mr_Simba

Appreciate the breakdown. I don't really know how the backend on y'all's stuff works so in taking a mental stab at it I would've assumed Aphelios was about 2-3x the VFX work of a normal champ, but sounds like it's even more than that.

I kinda would have assumed the VFX would "blend" together so to speak; if he's using guns X + Y, the different VFX profiles for those two guns would be used in tandem, hopefully with some system in place to tie VFX to be tracking bones or what have you, such that the workload would be heavier than normal but would still kinda just click into place so to speak. But that's all very idealistic and likely misses the complexities required to make the VFX truly look good and fit in with each animation for each champ.

Out of curiosity, does any of that difficult come with shortcomings in the system/engine (e.g. something which leads to a lack of VFX reusability across animations), or is the VFX system robust and it's just the nature of the beast? I work in game dev but have minimal experience working directly with VFX or VFX artists so I'm curious.

cheers!

Originally posted by patmax17

Thanks for the info!

One question: how does this complexity impact the slotting for skins? I doubt that the artists get 5x the time to work on his skins, do they just put in a lot more of work? Or do artists usually work on a number of skins, and in case of aphelios skins, they work just on him?

Originally posted by Mr_Simba

That makes sense. I guess I was mentally oversimplifying it as if e.g. Calibrum + Gravitum was just those two VFX triggered together rather than something custom, but as an Aphelios player it now feels obvious looking back that each of those VFX is unique. Five guns each that can be paired with the four others, + the five autos and the crit version of each, + the five ults... basically 6-8x as many ability VFX as normal. Pretty wild.

Appreciate the explanation and all the work you guys do, those VFX are so transient in-game but they're so important to making the champs feel good, especially auto-based projectiles on marksmen like Aphelios. He's so smooth and satisfying to play largely due to that work.

Give my love to StarWeaver cause this is the first skin in a while I'm expecting to buy the full skin + chroma pack for. Looking really great and can't wait to try it out in-game!!

Originally posted by Mr_Simba

Absolutely. My friends all tease me because of how much I gush over Aphelios; he's the first champ that's really resonated with me like that since maybe Jhin, if not even since I started playing in 2013 (maining Jinx). Love his thematic and story and it translates super well in-game.

Did you work on any of these skins btw? I also play Swain and that skin looks so amazing.

Originally posted by TheRealEtherion

Did you work on any of these skins? Because as always, it'll be a bit better than the rest even in same tier.