LavaFields
This was my submission for Clint Jone’s render challenge “Moving Meditations”. The assets provided were the mocap data and the camera move. I created everything from scratch besides the underlying Mixamo character model. I challenged myself to dive headfirst into Houdini with this project, prioritizing simulations and dynamics for this render. This can be seen in the cloth simulation on the character, VDB trickery for the lava blobs, fluid sims inside of the truck and the character’s backpack, and two seperate smoke simulations for the atmosphere. Additionally, this is my first project utilizing A.I. generated art, with the background city element being created by DALLE and photoshopped together. Another focus was the lighting and compositing, as I knew this needed to be atmospheric.
Final Render
Compositing and Lighting Breakdowns
Turnarounds
Main Character LavaCollector
Modeled in Maya and surfaced in Substance. The movement MoCap was provided by the challenge. I took a base model humanoid from Mixamo and covered it with things to make it mine. The clipping in the cloth sim was removed in After Effects. I really wanted the main character to have some sort of magical or mystical feel so I added an animated emissive to the clothes so that they flicker on and off as if he is utilizing some sort of “force” to raise the blobs.
Background LavaTruck
I modeled this truck in maya and surfaced in substance. The truck has lights lighting up the “Lava” and the interior as well as headlights. It was important to me that the lava was rendered like a lavalamp. Inside of the truck is a simple animation of the blobs which I converted to VDB and smoothed, then back into mesh.