These are a sampling of effects achieved through use of particle effects and scripted lighting in UDK. The particle effects are set up in Unreal’s Cascade editor. The lighting effects are a combination of material based light functions and Kismet scripting.

Effect one is a sci-fi plasma generator. The lighting is controlled through Kismet to flicker at randomized intervals that are generated on the fly through Kismet and then piped into the playback speed of a matinee event that toggles the dynamic light off and on. The beams/arcs are set up in Cascade as beam emitters. The crackling arc itself is achieved by panning cloud textures across one another in a dynamic material that is then applied to the beam particles.

The second effect is a fire effect consisting of 3 particle emitters and a material based light function. The emitters include one blobby particle emitter that creates the main flames of the fire effect, one smoke emitter, and a randomized spark emitter that emits bursts of sparks at randmized intervals to simulate the popping and cracling that occurs as wood and other fuel are combusted.

Finally there is the damaged light effect which consists of a spark emitter, a scripted material instance, and a scripted dynamic light. The material instance is controlled by the same script that toggles the light off and on; when it toggles the light off it also turns off the emissive channel of the material instance and when the light is toggled back on the emissive channel of the material is also reactivated. The sparks are a very basic burst emitter in Cascade which has its burst fired at random intervals.