Author: jtdrake

Now that this shot is wrapped up I created a breakdown. This is my favorite visual effects piece I have made so far so it was fun unpacking everything to show my work. I am still debating whether or not I want to create a video where I dive into the node trees in Houdini and Nuke and explain my process but we will see.

With the help of Drew Daly we were able to update the camera angle for the Blind Rider Crash shot in a way that is much more engaging and shows off my effects work even more. I would have a render for this shot but we are running into issues with virtual memory on the render farm so we are going to need to talk to the system administration office to see how we can work around this issue.

The crew provided feedback on how the EMP effect should work so I updated it to meet their requests. Once again we wanted to render this one but we ran into the virtual memory issue. Hopefully by the next update we will have a solution.

Finally wrapping this one up. I updated the bubble simulation with a lot more bubbles that mesh together and dissolve is a more natural way. The recommended HDA helped a bunch. I had to re-work the setup to get it to work but it was pretty similar to the setup that I created but with some creative features.

I made the lightning a bit thinner too to make its effect less dramatic (there was enough of that already).

The rest of the work was done in comp. There are some fun lensing effects here. The whole render is displaced by a moving noise pattern to heighten the effect of the lens being distorted through the ripples of water. There are some particles fading in and out to help sell the illusion of tiny bits in the water catching the light.

Ill do a full breakdown video for this shot in a bit.

Started working on the FX for this shot. There are going to be a lot of elements to this EMP blast. I have some of them started already. An energy wall, dust being kicked up, as well as some extra energy waves on the buttom.

I think the EMP should move faster too. Ill probably fade off half of it so it looks more like a faint wall moving in that direction. I think ill add some electic bits coming off the back of Storm Rider’s car too.

Currently, there are about seven separate simulations in this shot. 

The trail coming from behind the Blind Rider Vehicle is a Pyro sim. The sim starts by creating a particle system on the base of each tire.  The particle sim is then converted to a pyro sim with some parameters to customize the density and control the look of the sim.

There is also a particle sim for the dirt and debris flying out from under the wheels. After the sim, I used an attribute wrangle and the modulous operator to separate the particles into different groups to be used for instancing. 

Additionally, there are also the same sims that create particles through intersection analysis. That way, I can spawn the particles only where the vehicle is colliding with the ground and give the illusion that the weight and force of the car are scraping up dirt from the ground.

The explosion was a bit tricky. Trying to make the explosion look both cool and realistic conflicted with the vehicle moving really fast, about 200mph. I did some fun time shifting to achieve the look I have right now.  

There is, of course, the Blind Rider RBD. I have to do some research to find out if there is a way to make a dopnet inherit velocity from a transform to feed into the RBD sim. I would want to do this so I could have the vehicle move along a transform and have more control over the sim. I currently have the sim setup so that it inherits a velocity similar to that of the last frame of animation, so it all looks natural. Having to fine-tune those parameters to make it look fluid and cool was a bit tricky. In the end, the extra work might have ended up looking more fake, and I am honestly happy with the way the RBD looks right now and in the next shot.

I still need to complete the exhaust pyro sim. That should be done by the next update.

In the next update, I hope to have a render of the entire sim so I can fine-tune the look and then put this shot to rest. 

I went back and added some details to the Nitro shot now that I have an actual Nitro prop to base the textures on. I also made some slight changes to the environment and compositing after getting feedback from my peers. The cone angle of the light rays scattering from above is wider, and the lights are brighter and more noticeable. The whole environment is more blue, and the whole shot is graded more blue. I was also able to get the motion blur working in a more satisfying way. One of the other FX artists on this project, Zach, pointed me towards a really cool bubble HDA that I might utilize to try to push this even further. I have been told by some that the shot is good enough and that I can put it to rest. I would rather the shot be great and blow people away, so I am going to keep working on it.

Now that Blind Rider’s trail is pretty much complete, I can start to implement it into all the shots he is in and where his trail is visible, which is not too many. It will be interesting to see how this effect holds up once it’s composited onto the side-view mirror.