FX Artist Reel

Clocker Square

My graduation shortfilm Clocker Square was an awesome experience. Being the only FX Artist as well as project manager came with its  own challenges.

Being in charge on a large quantity of fx, both in diversity and shot work was tough but I managed to pull it of, with the help of my teammates and supervisors. I had to work closely with the other departments in order to provide the necessary data for everyone to work properly. 
This could be correct alembic exports for the lighters, shading networks as well as precomps of the FX for the compers, custom wetmaps for the texturing artist and some tools and HDAs to facilitate the use of my FX on every Houdini scene.

This large library fo effects could vary from:

Magical FX: Time Freezing Wave

This FX was particularly interesting beacuse it involved a high level of controlability and stability due to its large scale. Also all the shading was done using custom maps that were baked using a custom tool that could bake point attributes into differetn UDIMs for optimization and maxing the quality of the maps.

Shading was done using Arnold and further pushed in compositing using my own AOVs inside Nuke.

For the moving cars I made one setup for each kind of car, 8 total, and then I retimed the growth animation using VEX Coding. A technique I also used for some rain FX, see further below :)

This was certainly a challenge but definetly so fun to work on.

Rain FX

As ouf movie is set in a futuristic London, rain was a crucial element to provide the viewer the right ambiance and mood for out film.

I created diverse rain setups and sometimes their own HDAs for the Environment Artists to use them as they saw fit to set dress their scenes.

This setups included:

Rain falling | Rain dripping from objects | Rain running on surfaces | Rain Splahes | Water from pipes

All of these were done using Flip and some of them were baked as texture maps for the Surfacing Artist. The rain splashes for closeup shots were done simulating 4 different splashes using Flip then instanced on different points and eventually retimed using VEX Coding to match the life of each point. 

This setups were used in over 10 different shots, all with their unique challenges but also their unique lessons.

Magical FX: Timelapse

This effect was the last one I worked on for my shortfilm, none the less it receive the same amount of care and attention as every other setup I made.

Recerating this effect in CG came down to use different procedural thechniques combined with very precise simulations and also some compositing to give the final touches.

And as every FX Artist should know how to do, I had to do some cute little saprks.

Sparks

Here's a small video from the Behind the Scenes of the movie where I explain some details of my process to.

Firemen

This project is very dear to my heart too. I came into this project later on my graduation year to help the team build a very important FX for their movie, a Water Jet.

This FX was achieved using a combinatin of Flip and Pyro Simulations. The complexity of this setup came from the speed at which it needed to be done and the reusability of it. Since this film had about 10 different shots on which we saw the water jet, stability and predictability was key.

The water jet was composed of 5 different layers, this were:

The main water | The Airfield Water | Spray | Mist | Emission Spray

At last this FX was done using Houdini and the shading was done using Karma, rendering points as volumes to nail the look of this water jet.

Personal Projects

Also I like to explore different areas in my spare time to make myslef a complete Houdini artist. Here are two projects which got me out of my confort zone for some things and let me push and get better at others.

Rebelway FX Challenge

I decided to take on the mighty Rebelway FX Challenge! This project covers a lot of FX, some very apparent, and some a little more discrete, but that put al together make an awesome project.

Here is a sum of:

Pyro Fire Breath| Pyro Dust | RBD pillars | Flip RBDinteraction | Heightfield | Procedural Shading | Vellum Wings | Scattering and Intancing

And a ton of compositing  to put all this layers together:)

Space Portal

This project is based on the beautiful concept art by Tobias Roestch which involves different layers as well:

Magical FX Portal | Procedural Modeling Space Station | Nebulaes | Compositing