BRING ME THANOS

Hi, I'm Luca Montemurro, and this is my first entry for the Rookie Award. I am in my third year at Side Academy, and this year I have decided to specialize in Houdini.

BRING ME THANOS

This is the project I completed for my third-year thesis at Side Academy. I am a big fan of Marvel movies, and I decided to draw inspiration from them and recreate, as closely as possible, the scene of Thor arriving in Wakanda in the movie Avengers: Infinity War. The project was created in Houdini and served as a great exercise for studying destruction, as well as the creation of lightning and the use of particles. It is not perfect or identical to the original, but I learned a lot during this process.

DESTRUCTION

I started by creating the destruction area. Next, I created a simulation with points that originated from the point of impact and expanded across the entire terrain. These points, using the trail node, created the lines that I used to generate the main fractures in the ground. Then, using grids and cylinders to which I added noise, I created the secondary fractures by breaking the terrain into smaller pieces.

Once I obtained the fractured terrain and the initially created points, I began setting up the attributes for the simulation. Using VOP nodes, I set the direction of the terrain pieces and the active part of the simulation throughout the timeline.

Then I created the actual simulation where I set the speed and force of the destruction.

For the creation of the lightning bolts of destruction, I utilized the lines initially created by the points for the main fractures, to which I added various types of noise. Once the main branches were obtained, I scattered points randomly along all the lines to create the smaller branches.

To create the volume rays, I used the lines initially created for the fractures, assigning one color to the destruction and another color to the lines. With an attribute transfer, I extracted the piece of terrain along the main fractures, which I first transformed into curves and then into points using a scatter. The points created with a copy-to-point were replaced by lines that followed the pattern of the destruction, which were subsequently transformed into volume.

Then I create the smoke and debris

THOR EFFECTS

To create the lightning coming from Thor, I obtained points from the character's geometry, assigned them an ID, and using an add node and a ray node, I connected them to the ground. For the rest, I used the same workflow as for the destruction lightning.

For Stormbreaker, I first created static points that were present throughout the geometry, while for the outer aura, I created a substantial amount of points around the geometry to which I assigned noise and velocity.

For the dust, I extracted the contact surface and the force between the character and the ground and transformed it into smoke.

The rendering was done in Mantra

Thank you for your attention, and I hope you enjoyed the presentation!