After being out of the country for a quick break, it's time to get back to it. I've got the majority of the work done for this project now. The only parts that are left are to do with the final render, like building a small environment and putting together an animation for the staff etc.
Having just put this together I've noticed that the core light of the energy build up fades out a little slowly so I'll just have to quickly tweak the timing, but that's only a small issue. However, I'm still not sold on my approach to the portal itself. I came across an interesting approach to this type of effect by Epic for the UDK itself, in which they use a mesh and bend the UV's to get a really nice tendril effect in the material. I'm thinking of exploring this option because I experimented with having the portal by itself, supporting effects both infront and behind it but nothing worked in my opinion so I feel I will need to revise it before finishing this off completely.
In other news, this is the last project that I had planned for my portfolio so now I can start to think about rendering out my other projects and putting them together in a show reel.