Special Effects, also called FX, SFX, Visual Effects, VFX and Real-Time VFX are an essential part of gaming. The amount of immersion caused by that small puff of dust of the foot while running on a dusty area helps the player feel as they are actually moving the avatar in that virtual world.

Real-Time VFX can generally be broken down into 3 major categories: Particles, Shaders and Simulations.

Links

• VFX for Games - Particle Effects (84MB zip) presentation delivered at SIGGRAPH 2012 by Crytek’s Sascha Herfort.
• VFX Artists subforum on Tech-Artists.Org
• imbueFX : VFX Training ($) training site for visual effects in games
• FX Artist resources?
• Inside DICE: Adapting the Battlefield visuals for Close Quarters combat
• Rendering Wounds in Left 4 Dead 2 by Alex Vlachos of Valve Software, at GDC 2010
• Faking Volumetric Effects in UDK by Stephen Jameson