Challenges and solutions

Dynamic Movement for the Drill’s “Teeth”

Making the teeth surrounding the beam open and close dynamically, while maintaining control over smoothness.

​

Solution:

• I used the beam timeline to control the open/close position of the drill’s mouth

• Designed a single modular tooth asset, then used radial duplication with a parameter to adjust the number of instances

​

Optimising the Niagara Surface Hit Effect

When activated, the surface hit VFX Niagara system was triggered every frame (on tick), causing significant FPS drops.

Solution:​

• Implemented a “do-once” node with a reset delay, preventing the line trace from calling the Niagara system every frame

• Increased the loop duration of the VFX system, ensuring the effect played longer without needing constant retriggering.

• This approach balanced visual consistency while eliminating major frame rate issues.