Category: FMP

In the first shot, all assets were created by Houdini. This includes clouds, smoke, light beams, shockwave and mountains. A lot of use was made of Houdini’s VDB nodes as well as the pyro system. The smoke and clouds are similar in that they both require an emitter to create a large particle simulation, which is transformed into a solid model by the volume related nodes in order to be rendered. The difference is that for the tornado clouds, a velocity is added to the cloud that rotates from the centre and spreads out in all directions, thus ensuring that the cloud can rotate around the centre to achieve the desired effect. The light beams are achieved by using pop particles through an emitter. The mountains are done using the plane and mountain nodes to give some noise and other variations.

As the character animation does not need to be too cumbersome, so the use of Houdini’s binding plug-in KineFX binding, which is similar to Maximo, you can select the joints for binding, so in the previous model making session does not obscure the character’s joints is very important. Note that the weights need to be adjusted. After the binding is complete, use GraphEditor to adjust the animation rate and the magnitude of the movement.

The character’s model was created using Maya, choosing to use a basic mannequin for topology and modification to change it to a suitable body type. Clothing appearance was added to the character while modelling to avoid creating a fabric solver. However, it should be noted that the joints of the character should be left uncovered to facilitate subsequent animation.

The torso is not being made as it is expected that the wizard’s character does not require much physical movement. Simply make a wizard’s robe and add the bare body parts.