Heartbeat skill's visual effect

Having a powerful skillset when you're fighting with vampires and other bloodthirsty creatures in a game can come in handy from time to time, especially if it takes away the enemy's health to add to yours...

Thinking of that I started to shape the idea from scratch!

Being a Rookie with limited resources I tried to summon the devil's heart to do the job for me. Finding a suitable free 3D model HERE wasn't the most complicated one but it was a good start!

I wanted a heartbeat to suck the life out of my enemies but simply changing the scale wasn't satisfactory and the 3d model coming with no material made me try doing something completely new to me! a simple material capable of creating the illusion of motion without actually changing the mesh's setting...

To enhance the visual effect I decided to set different parameters for each part of the mesh, which was easily manageable thanks to the material instance.

Having some kind of effect while performing the skill wouldn't be bad right? So try another material and playing with the Niagra system can be fun too... Start making Reflection to add some more movement to the heartbeat then adding forces that are moving through the enemy's body to destroy their blood vessels can give you more power.

Now the enemy is dead but it's important to ensure they remain deceased and what purifies all the evil is nothing but fire! Enjoying working with the Niagra system made me try to make an explosion to finish the enemy for good.

Ok, almost finished but why doesn't it look as powerful as it should? Well... sound! Bring it to life with some sound effects!

The ideal place to include it appeared to be in an animation montage so I started to add the sound of mysterious whispers and Evil_Whoosh_ish thing from HERE while summoning the heart that was reading some ancient Hebrew ritual. Or... I don't know, maybe they're the soldiers of the devil trying to fight my will!

Moving on to another step, I added the sound of squishing and breaking the enemy's flesh and bones right when I finish the ritual now. I decided to add it in the enemy's blueprint as I didn't need any if there were no beasts to kill around!

The next step can be a stream of blood from the enemy to the player's body as the heart sucks their blood but since I'm thinking about submitting another entry from the game I'm making I decided to postpone it at the moment.

Here is a glimpse of what I made for the skill system in my game up until now.

Wish me luck... :)