Building Bliss - Work in Progress #4

Shot 2 Full Render Preview

Shot 2 has been fully rendered! This took a little longer than expected as I have started to integrate Houdini into my pipeline for more realistic and effective simulations, which you'll see more details on below. The full resolution preview is in the files attached as always!

Shot 3 Preview

I had a chance to render out the current WIP of shot 3. I hope you all don't mind the wait! I have quite a few corrections to make, but there is a LOT of progress to show off this week!

Houdini Integration

I've been taking the time to learn some Houdini to up my destruction game, and I'm starting small with some more simplified simulations using Houdini's MPM physics solver and RBD bullet solver.

For shot 2, I didn't really like how the building looked when it collapsed. Thanks to my friend JamesFoxes's help, we created a simple setup that would allow me to sim the destruction of the building more accurately. MPM allows for relatively detailed destruction simulations with little effort. It definitely works great for how far away the building in the distance is!

The solver essentially works by converting a mesh's volume into "points" which are then simulated to replicate whatever kind of physics you're trying to replicate. Those points are then used to fracture geometry and then transform the fractured geometry as seen above. The colors you see below represent the stress (attribute Jp) being enacted on each point so Houdini can tell which parts of the mesh should be fractured.

For shot 3, I also used Houdini for some simple RBD (rigid body dynamics) simulation to help with a glass shattering effect. I needed the glass to explode off the building when Sara grabbed it, so the easiest way to bring the glass into Houdini, fracture it, and sim it there.

I'm going to use Houdini a LOT more in the future, so keep an eye out!

Camera Projection Continued

I ripped the camera projection method from the tank shot and used it here for the phone! It works in pretty much the exact same way, except now it's on a phone screen. I enhanced it a little with a UI and such!

Environment

The scale of the environment is quite large in this scene to match Sara's gargantuan size. Look at the size of the building compared to her!

Most the environment detail is also focused around the camera's main view, like you can see here. It's fun to play with detail and scale!

That's all for this week! The wait is a little longer for this WIP, but I hope it's worth it! Until next time...