If you’ve ever tried converting VFX elements into game-engine-ready assets, you know it can be… painful.

That’s why DJ from Undertone FX teamed up with ActionVFX to streamline the entire process. This video tutorial walks through how to take high-quality ActionVFX stock footage, like our Dirt Blasts collection, and turn them into clean, optimized flipbooks ready for Unreal Engine.

Spoiler: We have a After Effects template that does the heavy lifting.

It starts with importing your ActionVFX element — in the tutorial, DJ uses an asset from our Dirt Blasts collection, but the process works for any of our elements. From there, he walks through a smart technique for fading the edges of the VFX using a noise-based mask and gradient ramp. This isn’t just a visual polish; it prevents your flipbook from creating distracting hard edges when rendered in-engine.

Every frame of the element is also carefully centered to ensure that when it’s triggered in Unreal, it feels grounded and accurate. DJ explains how to make subtle alignment shifts so the core of the explosion hits exactly where you need it in gameplay — which makes a real difference in how immersive the final result feels.

Ground removal is handled with clean matte passes and masks, making it easy to isolate only the parts of the effect you need. Once everything’s isolated and cleaned, DJ moves on to scale and resolution — breaking down how to match your comp to power-of-two dimensions like 2048x1024, which are optimal for game engine integration. This keeps assets consistent and optimized across production.

And then comes the part most artists dread: building the actual flipbook. But with the included After Effects template, this step is already automated. With built-in expressions, your sequence is automatically split into frames — 64, 128, 256, whatever fits your needs — and laid out in a clean tile grid. No spreadsheets. No hand-editing frames.

The tutorial even covers how to generate a normal map for your asset using AE plugins — a huge bonus if you’re trying to add lighting and realism in-engine. Whether you’re outputting for mobile or cinematic games, this workflow gives you a system you can reuse and scale.

If you’ve been sitting on a library of great VFX assets but haven’t had time to convert them into usable flipbooks, this is the shortcut you’ve been waiting for. Whether you’re building your own internal library or prepping for live engine use, this process is faster, cleaner, and easier to control and it works beautifully with any ActionVFX clip.

We built this template so that you can get right to the creative part, without sacrificing quality or wasting time.

Ready to build your own?

Download the free After Effects template today and start converting your ActionVFX assets into game-ready Unreal flipbooks.

Want something pre-built? You can also find flipbook-ready collections on our Unreal Fab Store.

Explore. Create. And start building VFX that feel like they were made for your engine, because now, they are.