An Entry of Fire and Ice

Final Submission For the Contest

I redid my rbd and smoke sim as I encountered some issues with textures and the inside faces while render testing. 
The technique is more or less the same as v1. I just changed the fracturing styles from voronoi into voronoi to voronoi into boolean.

For the Icicle growth i used a simple growth solver over the claw of the Hydralisk. I than separated just the leading edge and did a POP sim to gain access to the age and life attribute, which allowed me to easily control the growth over time. In the Pop sim i turned of any velocity to ensure the  the particles stick to the claw. 
I than reduced the points on the claw and copy stamped lines on to it. I used pscale to control their size and orient to slightly randomize their orientation in x and z. I used a costume width attribute and a poly-wire to give the lines some thickness. for extra details i added a slight noise on-top of the surface. I than created a vdb and back to polys to have a single mesh instead of intersecting geometrys. At the end I booled out the claw to ensure there is no intersecting between the two.
The RBD sim at the end was a very similar technique to the one used for the ground fracture, but i didn't used any constraints.
I initially planed for some icy smoke and flakes coming out of the inside pieces once they break apart, but I dont think i have time for that anymore.

Quick update on shading and lighting the environment. I just used a simple HDRI and a sun light. To create some atmospheric effects i created some volumes and a few gobos to block light here and there to fake some clouds.
For Texturing i used tri-planar UVs and mixed different textures together for all Environment assets but the ground. For the ground its just a texture as is, but i edited the mesh and scaled the UVs before the rbd sim to get a nice transition of the static ground and rbd ground pieces

Next up is shading the creature and the character and redoing the destruction, as i had some issues with the fractured geometry regarding rendering, as well as some cutter geometry from the second upres fracture being visible and stuck to the ground geo

Main RBD sim
The goal was to setup a relative low res RBD simulation with constraints to achieve the main behavior. For fast feedback i used Voronoi for fracturing and simple clustered glue constraints. Beforehand I defined a fracture-area via SOP solver and attribute transfer, to only fracture the ground where i need to. I applied the same technique to activate the pieces to further reduce sim time.
Sim time was 2h for 625 frames

Upres RBD simulation
The goal was to aply a second fracture, but only on the pieces that area actually moving and on those that are not extremely smale. This time however i used boolean to enhance the look of the pieces and create a greater variety between big and small pieces. Also i was not using any constraints as we got the main behavior from the first simulation More constraints would only drastically increase sim time! The pieces i didnt use i included as colliders

RBD Particle Debris
I used particles to further enhance the simulation adding extra secondary details to the sim. For emitting particles i used three separate emitter. 
One was based on pure speed
One on speed and collisions between pieces and the ground 
And one based on speed and disconnection between pieces

RBD Dust
Adding a layer of dust, which gets emitted from the pieces that are moving, just disconnected and on the pieces where the velocity vectors and normal vectors have a dot-product value higher than -.5. From the final points i create lines to get better emission trails. Based on the lines i rasteries a vel and density volume.

For all the previous simulations i created a "air-field" that simulates a wind-field created by the Hydralisk movement since it is so massive. And also a "scream-field" that simulates another wind-field created by the scream of the Hydralisk

For the air-field i just filled a empty container with a density volume. no buoyancy, no gravity and just added the Hydralisk as Collider ("Volume source" for maximum controllability of the collision strength) 

For the scream field i did the same but instead of the collision i sourced a pump volume into the sim, which i created based on a shrink-wrap around the creatures tooth (also included the shield (for later FX) as collider )

My first step (as suggested by Steven) is to figure out a story, to make the hole project more interesting. The Story helps me deciding which effects make sense to support the story and which don't. (This does by no means has to be Hollywood material, just something. Doing this often forces me to do effects that i otherwise would never thought about, which helps me push my boundary's)
I quite liked the idea from Steven with Fire n Ice, but i switched the roles (Character is ice-guy and the creature is fire).
The Creature in my story is the evil villain (which i think fire does represent better than ice). The Creature guards "The Heart of Ice", which is a artifact that has the potential to turn the entire planet into ice.
The artifact once belonged to the native ice people, but the creature stole it from them, because it was unable to use its fire abilities on an ice-planet, plus it is like a dragon, it likes shiny stuff. After the artifact was gone from their village all ice people, but our main character (because he has special abilities), turned into stone. 
Now he has to fight the creature in order to save his people and claim what ones belonged to him and his people.

My second step is figuring out each Step/Simulation that needs to be done and finding reference(s) for every single one showcasing the basic idea. This way I can set myself deadlines for each effect to better plan the project and see how i am doing time wise down the line. (i call this my time - calendar)

I can also decide which Steps/Simulations are "nice to have" and which are definitely necessary. When I have this figured out I start with the ones that are necessary, making sure that i am in my previously figured out time-calendar, and than depending on how i am doing/how much time is left i am doing the "nice to have" ones. 

This is my List of "Nice to have" and necessary tasks
Nice to have:
- decloak 
- fire on the creatures body
- burning eyes
- shield
- The entire last shots, where the ice guy forms and shots the icicles on the creature (This might seam weird, but I am not required to render the hole Sequence. This does not mean that i dont want to, but rather that i am already starting 1 1/2 months into the Challenge and there is a lot to do)

Necessary 
- Heart of Ice
- Ground Destruction
- Sweep ground destruction
- Claw hit ground destruction
- Icicle Growth

On all the Necessary Tasks i will do simple draw overs tomorrow, to better illustrate my ideas, while also thinking about colors, sizes and shapes. Once i have this done i will further look at References (if needed) and start doing rnd, one task at a time.