Colour, value and brightness in effects

Colour

• One hue is common for elemental skills (water blue, heal green, fire orange).
• Two analogous hues about 45 to 50 degrees apart (lime with gold) add richness without noise.
• A complementary accent stays small: about 10% of layers.
• Saturated energy, desaturated matter. Rings, flames and beams are saturated; smoke, dust and debris are not.
• Smoke next to fire takes the fire's colour where the fire lights it. Smoke away from fire comes in warm and grey pairs, lit by the scene.
• Lights take the palette too. One PointLight per hue tints the surroundings and sells the colour.

Value: black is a colour

Black layers are 10 to 35% of emitters in good effects. A dark layer behind a bright one is what makes the bright one read as bright.

• The three-value stack on impacts: a colour layer, its black twin slightly behind, and a short white copy in front.
• Stacked copies for an inner gradient: three copies of one flame sheet at different sizes and colours give a hot core without drawing a new texture.
• Glow that cools: one copy at LightEmission 1 that dies first, and one unlit copy that lives longer.
• Dark energy: invert it. A black core with coloured edges.

White is a thin shape, not a fill

Pure white is kept for thin, short-lived shapes: rings, flares, wind arcs, crescents. A white fill flattens everything around it.

Brightness

• Read the place's BloomEffect before choosing Brightness. The same value blooms out in one place and looks dull in another.
• Hard cel shapes: LightEmission 0 (or negative) with Brightness 5 to 55.
• Glows and halos: LightEmission 1 at Brightness 1 to 6, often below 1.
• The white-hot core: one or two front layers at very high Brightness for a single frame or two.
• A Decal's Color3 above 1 is overbright and blooms. Tween it down for a crack that glows and cools.

Lighting influence

LightInfluence 0 keeps a glowing layer at its own colour. Smoke reads better lit by the scene, at 0.35 to 1.

Parts of this guide are adapted from the VFX half of Roqer's roblox-animation-vfx skill (github.com/S4US/Roqer, MIT licence, TabooHarmony), measured and extended in Studio.