Realtime VFX Studio
Espoo, Finland
Petra: The Glory Of The Nabateans
VR Experience
Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn
Game VFX
Jameson – VR
Brand Experience
Aurora
Realtime Demo
Ramses & Nefertari: Journey to Osiris
VR Journey
Orbitals
Game VFX
Coming Soon
Unannounced – TopDown Shooter
Coming Soon
Coming Soon
Unannounced – Anime Cooperative
Coming Soon
String VFX is a realtime visual effects studio based in Espoo, Finland. We create VFX for games, VR experiences and brand activations using Unreal Engine, Houdini and EmberGen, and we specialise in making high-end effects run in realtime on tight performance budgets.
A highly-acclaimed VR experience where we pioneered the use of Heterogenous Volumes in Unreal for realtime volumetric dust and "djinn" magic. We overcame on-site photogrammetry challenges to deliver cinematic lighting, complex water simulations for player immersion, and civilization timelapses, all heavily optimized to run in realtime.
Brought on under a tight deadline, we rapidly designed and shipped critical gameplay VFX for this Unreal title. Our work included impactful boss FX, dynamic plant-growing systems, and team identification shaders. We also integrated with the studio, establishing their VFX pipeline and mentoring their artists to build long-term capacity.
Optimization was the key challenge for this lower-end PC VR experience. We delivered high-fidelity realtime fire and water-transition effects by leveraging EmberGen's speed and custom Unreal shaders. We also designed moody, atmospheric lighting that respected a very tight performance budget.
For this Unreal cinematic, we built a custom pipeline to drive large-scale dynamic events. The highlight was an entire tree-freezing sequence, driven by positional data baked from Houdini into textures. We also used Houdini Vellum for dynamic tearing simulations and baked fluid dynamics into Vertex Animation Textures (VATs) for realtime performance.
A fast-paced, low-end PC VR project praised for its visual effects. On a tight schedule, we delivered optimized destruction simulations, atmospheric lighting, and magical glows that all ran efficiently on minimal hardware, contributing to the project's positive reception.
Created for Shapefarm and published by Kepler Interactive, Orbitals is a stylized sci-fi action title inspired by 80s anime. We joined during the initial pitch diorama through ship to build ~1,000 realtime VFX in Unreal Engine.
Breakdown Highlights:
Currently in production: 2 unannounced titles (TopDown Shooter, Anime Cooperative).
Boss and ability effects, dynamic environment systems and team-identification shaders, designed and shipped on tight deadlines.
High-fidelity effects, lighting and atmosphere optimised to run on low-end PC VR hardware.
Simulations baked into textures and Vertex Animation Textures (VATs), Vellum tearing and custom pipelines for large-scale dynamic events.
EmberGen fire and water transitions, and realtime volumetric dust and magic using Heterogeneous Volumes in Unreal.
Non-PBR 80s anime emulation, stepped Niagara animations, and hybrid hand-painted/procedural shading in full 3D.
Profiling and optimizing large-scale particle counts and shader overdraw to fit strict realtime performance budgets.
Embedding with studios to establish their VFX pipeline and mentor their artists to build long-term capacity.
Need realtime VFX for your project?
Email: milan@stringvfx.com
String VFX · Espoo, Finland