>> Hello and welcome, everyone,
to another video.

Recently, I have created this Dragon
Ball Z aura type effect in Blender.

And today, I'm going to show you
how you can make it yourself.

Of course, as most of my videos,
this effect is fully procedural.

So, if you don't like something about
it or you just have your own vision,

then chances are you can just adjust the values
that I will show you later and make it your own.

So, again, as in every video, if you managed
to make something out of it or use it

in some scene, I would really
love to see your creation,

so make sure to share with me on Twitter.

Link for that is in the description.

And now, let's just jump right into Blender.

So, first of all, we will delete everything
and we will start with a mesh sphere.

And for those of you that watched my
recent tutorial about the fire effect,

the beginning is going to be very, very similar.

So, you may just skip to
the shader creation part.

And for those of you that are new,
we will start by going into modifiers

and add a subdivision surface modifier as
first one, then a normal edit modifier,

and as last we will add a displace modifier.

So, your stack should look something like this.

The next step, we will create an
empty and put it below ours here.

Let's also name it "normal
controller" because we will use it

to control the normals of our sphere.

It may not make a lot of sense
right now, but just bear with me

and you should soon see visually
what I'm talking about.

So, now, let's go into the displace modifier
and click "new" to get a new texture.

And go down to the texture tab
and change the type to clouds.

Now, back in the modifier stack in
the normal edit, the target is going

to be the normal controller,
so the empty we created.

And then, open up mix and change
the mix mode from copy to add.

You may also notice that we have this
warning that tells us to enable auto smooth

for this modifier to work,
so we'll do just that.

Go to the object data properties,
normals, and enable auto smooth.

Now, as you can see, not much happened.

But as you move this empty around, it may
look like we are moving a light source,

and that is because we are actually
editing the normals of our mesh,

which also means we can use these
custom normals in our displace modifier

to displace it only where we want to.

So, in the displace modifier,
change the direction from normal

to custom normal, so the one we edit.

And now as you move the empty, you can see
that the mesh is being displaced according

to the custom normal that
we are editing in real time.

So, let's keep it under.

And now, in order to have further control

over the displacement itself,
we will create another empty.

So, again, empty.

Plain access is fine or any
other will do just fine.

And this one we will call a displace controller.

Now, back in our sphere in
the displace modifier,

change coordinates from local to object.

And the object is going to be the
displace controller that we created.

This way, we can easily control the
displace texture by simply scaling our empty.

Also, moving it around is going to phase
through the three-dimensional texture.

Now, with this basic setup, let's make our aura
look like an aura, so sort of an egg shape.

We can just pick the top vertex.

And with the proportional editing enabled, we
can see simply move it up and just adjust it.

Just make it look like a sort
of egg or a droplet of water.

And then when you get out of the edit mode,

you can see that it resembles
aura a little bit more.

Now, one thing to pay attention to is
when you go back into the edit mode,

you can see that the density of the vertices
is much higher down here than it is up here,

so it is a good practice to sort of even it out.

So, feel free to just add some loop cuts in the
middle to sort of have a uniform or at least

around a uniform across the whole surface.

So, with that done, right-click shade
smooth so we have a nice smooth sort

of bush looking mesh, which is perfectly fine.

Don't worry too much about the
displacement and the values so far

yet because we can always
adjust it later down the road.

And now, let's just focus
on the material itself.

So, let's get a new window,
change it to shader editor,

and click "new" to create a new material.

We can delete the principled BDSF and get an
emission shader node as well as transparent BDSF

and also a mix shader connected like so,

the transparent on top and
the emission on the bottom.

And now, let's add a Fresnel node
as well as layer weight node.

Now, let's also go into the render
preview so we see what we're doing.

And as we preview the Fresnel node, the
preview is control-shift left mouse button,

but you have to have a node wrangler enabled.

For those of you wondering, it's
under edit, preferences, add-ons.

And by default, it should be in Blender
already, so just make sure it's enabled.

So, the Fresnel node as you see gives us this
really, really nice effect where only the edges

of the mesh is highlighted, which is going to
play perfectly into what we are trying to do.

So, right after Fresnel node,
let's add a color ramp.

And here, we can already
start laying in some colors.

First of all, let's change the
interpolation from linear to constant

so that we don't have any gradient, but rather
sharp contrasty look between the colors.

And now, let's start with the darkest being
sort of reddish, maybe something like this.

Then, the next one, we will go through
orange then to yellow and the last one sort

of washed out yellow going into the white.

Now, we can adjust it as it is
right now or you can do it later.

Just make sure it looks something like that,
it gradually goes from darkest to the lightest

in the edges poking out of the mesh,
but don't worry about it too much.

We can always come back to it later.

And this color ramp is going
straight into the emission node.

Now, as we preview the mix shader,
you can see that we have just that

and we don't have any transparency yet, and
that is because first of all we need to go

into the material properties and in blend
mode enable alpha blend instead of opaque.

And the second thing, let's
also enable backface culling.

Now, as you see, everything is sort of half
transparent because this mix shader is now set

to being half transparent
BDSF and half emission.

So, what we need to do is we
need to get an alpha mask.

And for this, we will use
this layer weight node.

So, let's get another color ramp and
connect facing into the color ramp.

And let's preview this.

Here, we can change the interpolation
from linear to B-spline

to get a much softer gradient than with linear.

And also, let's bring in
the black value quite high.

And the white one, just slightly
move it from the edge to like 0.9.

Now, let's duplicate this color ramp and this
time connect it with Fresnel from layer weight.

And as you preview this one, it
has slightly different result.

You can see that the facing has more
of that gradient going into our aura

and Fresnel only really highlights
the very edges.

So, here, we can actually dial
back this black value a little bit

to have that gradient as well.

And now, we just need to
combine these two color ramps.

So, let's get a math node, connect
both of them together, leave it at add.

Let's preview that.

And the only thing you need to do
is enable clamp just to make sure

that the white values do not exceed
one because this will go directly

into the mix shader factor, and so everything
of value one is going to be fully opaque

and the black values are
going to be transparent.

So, as we preview this, we can see that we
already have something going on in here.

Now, make sure that the backface culling
is on because if you turn it off,

then you see that we have some sort of artifact.

Not sure why it happens, but it does.

So, just make sure it's checked in.

And here, we can adjust the color ramp values
just to make sure that our colors are popping

in nicely and they are not too faded, but
also that we still have this nice gradient.

Also, if this mesh is pretty spiky,

remember that in the modifier stack we added
a subdivision modifier at the beginning,

so we can up the levels of subdivision and
this should give you a lot more geometry

to work with, which should also make
the gradient a little bit smooth.

And then as you see in my case, I have
very noisy displacement going on right now

and that is why we have this displace controller
in here so we can easily just scale it

up a little bit in order
to get much softer results.

Now, because it's an aura and it's supposed
to be glowing, we can up the emission strength

in here to something like maybe 10.

And if you don't have this glow going
around your mesh, just make sure that you go

into the render settings
and you have a bloom enabled

because that's the setting that's
allowing your emissive areas to glow.

Now, as you can see, we have very cell
shaded sort of stylized look of the aura.

And if you want to have it more
gradual, I would say blurry or smooth,

you can go into this color ramp that
is dealing with the color of your aura

and just change the interpolation
from constant to whatever you like.

I would recommend B-spline
because it gives this really,

really nice soft gradient
between the values that we have.

So, as I said, just an artistic
choice for you to make.

And now, to put a little bit
more life into this whole effect,

we can take the displace controller and
just animate it going up because as you see

with the displace controller, the texture that
is displacing the mesh is going up as well.

So, on the frame one in his base
position, I'll just click "I"

and add a location keyframe to the first frame.

And then on let's say frame 20th, I will
move it upwards and then click "I" again

and add another keyframe location.

And now, if we play this, you can
see that it's moving from 1 to 20,

but what we can also do is change the
interpolation to linear by clicking "T"

on the keyboard and choosing linear and then
shift-E and choose linear extrapolation.

And this will take these two keyframes and based

on them it will extrapolate this
animation further so that we don't need

to have the keyframe all the way up there in
order to have this animation going infinitely.

And then if you want this
to go faster or slower,

you just move this second keyframe further
or crunch it in closer to the first keyframe

to have it really, really frantic.

I like the slower one, so I'll
put it somewhere around here.

So, with this flamy color done, the
next step is to add those bluish sparks

that are moving through the whole aura.

I'm talking about those blue sparks that
you can see appearing and disappearing.

So, for that first of all we will
duplicate this color ramp with the colors

and connect the Fresnel node to it as well.

And let's preview it up.

And here, we want to change the color scheme
from this orangey yellowy flamy looking one

into the bluish sort of sparky colors.

So, we will just go through all those color
stops and just move it into the blue areas.

So, this one here, this one maybe a little
bit like this, this one much, much brighter,

and then the last one going
into almost whitish just to have

that little oomph at the at the very edge.

Now, if we preview this blue spark
color by plugging it into the emission,

you can see that it looks nice, but looks
much better if its interpolation is changed

to constant because electricity
usually is quite harsh and jagged.

So, I would recommend this.

But again, your choice.

So, let's move back the flamy
boy into emission as a default.

And then, we want this blue
one only to appear in waves.

So, let's start by adding a wave texture.

And then again, if you have the node wrangler
enabled with the node selected, click control-T.

To get a mapping and texture coordinates
node, change it from generated to object.

And then as you preview this, you can see
that now the waves are going vertically.

So, we will need to rotate it on the y-axis by
90 degrees and also change the scale all the way

down to something like 0.7 so
we have those waves quite big.

The next step is to animate the phase offset.

As you can see, we have the single value
that can control the waves going up.

So, we will simply type in here hashtag frame,
which is going to change it into a driver.

And then, we can divide it by let's say two.

And as we play the animation, you can see
that these waves are moving downwards.

So, in order to change the direction,
we just need to put a minus sign before.

Now, it's moving upwards.

And if it's moving too slow, you can
just change the frame divided by 2

to like frame divided by 0.5, whatever you like.

I will have it at 0.8 because I found
this value to work great for me.

And then in order to refine this gradient,

we will get another color ramp
right after the wave texture.

And this time, we will change it to B-spline
again so we have much, much softer gradient

and move the black value all the way in
and the white value just a little bit

so that we have this really, really
white value in here, then the gradient,

and then the black values in here,
which is exactly what we're looking for.

Now, in order to give a little
bit more variation to this,

we can increase the distortion,
the detail scale in order

to just give it a little bit of irregularities.

Now that we have this wave texture already
done, we will need a mix RGB in order to change

between the yellow and the
blue based on this mask.

So, this mask goes into the factor, and then
the yellow one goes into the color one input

and the blue into the color two input,

and the output of the mix RGB
goes straight into the emission.

Now, as we preview the mix
shader, so our finer material,

you can see that we have this
nice sort of sparky wave going

from the bottom to the top of the whole effect.

But right now, it's visible
all the time and I just feel

like it's much better when it's blinking.

So, we will need a couple more
nodes in order to achieve that.

The first one will be a math node
changed from add to ping-pong.

So, in order for us to have a blinking mask, we
need to type in hashtag frame, again a driver.

And then depending on how fast we want it
to blink, we can divide it by some number.

I will leave it at divided by 2
because I want it to blink quite fast.

And now, a disclaimer for those of you that
may have problem with fast blinking images

or epilepsy, just maybe skip this part because
I'm going to preview it and it's just going

to blink black and white, so be prepared.

So, as you can see, it's blinking right now.

And if it's too fast, too slow,
again, you can adjust the driver.

And one more thing we can do is right now as
you can see as we scroll through the animation,

it goes from black to gray and only then through
white, and we want to skip the gray values.

We only want zero and one, so
like invisible and visible.

And for that, we will need another math
node connected right after ping-pong

and this time change the add to snap, and this
will snap to whatever value we have in here.

So, I will put in one so it snaps to every
round number without anything after comma.

Again, disclaimer, flashing images.

As you preview this, you have a
clear zero to one mask flashing.

So, we move this a little bit
further, get another math node.

And this time, it's going to be a multiply,
and we want to multiply the result of the snap

with the color ramp going from our wave texture.

So, if we preview that, we
have the same blinking thing,

but this time it's the waves
that are blinking upwards.

And this goes into the mix RGB factor.

Now, as we preview everything, you should have
these really blue sparks only visible every now

and then depending on how fast it's blinking.

And I just feel like it looks so much
better than when it's always visible.

You can of course adjust the size of
the waves and the scale of it all,

so like the scale of the wave
texture, in order to have less

or more of the sparks going at the same time.

Again, all up to you.

I'll maybe change it to like 0.4.

And yeah, now is the time to sort of
adjust all the values that you want.

And just small tip.

It's better if your background is much,
much darker than this grayish value.

Then, everything that's happening
is just more visible.

So, I would recommend just go into the world
settings, change the color to something --

I don't know -- maybe bluish and
then get the value all the way

down to almost like black, but not quite.

And then, you see what's really going on.

So, again, all the values that we
went through, all the color ramps,

just feel free to adjust them as you wish.

I think I will leave it as it is.

Now, as you can see, the difference
is that my frame rate here is much,

much higher than in the presentation video.

And that is because I just like this 12 FPS
sort of look that I have had in this scene,

and you can easily have that as well
just going into the render settings

and change the frame rate from 24
to custom and then just type in 12.

But then again, the whole speed of your
animation, speed of your displace controller,

everything has to be adjusted based on
the frame rate that you choose to have.

So, for this tutorial, I will just
use 30 to have smooth-looking thing,

but just know that it's a possibility in order

to achieve a totally different
look to the whole thing.

So, now, the last thing to do
is the stones, the particles,

and that is done with the particle system.

So, we can just shift a mesh plane

to have a particle emitter on
the bottom of the whole aura.

And we can also name it "emitter."

And then, we need just a couple of stones.

And I just simply took mesh rock generator.

I believe you need to have an
add-on enabled for that as well,

which is I think extra object,
add mesh extra object.

So, make sure it's enabled or you can
just create any rock that you want.

I just found that this method is so much faster.

You just generate a rock, you go into
the modifier stack, apply all of them,

and then add a decimate modifier
and just go all the way

down until you have like a low poly version.

In order to see the faces better,
you just right-click shade flat

and then bring it all the way
down and then apply the decimate.

And you can just generate a few rocks like that,
decimate all the way down shade flat and done.

So, when you have your rock collection, I don't
know how many different variations you want,

just select both of them, click
"M" and choose "new collection."

Name them "rocks" or something like that and
this should create a new collection for you.

And now in our particle emitter in this
plane, we can create a particle system

and under render change the
render as from halo to collection

and the collection being
rocks that we just created.

We can change the scale also to
one so we see what's going on.

And as you click "play," you
can see we have our rocks.

Now, first of all, of course,
let's increase the scale randomness

so we have a variation with the scale.

Let's choose the frame start to be
like minus 50 so we have a little bit

of pre-warn before the whole animation starts.

The end also 250 so it encompasses the whole
animation frame that we have right here.

And now, first of all, obviously,
the rocks are falling.

We don't want them to fall.

All the way down into field weights and
turn down the gravity all the way to zero.

This will make our particles go up, but
in very uniform and not pleasing way.

So, first of all, let's decrease the number
to like something more sensible, maybe 100.

And then under the velocity tab, let's add an
object aligned z velocity 1 meter per second.

And then under randomize, let's increase
it to something like one so we can see

that the rocks are not going straight up,
but have a little bit of random velocity.

We can also increase the lifetime
randomness to like 0.5 so not all

of them will disappear at the same height.

Next thing, as you can see, they
are all rotated the same way.

So, under rotation, let's enable it.

Crank the randomize all the way up, randomize
space all the way up, enable dynamic.

And under angular velocity, we can increase
the amount so that they will rotate as they fly

up as well, which I think gives a little
bit more dynamism to the whole scene.

Now, if they are a little bit too big, you can
either scale your models down or scale them

under the render tab to scale a little
bit lower so they are not as big.

And now, I think the last thing to
do is as you can see they just fly

up and disappear sort of abruptly.

In order to make this transition
much smoother, we scroll all the way

down until we find the textures tab, then
open it up, click "new" to create new texture,

go into the textures tab again, change
type from image or movie to blend,

and we will use this texture in order

to tell the particle system how big the
particles should be at given moment of life.

So, first of all, open influence
and we want this texture only

to influence the size of our particle.

And then under mapping, the coordinates we want
to be not generated, but per strand and particle

so each of these particles will be affected
by this texture as its own entity basically.

Now, let's open colors, enable
color ramp and open it up.

And here, first of all, let's increase the alpha
of this to like one so we see what we're doing.

This basically represents the scale
of our object throughout its life.

So, black is zero obviously, white is one.

So, we want it to start with the size one.

And then as it grows old, we want it
to be zero by the time it disappears.

We can also change the interpolation to
B-spline to have much smoother transition

and just bring it a little bit closer.

So, as you can see, the particles
now start with their normal size

and then they just gradually
scale down until they disappear.

We can increase the render scale now
because they are a little bit too small.

And when you're happy with your particles
going up, the last thing to do is take them

and create the material for them
because right now in the render preview

as you can see we have this emissive
color and then we have those stones.

And then, it depends what you want to go for.

I in my previous scene had a
simple setup of area light shining

from the top quite big and quite strong.

And based on this light information, I had the
stones cell shaded, and I will show you how.

So, first of all, let's select the stone.

And in the material editor, click
"new" to create new material.

And we can delete the principled
BDSF and instead have a diffuse.

And now right after the diffuse,
we want a shader to RGB node,

which is going to take the shader
information and turn it into an RGB color,

which we can further connect to a color ramp.

And let me show you what it does.

So, it takes this information of how this
object looks like being lit by the light.

And based on that, we can just
give it some different color.

So, because it's stone, I went
with like the basic brown setup.

Let's do it again as well.

Change the interpolation to constant
again to have the cell shaded look.

Now, the second one's going to be
much brighter, but not too bright.

And a highlight on top.

So, you can spend much more time adjusting it.

I'm just hungry, so I'm going to wrap it up.

So, simply select the second rock,
go in here and choose the material

that we just created for our rocks.

And now, as you see, as they fly upwards
as the light changes, the material reflects

that as well and changes with it.

If the lighting is too strong for you,

then you can always just decrease
the strength of the light.

And as you can see, it affects the color

because again it's taking the diffuse
shader and then turning it into color.

So, depending on how the diffuse
shader looks in the first place,

that's how the result is going to look like.

And yeah, because it's aura, one last thing.

You can select it.

You can see we have a shadow right now.

Go into the material properties.

And under the shadow mode, just click
"none" so that it doesn't cast any shadow

because I just believe it shouldn't.

And this would be it for the tutorial.

I hope that you learned something, that you
enjoyed it and you will be able to use it

in your personal project, which
I would love to see if you do so.

Please share with me on Twitter.

Link for that in the description.

And if you have any requests for the future
tutorials, comment section is for you,

and I will see you in the next one.

Bye-bye.

>> Hello and welcome everyone to another video.

Recently I have created this Dragon Ball Z aura
type effect in Blender, and today I'm going

to show you how you can make it yourself.

Of course as most of my videos
this effect is fully procedural.

So if you don't like something about
it or you just have your own vision,

then chances are you can just adjust the values
that I will show you later and make it your own.

So again, as in every video, if you manage
to make something out of it or use it

in some scene, I would really
love to see your creation.

So make sure to share with me on Twitter,
link for that is in the description.

And now let's just jump right into Blender.

So first of all, we will delete everything
and we'll start with a mesh sphere.

And for those of you that watched my
recent tutorial about the fire effect,

the beginning is going to be very, very similar.

So you may just skip to the
shader creation part.

And for those of you that are new,
we will start by going into modifiers

and add a subdivision surface modifier as
first one, then a normal edit modifier,

and as last, we will add a displace modifier.

So your stack should look something like this.

The next step, we'll create an
empty and put it below our sphere.

Let's also name it normal
controller because we will use it

to control the normals of our sphere.

It may not make a lot of sense
right now but just bear with me

and you should soon see visually
what I'm talking about.

So now let's go into the displace
modifier and click new to get a new texture

and go down to the texture tab
and change the type to clouds.

Now back in the modifier stack in
the normal edit, the target is going

to be the normal controller,
so the empty we created.

And then open up mix and change
the mix mode from copy to add.

You may also notice that we have this
warning that tells us to enable auto smooth

for this modifier to work,
so we'll do just that.

Go to the object data properties,
normals, and enable auto smooth.

Now as you can see not much happened,
but as you move this empty around,

it may look like we are moving
a light source and that is

because we are actually editing
the normals of our mesh,

which also means we can use this
custom normals in our displace modifier

to displace it only where we want to.

So in the displace modifier,
change the direction from normal

to custom normal, so the one we edit.

And now as you move the empty, you can see
that the mesh is being displaced according

to the custom normal that we
are editing in the real time.

So let's keep it under.

And now in order to have further control

over the displacement itself,
we will create another empty.

So again, empty plane axis is fine
or any other will do just fine.

And this one we will call a displace controller.

Now back in our sphere, in the displace
modifier, change coordinates from local

to object, and the object is going to be
the displace controller that we created.

This way we can easily control the displace
texture by simply scaling our empty.

Also moving it around is going to phase
through the three-dimensional texture.

Now with this basic set up, let's make our aura
look like an aura, so sort of an egg shape.

We can just pick the top vertice, and with the
proportional editing enabled we can simply move

it up and just adjust it.

Just make it look like a sort of egg or
a droplet of water, and then when you get

out of the edit mode you can see that
it resembles aura a little bit more.

Now one thing to pay attention to is
when you go back into the edit mode,

you can see that the density of the vertices
is much higher down here than it is up here.

So it is a good practice to sort of even it out.

So feel free to just add some loop cuts
in the middle to sort of have a uniform --

or at least around a uniform
across the whole surface.

So with that done, right click shade
smooth so we have a nice smooth sort

of bush-looking mesh which is perfectly fine.

Don't worry too much about
displacement and the value so far

yet because we can always
adjust it later down the road.

And now let's just focus on the material itself.

So let's get a new window, change it to shader
editor, and click new to create a new material.

We can delete the principled BDSF and
get a emission shader node as well

as transparent BSDF, and also a mix shader
connected like so, the transparent on top

and emission on the bottom, and now let's add
a fernel node as well as layer weight node.

Now let's also go into the render
preview so we see what we're doing.

And as we preview the fernel node -- the
preview is ctrl shift left mouse button,

but you have to have a node wrangler enabled.

For those of you wondering it's
under edit, preferences, add-ons.

And by default it should be in Blender
already, so just make sure it's enabled.

So the fernel node as you see gives us this
really, really nice effect where only the edges

of the mesh is highlighted which is going to
play perfectly into what we are trying to do.

So right after fernel node
let's add a color ramp,

and here we can already start
laying in some colors.

First of all, let's change the
interpolation from linear to constant

so that we don't have any gradient but rather
sharp, contrasty look between the colors.

And now let's start with the darkest being
sort of reddish, maybe something like this.

Then the next one it will go through orange,
then to yellow, and the last one sort

of washed out yellow going into the white.

Now we can adjust it as it is
right now or you can do it later.

Just make sure it looks something like that.

It gradually goes from darkest to the
lightest in the edges poking out of the mesh.

But don't worry about it too much,
we can always come back to it later.

And this color ramp is going
straight into the emission node.

Now as we preview the mix shader,
you can see that we have just that

and we don't have any transparency yet, and
that is because first of all we need to go

into the material properties and in blend
mode enable alpha blend instead of opaque.

And the second thing, let's
also enable back face culling.

Now as you see everything is sort of half
transparent because this mix shader is now set

to being half transparent
BSDF and half emission.

So what we need to do is we
need to get an alpha mask,

and for this we will use this layer weight node.

So let's get another color
ramp and connect the facing

into the color ramp, and let's preview this.

Here we can change the interpolation
from linear to B-spline

to get a much softer gradient than with linear.

And also, let's bring in
the black value quite high

and the white one just slightly
move it from the edge to like 0.9.

Now let's duplicate this color ramp, and this
time connect it with fernel from layer weight.

And as you preview this one it
has slightly different result.

You can see that the facing has more
of that gradient going into our aura,

and fernel only really highlights
the very edges.

So here we can actually dial back this black
value a little bit to have that gradient

as well, and now we just need to
combine these two color ramps.

So let's get a math node, connect both of them
together; leave it at add; let's preview that.

And the only thing you need to do
is enable clamp just to make sure

that the white values do not exceed
one because this will go directly

into the mix shader factor, and so everything
of value one is going to be fully opaque,

and the black values are
going to be transparent.

So as we preview this, we can see that we
already have something going on in here.

Now make sure that the back face calling is
on because if you turn it off then you see

that we have some sort of artifact.

Not sure why it happens, but it does,
so just make sure it's checked in.

And here we can adjust the color ramp values
just to make sure that our colors are popping

in nicely and they are not too faded but
also that we still have this nice gradient.

Also if this mesh is pretty spiky, remember

that in the modifier stack we
added a subdivision modifier,

at the beginning so you can
up the levels of subdivision.

And this should give you a
lot more geometry to work

with which should also make the
gradient a little bit smooth.

And then as you see in my case, I have
very noisy displacement going on right now

and that is why we have this displace controller
in here so we can easily just scale it

up a little bit in order to
get much, much softer results.

Now because it's an aura and it's supposed to
be glowing, we can up the emission strength

in here to something like maybe ten.

And if you don't have this glow going
around your mesh, just make sure that you go

into the render settings
and you have a bloom enabled

because that's the setting that's
allowing your emissive areas to glow.

Now as you can see, we have [inaudible]
shaded, sort of stylized look of the aura.

And if you want to have it more
gradual, I would say blurry or smooth,

you can go into this color ramp that
is dealing with the color of your aura

and just change the interpolation
from constant to whatever you like.

I would recommend the B-spline
because it gives this really,

really nice soft gradient
between the values that we have.

So as I said, just a -- So as I said,
just an artistic choice for you to make.

And now to put a little bit more
life into this whole effect,

we can take the displace controller
and just animate it going up.

Because as you see with this
displace controller,

the texture that is displacing
the mesh is going up as well.

So on the frame one, in his
base position, I'll just click I

and add a location keyframe to the first frame.

And then on, let's say, frame 20th, I will
move it upwards, and then click I again

and add another keyframe location.

And now if you play this you can
see that it's moving from 1 to 20.

But what we can also do is change the
interpolation to linear by clicking T

on the keyboard and choosing linear, and
then shift E and choose linear extrapolation.

And this will take these two
keyframes and based on them,

it will extrapolate this animation
further so that we don't need

to have the keyframe all the way up there in
order to have this animation going infinitely.

And then if you want this
to go faster or slower,

you just move this second keyframe further
or crunch it in closer to the first keyframe

to have it really, really frantic.

I like the slower one, so I'll
put it somewhere around here.

So with this flamey color done, the
next step is to add those bluish sparks

that are moving through the whole aura.

I'm talking about those blue sparks that
you can see appearing and disappearing.

So for that, first of all, we will
duplicate this color ramp with the colors

and connect the fernel node to it
as well; and let's preview that.

And here we want to change the color scheme
from this orangey, yellowy, flamey looking one

into the bluish sort of sparky colors.

So we will just go through all those color
stops and just move it into the blue areas.

So this one here, this one may be a little
bit like this, this one much, much brighter,

and then the last one going into almost whitish
just to have that little oomph at the very edge.

Now if you preview this blue spark
color by plugging it into the emission,

you can see that it looks nice, but it looks
much better if its interpolation is changed

to constant because electricity
usually is quite harsh and jagged.

So I would recommend this,
but again your choice.

So let's move back the flamey
[inaudible] to emission as a default,

and then we want this blue
one only to appear in waves.

So let's by adding a wave texture.

And then again if you have the node
wrangler enabled with the node selected,

click CTRL T. To get a mapping
and texture coordinates node,

change it from generated to object.

And then as you preview this you can see
that now the waves are going vertically,

so we will need to rotate it
on the y-axis by 90 degrees,

and also change the scale all the
way down to something like 0.7.

So we have those waves quite big.

The next step is to animate the phase offset.

As you can see we have the single value
that can control the waves going up.

So we'll simply type in here hashtag frame
which is going to change it into a driver,

and then we can divide it by let's say 2.

And as we play the animation you can see
that these waves are moving downwards.

So in order to change the direction, we
just need to put a minus sign before.

Now it's moving upwards.

And if it's moving too slow, you can
just change the frame divided by 2 to --

like frame divided by 0.5 whatever you like.

I will have it at 0.8 because I found
this value to work great for me.

And then in order to refine this gradient,

we will get another color ramp
right after the wave texture.

And this time we will change it to B-spline
again so we have much, much softer gradient.

And move the black value all the way in
and the white value just a little bit

so that we have this really, really
white value in here, then the gradient,

and then the black values in here,
which is exactly what we're looking for.

Now in order to give a little bit more variation
to this, we can increase the distortion,

the detail scale in order to just give
it a little bit of irregularities.

Now that we have this wave texture already
done, we will need a mix RGB in order to change

between the yellow and the
blue based on this mask.

So this mask goes into the factor and then
the yellow one goes into the color one input

and the blue into the color two input.

And the output of the mix RGB
goes straight into the emission.

Now as we preview the mix
shader, so our final material,

you can see that we have this
nice sort of sparky wave going

from the bottom to the top of the whole effect.

But right now it's visible all the time,

and I just feel like it's much
better when it's blinking.

So we will need a couple more
nodes in order to achieve that.

The first one will be a math node
changed from add to ping pong.

So in order for us to have a blinking mask, we
need to type in hashtag frame, again, a driver,

and then depending on how fast we want it
to blink we can divide it by some number.

I will leave it at divided by 2
because I want it to blink quite fast.

And now a disclaimer, for those of you that
may have problem with fast-blinking images

or epilepsy just maybe skip this part because
I'm going to preview it and it's just going

to blink black and white, so be prepared.

So as you can see, it's blinking right now.

And if it's too fast, too slow,
again, you can adjust the driver.

And one more thing we can do is -- right now as
you can see as we scroll through the animation,

it goes from black to gray
and only then through white.

And we want to skip the gray
values; we only want zero

and one, so like invisible and visible.

And for that we will need another math
node, connected right after ping pong,

and this time change the add to snap.

And this will snap to whatever
value we have in here.

So I will put in one so it snaps to every
round number without anything after comma.

Again disclaimer, flashing images.

As you preview this, you have a
clear zero to one mask flashing.

So we move this a little bit further, get
another math node, and this time it's going

to be multiplying, and we want to
multiply the result of the snap

with the color ramp going from our wave texture.

So if we preview that we
have the same blinking thing,

but this time it's the waves
that are blinking upwards.

And this goes into the mix RGB factor.

Now as we preview everything, you should have
this really blue sparks only visible every now

and then depending on how fast it's blinking.

And I just feel like it looks so much
better than when it's always visible.

You can, of course, adjust the size
of the waves and the scale of it all,

so like the scale of the wave
texture in order to have less

or more of the sparks going at the same time.

Again, all up to you.

I will maybe change it to like 0.4.

And here now is the time to sort of
adjust all the values that you want.

And just small tip, it's better
if your background is much,

much darker than this grayish value
then everything that's happening is just

more visible.

So I would recommend just go into the world
settings, change the color to something,

I don't know maybe bluish, and then get the
value all the way down to almost like black

but not quite, and then you
see what's really going on.

So again, all the values that we
went through, all the color ramps,

just feel free to adjust them as you wish.

I think I will leave it as it is.

Now as you can see the difference
is that my frame rate here is much,

much higher than in the presentation video and
that is because I just like this 12 FPS sort

of look that I have had in this scene, and
you can easily have that as well just going

into the render settings, and change the frame
rate from 24 to custom and then just type in 12.

But then again, the whole like speed of your
animation, speed of your displace controller,

everything has to be adjusted based on
the frame rate that you choose to have.

So for this tutorial I will just
use 30 to have smooth-looking thing,

but just know that it's a possibility in order

to achieve a totally different
look to the whole thing.

So now the last thing to do
is the stones, the particles

and that is done with the particle system.

So we can just shift a mesh plane to
have a particle emitter on the bottom

of the whole aura, and we
can also name it emitter.

And then we need just couple of stones.

And I just simply took mesh, rock generator.

I believe you need to have an add-on
enabled for that as well which is, I think,

extra object add mesh extra object.

So make sure it's enabled.

Or you can just create any rock that you want.

I just found that this method is so much faster.

You just generate a rock.

You go into the modifier stack, apply all
of them, and then add a decimate modifier,

and just go all the way down until
you have like a low-poly version.

In order to see the faces better, you just right
click, shade flat, and then bring it all the way

down and then apply the decimate.

And you can just generate a few rocks like that.

Decimate all the way down, shade flat, and done.

So when you have your rock collection, I don't
know how many different variations you want,

just select both of them, click
M and choose new collection.

Name them rocks or something like that, and
this should create a new collection for you.

And now in our particle emitter, in this
plane, we can create a particle system,

and under render, change the
render as from halo to collection,

and the collection being
rocks that we just created.

We can change the scale also to
one, so we see what's going on.

And as you click play you
can see we have our rocks.

Now first of all, of course let's
increase the scale randomness

so we have a variation with the scale.

Let's choose the frame, start to be
like minus 50, so we have a little bit

of pre-warm before the whole animation starts.

The end also 250 so it encompasses the whole
animation frame that we have right here.

And now first of all, obviously
the rocks are falling.

We don't want them to fall -- all
the way down into field weights,

and turn down the gravity all the way to zero.

This will make our particles go up but
in very uniform and not pleasing way.

So first of all, let's decrease the number
to, like, something more sensible maybe 100.

And then under the velocity tab, let's add a
object aligned Z velocity, one meter per second,

and then under randomize let's
increase it to something like one.

So we can see that the rocks
are not going straight up

but have a little bit of random velocity.

We can also increase the
lifetime randomness to like 0.5.

So not all of them will disappear
at the same height.

Next thing, as you can see,
they're all rotated the same way.

So under rotation, let's enable it.

Crank the randomize all the way up, the
randomized phase all the way up, enable dynamic.

And under angular velocity we can increase the
amount so that they will rotate as they fly

up as well, which I think gives a little
bit more dynamism to the whole scene.

Now if they are a little bit too big,
you can either scale your models down,

or scale them under the render tab to scale
a little bit lower so they are not as big.

And now I think the last thing to do is --

as you can see they just fly up
and disappear sort of abruptly.

In order to make this transition much,
much smoother, we scroll all the way

down until we find the textures
tab, then open it up, click new.

To create new texture, go into the textures tab
again, change type from image or movie to blend,

and we will use this texture in order

to tell the particle system how big the
particles should be at given moment of life.

So first of all, open influence,
and we want this texture only

to influence the size of our particle.

And then under mapping --
the coordinates we want

to be not generated but per strand and particle.

So each of this particle will be affected
by this texture as its own entity basically.

Now let's open colors.

Enable color ramp and open it up.

And here, first of all, let's increase the alpha
of this to like one so we see what we're doing.

This basically represents the scale
of our object throughout its life.

So black is zero, obviously; white is one.

So we want it to start with the
size one, and then as it grows old,

we want it to be zero by the time it disappears.

We can also change the interpolation to
B-spline to have much smoother transition

and just bring it a little bit closer.

So as you can see the particles
now start with their normal size

and then they just gradually
scale down until they disappear.

We can increase the render scale now
because they are a little bit small.

And when you're happy with your particles
going up, the last thing to do is take them

and create a material for them because right
now in the render preview as you can see,

we have this emissive color,
and then we have those stones,

and then it depends what you want to go for.

I, in my previous scene, had a simple
setup of area light shining from the top,

quite big and quite strong, and based

on this light information I had the stones
cell shaded, and I will show you how.

So first of all let's select the stone,

and in the material editor click
new to create new material.

And we can delete the principled
BSDF and instead have a diffuse.

And now right after the diffuse,
we want a shader to RGB node,

which is going to take the shader
information and turn it into an RGB color,

which we can further connect to a color ramp.

And let me show you what it does.

So it takes this information of how this
object looks like being lit by the light,

and based on that we can just
give it some different color.

So because it's stone, I went
with like the basic brown set up.

Oh, let's do it again as well.

Change the interpolation to constant
again to have the cell-shaded look.

Now the second one's going to be
much brighter but not too bright.

Add a highlight, highlight on top.

So yeah, you can spend much
more time adjusting it.

I'm just hungry so I'm going to wrap it up.

So simply select the second rock
going in here and choose the material

that we just created for our rocks.

And now as you see as they fly upwards, as
the light changes, the material reflects

that as well and changes with it.

If the lighting is too strong for you, then
you can always just decrease the strength

of the light, and as you can see it
affects the color because, again,

it's taking the diffuse shader
and then turning it into color.

So depending on the how the diffuse
shader looks in the first place,

that's how the result is going to look like.

And yeah, because it's aura, one
last thing, you can select it.

You can see we have a shadow right now --

go into the material properties and
under the shadow mode just click none

so that it doesn't cast any shadow
because I just believe it shouldn't.

And this would be it for the tutorial.

I hope that you learned something, that you
enjoyed it, and you will be able to use it

in your personal project,
which I would love to see.

If you do so, please share with me on Twitter.

Link for that in the description.

And if you have any requests for the future
tutorials, comment section is for you.

And I will see you in the next one.

Bye bye.