Zerzura Wind and Sand Effects

The Temple of Zerzura course in Walkabout Mini Golf was all about scale, and the effects had to work in tandem with the models to portray the feeling to the player. Wind was used with large cloths to showcase that scale, and I was tasked with setting those up in our wind setup, along with all the plants, and making them work together. The cloth needed enough lift and softness to the vertex offset to be believable and had to be consistent across the different types and sizes of cloth in the level. The plants, on the other hand, were large swaths of papyrus that had to be combined for optimization, along with the large trees that had to be set up for the level.

Along with the wind, sand particles were used to show the emptiness in the desert. Large clouds of sand were added to the start of the level. Inside the temple, I also created cracks in the geo and added falling sand particles that would collide with a floor plane and spawn a dust cloud subparticle. These effects brought the course to life, invoking the emotions we wanted the players to feel.