Fireball Effect and Destruction

It took me four days to learn and create this project in Unreal since this was my first time using it. My knowledge and experience in programs; Houdini, RenderMan and Maya helped me in understanding Unreal at an accelerated rate. Houdini help in the creation of the blueprints, materials, particles and destruction. RenderMan helped in the creation of the materials too and rendering. Maya helped in the general use of Unreal.
The effects within the project are a fireball that is shot out the hand of the character and crate destruction. Cascade was used for the fireball and the crate destruction was done using Apex Destruction.
The movement and opacity map was created using three grey scale maps, putting one map into each colour channel gives the colourful map result. Having the three different maps in a single image allowed me to easily access each of them but also use the information of all three together. The combined information was used to create the movement, with the map being moved in an upwards direction. The opacity also used the three maps too but individually having each move in different directions and multiplying them back together giving a more believable effect.