I started out this week diving right into the first 3 things that were recommended to do first. I first chose to work on the puffy thruster smoke which are 2 streams of white trails emitting from his jetpack. The emitter was straight forward but a lot of work needs to be done for the look to match the reference. I need the smoke to expand as it cools down and not dissipate as much.
For this collision emitter, I have matched the animation and used booleans to give me data on where the Jett Trooper collides with the ground plane. I have then used these booleans as emitters for a POP net. As I keep working on it, I will connect the animation's velocity to drive the POP net's force and particle count as well as direction of the particles. Once I get to that stage, I can start the other layers of sand in the big ground collision and make a layer that has more wispy sand while the current one is dense sand.
For the thrusters themselves, I have created an inner flame and an outer flame just like in the reference. I've animated these 2 to match the reference as well. I will use clever shaders and utilize opacity and glow to sell that the thrusters are firing downwards with extreme force and heat.
This thruster will be far more transparent than the inner core flame.