Kurt Liu 2024 Portfolio - Fx & Lighting

Having worked as an independent filmmaker in the past, I was impressed by the potential and creativity of CG imagery and began to learn VFX on my own, I was fortunate enough to enroll in Rising Sun Picture's placement program and learn with the help of many professional artists. Now I have learnt more skills and want to start my career in the VFX industry. I'm pretty excited to show you some of the interesting footage I've created.

This shot was inspired by a real news story that happened during the Chinese New Year. I was captivated by the visual beauty of the scene and the complex interaction of the elements. The hydrogen balloon touches the pole and explodes, creating a series of sparks, a stream of air that impacts the surrounding balloons and wires at the same time, in addition to the collision of the wires with the balloon, the simulation of the balloon strings, the atmospheric simulation, and other dynamic elements. The fact that so many elements were interacting at the same time made it necessary for me to manage and decide on the order of the different simulations in the early stages of the project. I ended up using 3 different VellumSims and 5 PyroSims to separate the different effects and make them look uniform. 

Matching the background plate to the CG's lighting was also a major difficulty. As the lighting of the original background was complex, I used a range of means to match it. I did a simple layout of the original image, converting the explosion into a mesh light, which allowed objects in the CG scene to affect the background as well. Additionally, I used a Pyro simulation of atmospheric motion to enhance the billboard lighting.

This shot of the truck destroying the barrier uses mostly RBD sim and adds details like smoke and particles to make the whole scene as realistic as possible. This scene uses the Rising Sun Pictures pipeline, which was helpful for me to understand the industry workflow. To get the shadows and lighting to match, I created the bridge layout and used lighting to make the color of the barriers fit the bridge.

The goal of this task is to use PyroSim to generate flames and smoke as similar to the reference as possible. To demonstrate how close the simulation is to reality through similar collisions, I modelled a simple wok and stove and added a piece of animation (although I'm not a good animator). 

I also added simulations of rice and liquids in the experimental FX test. In addition to the flames and smoke, I used the attribute transfer node to make the wok and stove spark when they touch.

Lighting Tasks

I am also learning about lighting with the help of many VFX artists and the following demonstrates my ability to match CG objects to realistic backgrounds.

Thanks for watching!