Back after the holidays! This time I decided to brush up on my audio design skills as well, which is also highlighted at the end of the main demo video. I am quite happy with how the effect turned out, with only one minor quirk being the dissipation effect not working in sequencer (bug in UE 4.27 *sad trombone noise*). Check out the in-editor video to see that effect.
On a more technical note, it's been super interesting working with vertex displacement to achieve different effects, like rippling surfaces with sine-waves, creating a "shockwave" effect, or aligning the mesh of the groundwash with the ground. You can see the difference again in the editor video, where the groundwash is instead hovering above the effect, as we have no terrain to displace it to.
VFX and Audio demonstration in sequencer
Beam in-editor, without external parameters
Hand effect in-editor, without external parameters.
Note the lack of smoke, as this scales with movement and a scale parameter which defaults to zero.