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ice-frost-skill-vfx

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Build the effects of an ice and frost skill as one visual language in Three.js. Frost that grows like real frost, not a painted fern: a dendritic tree grown on the CPU from a seed point, stems racing outward with barbs and sub-barbs that compete for space in one time-ordered queue, side branches leaned toward their tips, baked into a distance field so the shader draws hairline feathers growing out from the seed with a bright tip, rime, crystal glints and a contact shadow. Faceted ice spikes built from half-spaces and ray-traced against their own planes (Snell, Fresnel, total internal reflection, Beer-Lambert blue, trapped bubbles, a fracture network, frosted edges) that erupt along the frost line, crack along visible planes and shatter into convex pieces that tumble, land on a face and rest, with snow lumps and ice chips settled into the crust. A low freezing mist marched as wind-stretched banks that churn in place and part around the ice, a blizzard column of powder on helical strand…

When to use

• ice or frost skills
• frost novas
• ice spikes or walls
• glacial eruptions
• shattering ice
• blizzards
• snow devils
• freezing mist

When not to use

• lightning, energy orb, black afterimage smoke and air bursts
• flames, smoke, embers and burning ground
• readable, budgeted gameplay effects in general
• scoring a skill out of 10
• polishing the caster's body and timing

Skill page

Source