effekseer-vfx-skill

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Agent skills that let a coding agent (Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Gemini CLI, GitHub Copilot, OpenCode and other Agent Skills hosts) make real-time game VFX the way a VFX artist iterates, in code:

design brief → textures → Python recipe → EffekseerCore build → real Godot filmstrip → look → fix one thing → repeat → independent review

• effekseer-vfx — the authoring skill: craft rules, verified Effekseer/Godot engine conventions, about 30 composable layer primitives, a static linter, the official EffekseerCore compiler with save/open read-back, a Godot Lab that stages every effect as an exchange between two dummies, filmstrip capture with pixel flags, iteration history and tamper-evident evidence that ties a review to the exact build it saw.
• vfx-review — the reviewer skill: a separate agent scores the strip against a fixed rubric without seeing the recipe, because the author never grades its own work.
• Examples — sixteen finished effects with briefs and textures: four ranged pairs (fire, ice, poison, dark: projectile + impact), one each of hit, slash, charge, shield and heal, and a kaiju set (a charge that climbs the dorsal plates, a sweepable atomic beam, a photographic explosion), plus three diagnosed before/after cases.
• Large and realistic effects — scale='kaiju' builds a character-scale recipe 40x larger and 2.5x slower (sizes, speeds, gravity, budgets and the review camera all follow); beam() makes a held beam whose end point the game moves every frame (Vfx.beam() → aim() → release()); charge_chain() lights arcs along a chain of points; photographic fire, soot and smoke flipbooks; soft particles verified in Forward+.
• Combos, blockout and stylized shapes — a sequence brief ties several effects to the beats of a character animation and gates the work blockout → detail → polish (an independent blockout review must pass before any texture work); captures can come from the game itself; references carry steal lists the reviewer checks; vfx paintover turns a captured frame into an image-edit prompt for a concept target. Hard-edged stylized primitives (spiral_ribbons, spike_crown, speed_streaks, stylized_pair, sparkle), greyscale mask templates, and screen feedback (screen=: shake, impact frame, hit-stop) that the Lab plays and Vfx.screen_cue hands to the game.

Three ways to make an effect (new in 0.3)

You choose per effect; nothing forces one way.

Way	How	Plays in
Procedural	layered primitives in a Python recipe, painted textures, EffekseerCore build, Godot review (everything above)	Effekseer → Godot
Video flipbook	an image-to-video model (verified with Seedance 2.5; any model with first and last frames works) paints the motion on black; vfx video-flipbook keys, crops, masks and packs it, vfx video-grade gives every sheet of an element the same cel-shaded look	Unity (URP), or Effekseer → Godot
Combined	the sheet is the body layer of a recipe (video_body(...)); primitives add the contact flash, sparks, rings, cracks, decals and heat haze	Effekseer → Godot, Unity

What was not possible before and is now:

• Continuous shape changes. A water column that shoots up, carries the target into the air and collapses as rain; a fireball that bursts and boils into grey smoke; an orb whose flames churn in a seamless loop. Primitives scale, fade, scroll and erode a picture; they cannot turn fire into smoke inside one silhouette. A video model draws every in-between.
• A hand-painted anime look in motion, consistent across a whole element set: one value ramp per element grades every sheet to the same flat steps (dark rim, body, light, hot core).
• Unity. The skill used to stop at Godot. vfx unity-install <UnityProject> adds a URP runtime package (data-driven ElementProfile skills with projectile, instant-bolt and ground-eruption delivery, layered particles, hit-stop, shake, target lift) and its procedural textures; vfx unity-export copies a sheet with its grid; three menu items (or one batch-mode command an agent can run) turn sheets into a playable skill and a demo scene.
• Reproducible from a sentence. Every clip's prompt and every sheet's parameters are recorded in vfx/video_prompts.json, so an agent can rebuild or vary a sheet exactly. Ask: "Make a water-column skill from a video flipbook and set it up in my Unity project."

Guide: references/video-flipbook.md. The skill ships the technique only: clips, sheets and characters you generate stay in your own project.

Requirements

Mode	What you can do	Needs
authoring	write briefs and recipes, lint, process and measure textures	Python 3.11+ or uv on macOS, Linux or Windows (macOS's built-in Python 3.9 is too old)
build	compile .efkefc / .efk through the official EffekseerCore	macOS on Apple silicon or Windows x64, network for the first setup (~250 MB into ~/.cache/effekseer-vfx)
render	Godot filmstrip review, Lab, preview, packaging	the above + Godot 4 (Forward+) on PATH or in GODOT; ffmpeg for reference clips and recordings
video flipbooks	video-* commands	authoring mode + ffmpeg; clips from any image-to-video model
Unity	play sheets as element skills	Unity 6 (6000.0+) with URP 17; verified on 6000.5

Build and render are verified on macOS ARM64 (Effekseer Core 1.80.7, EffekseerForGodot4 1.80.5.1, Godot 4.7, .NET 9) and on Windows 11 x64 (the same versions, Godot 4.7.2). Windows ARM64 gets the matching .NET runtime from setup but is not verified. Linux runs authoring mode; its build path is not verified.

On Windows every sh <skill>/scripts/... command below also works from Git Bash (what Claude Code uses); from cmd or PowerShell use <skill>\scripts\vfx.cmd for vfx and powershell -NoProfile -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File <skill>\scripts\setup.ps1 for setup.sh.

Install

The simplest way: give this repository's URL to your coding agent and ask it to install the skill. The steps it follows are in For agents: installing from this URL. Or install it yourself:

Claude Code (type these in Claude Code)

/plugin marketplace add kanaworksai-hue/effekseer-vfx-skill
/plugin install effekseer-vfx@effekseer-vfx

Codex (ask in a Codex chat; the skills land in ~/.codex/skills, or $CODEX_HOME/skills, and are used from the next turn or a new session)

$skill-installer install https://github.com/kanaworksai-hue/effekseer-vfx-skill/tree/main/skills/effekseer-vfx
$skill-installer install https://github.com/kanaworksai-hue/effekseer-vfx-skill/tree/main/skills/vfx-review

Other agents (Cursor, Gemini CLI, Copilot, OpenCode, ...)

npx skills add kanaworksai-hue/effekseer-vfx-skill

Or copy skills/effekseer-vfx and skills/vfx-review into your agent's skills folder (~/.claude/skills/, .agents/skills/, ...). Each skill folder carries its own LICENSE (and effekseer-vfx its THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md), so a copied folder keeps them.

For agents: installing from this URL

1. Get the files. If your host has a plugin or skill installer, prefer it (the commands above); a slash command such as /plugin must be typed by the user, so show it to them. Otherwise clone the repository and copy both skill folders into your skills folder, keeping their names: git clone --depth 1 <this repository URL>, then copy skills/effekseer-vfx and skills/vfx-review to ~/.claude/skills/ (Claude Code, all projects), <project>/.claude/skills/ (Claude Code, one project), ~/.codex/skills/ (Codex; $CODEX_HOME/skills if set) or your host's skills folder (for example .agents/skills/). Do not copy anything else; the skills are self-contained and read-only at run time.
2. Load them. If the skills do not appear in your skill list yet, ask the user to start a new session.
3. Check the machine. From the user's game project run sh <skill>/scripts/vfx doctor (<skill> is the installed effekseer-vfx folder; on Windows outside Git Bash, <skill>\scripts\vfx.cmd doctor) and follow its next steps.
4. Ask before downloading. sh <skill>/scripts/setup.sh (Windows: setup.ps1, the exact command is in doctor's next) installs the toolchain into ~/.cache/effekseer-vfx (about 250 MB on macOS ARM64 and Windows x64; --authoring-only elsewhere), and the first vfx init downloads the official Effekseer Godot plugin (about 34 MB). Setup needs Python 3.11+ or uv: if doctor reports neither, ask the user to install one. Godot 4 is never installed for the user; ask them to install it (or to allow you to) and set GODOT if it is not on PATH.
5. Run Godot outside the sandbox. vfx review, preview and showcase open a Godot window on the user's desktop. A sandboxed agent (Codex in its workspace sandbox, for example) cannot open one: run those commands with the user's approval outside the sandbox; if your host cannot leave its sandbox, give the user the exact command to run in a terminal on their desktop. A review that renders no frame stops after about 90 s with "rendered no frame" (most likely the window could not open; check the Godot output it includes). doctor's render: true only means Godot was found.
6. Confirm it works. Run vfx doctor again (modes should show what this machine supports), then follow . Report what works and what is missing; do not claim build or render works on a machine where says it does not.

First steps

Ask your agent, in your game project: "Set up the effekseer-vfx skill here and show me the fire example." It will run:

sh <skill>/scripts/vfx doctor            # what this machine can do, and what to install
sh <skill>/scripts/setup.sh              # macOS ARM64 / Windows x64; use --authoring-only elsewhere (asks you first)
sh <skill>/scripts/vfx init              # creates vfx/ with the Godot Lab, materials and math textures
sh <skill>/scripts/vfx examples add fire
sh <skill>/scripts/vfx build --ids VFX_Projectile_Fire VFX_Fire_Explosion
sh <skill>/scripts/vfx review --ids VFX_Projectile_Fire VFX_Fire_Explosion --note "baseline"
sh <skill>/scripts/vfx showcase          # play the library in the Lab

Then ask for an effect: "Make a lightning strike for a targeted spell, short and sharp, with a return stroke." The skill makes the agent write a brief, request painted textures from your image generation tool (or ask you for them), write the recipe, build, review the strips over several rounds and hand the result to an independent reviewer before it reports effect-verify as passed. Until that independent review is submitted and vfx overview has been rerun, effect-verify says verified: false even when the effect renders correctly; an agent should report "builds and renders" rather than "verified" at that point. The toolchain lives in ~/.cache/effekseer-vfx; set EFFEKSEER_VFX_HOME to put it elsewhere (see the command reference).

Image generation

Complex painted shapes (smoke, slash arcs, fire, cracks, ice, symbols) must come from an image generation model; the skill never fakes them with code. If your agent has a built-in or connected image tool, it uses it with the prompts it records in vfx/texture_prompts.json. Otherwise it tells you exactly which image to generate and where to save it. Math shapes (glows, rings, noise, gradients, trails, distortion maps) are generated procedurally.

Using the effects in a game

Effects end up as .efk runtime exports and .efkefc sources with a vfx_manifest.json. The generated Godot project contains a small API:

var handle = Vfx.play("VFX_Fire_Explosion", position)
var shot = Vfx.launch("VFX_Projectile_Fire", from, to)
shot.arrived.connect(func(at): Vfx.play("VFX_Fire_Explosion", at))

Beams are aimed every frame; the game owns the end point (a ray cast, a target bone):

var ray = Vfx.beam("VFX_Kaiju_Atomic_Beam", mouth, target)
ray.aim(mouth, new_target)   # each frame: sweep, follow the head
ray.release()                # narrows and fades out, then frees itself

See skills/effekseer-vfx/references/godot.md and, for giants and kaiju, references/scale.md.

Repository layout

skills/effekseer-vfx/      SKILL.md, references/ (craft, engine conventions, review...), scripts/ (vfx CLI and vfx.cmd,
                           setup.sh and setup.ps1, vfxkit, vendored effekseer_ai), assets/ (Godot Lab, materials, rubric,
                           brief schema, examples, unity/ URP package)
skills/vfx-review/         SKILL.md for the independent reviewer
docs/zh/, docs/ja/         Chinese and Japanese translations of the references
.claude-plugin/            Claude Code plugin and marketplace manifests
tests/                     pure-Python tests (no Core or Godot needed)

Limitations

• Review metrics are pixel heuristics on the real viewport, not GPU or overdraw measurements.
• The review harness drives a windowed Godot on macOS and Windows; headless Linux capture is not supported yet. On Windows the Godot window keeps focus while it captures (macOS hands focus back to your app).
• On Windows, the symlink-safety tests need Developer Mode (or an administrator shell) and are skipped without it.
• Example scores are an independent review of the skill's own capsule-Lab renders (two of the sixteen were judged iterate); rebuild and review before relying on them.
• soft particles are verified in Forward+ (they fade against opaque depth only); the Compatibility renderer has no depth texture and cannot use them.

Development

sh skills/effekseer-vfx/scripts/setup.sh --authoring-only
~/.cache/effekseer-vfx/venv/bin/python -m pip install pytest
~/.cache/effekseer-vfx/venv/bin/python -m pytest -q tests

On Windows (PowerShell; drop --authoring-only to also run the EffekseerCore build tests):

powershell -NoProfile -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File skills\effekseer-vfx\scripts\setup.ps1 --authoring-only
~\.cache\effekseer-vfx\venv\Scripts\python.exe -m pip install pytest   # a venv made by uv: uv pip install --python <that python.exe> pytest
~\.cache\effekseer-vfx\venv\Scripts\python.exe -X utf8 -m pytest -q tests

Contributions that confirm a new engine convention should add it to skills/effekseer-vfx/references/engine-conventions.md together with how it was measured.

License and credits

• This project: MIT. Use, change and ship it, commercially too; keep the copyright and license notice with copies of the code.
• What you make with it: the effects, textures, flipbooks and Unity skills you build in your own project are yours. This repository claims nothing in them.
• Video and image models: clips and images you generate (for example with Seedance 2.5) follow that model's terms, not this license. Check them before commercial use. None are distributed here.
• Third-party components: Effekseer, EffekseerForGodot4, .NET and the vendored effekseer-ai keep their own licenses. See THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md.
• Brand and showcase: the KanaWorks_AI name, logo and the Kana character are © 東京AI映像合同会社 (Tokyo AI Visuals LLC) and are not covered by the MIT license. The effects, characters and footage in the banner and the promo videos are examples: not included and not licensed. See docs/brand.

Effekseer, Godot and Unity are trademarks of their respective owners. This is an independent project, not affiliated with or endorsed by them.