Cosmic Titan Houdini Vfx

26th Oct 2019

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With knowledge & experience from both my post grad cert in Dynamics Effect & Lighting in RSP (Adelaide, Australia) & VFX work experience in a CGI creature SG movie, I decided to try out making my own Houdini Vfx piece as one of my personal portfolio & as a piece to be use in my MA Digital Effect course in Bournemouth University application.

Very happy how this turn-out to be & learnt a lot from a good mentor of mine from RSP Adelaide, Australia.

*NOTE* As this is quite an old portfolio piece, during that time I was in the midst of transitioning my dependency on maya 3d software to fully using Houdini for both 3D modeling & Vfx creation.

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Houdini Vfx break-down reel video

simple break-down reel video preview - cosmic titan Houdini Vfx (vid above)

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Simple & quick Cosmic Titan Turn-around video

Cosmic titan turn-around - Unreal 5 render (vid above)

• 3D model imported into Unreal

• Material preped in Unreal & result adjusted to match Marmoset's material outcome as close as possible

• Face fire Fx done using Niagara Fx

  • *NOTE* that this fx is different from the one presented in the main breakdown video as that fire fx is completely done in Houdini & rendered in Redshift

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Breakdowns of the project

Cosmic titan 3D model

cosmic titan 3D model preview - Marmoset (img above)

cosmic titan 3D model wire-frame preview - Marmoset (img above)

cosmic titan 3D model front close-up preview - Marmoset (img above)

cosmic titan 3D model top close-up preview - Marmoset (img above)

cosmic titan 3D model back close-up preview - Marmoset (img above)

• 3D modeling done in maya

  • some high-res details sculpted in Zbrush

• Texturing done in Substance painter

• Rendered previews are done in Marmoset

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Rendered Fx passes from Redshift in Houdini

• The main dimensional portal the Cosmic Titan walked through is entirely done in Houdini using pyro / volume simulation

  • It is mainly driven & created by various animated geometry sources & attribute to control the coloring & shapes during simulation

• The portal simulation does have ground collision data being fed into it for minor optimization and masking purposes during rendering

• The floating relics geometry are then use as a masking object to render a cutout from the portal render

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• Cosmic Titan itself is rendered with a basic mask

• A noise masking depth pass of Cosmic Titan is also made for the use of materializing the giant being coming through the portal

• Face fire fx is also rendered with basic mask

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