Hey there,

I am creating an other portfolio piece and I'd like to share my process. Last time [www.sidefx.com] this really helped me, even though not really many people gave feedback. Its nice to see the progress in one place.

This piece is a focused exploration of cinematic FX language — combining fluids, particles, procedural geometry mutation, volumetrics and environment art in a single coherent shot sequence. It's built as a personal reel piece to demonstrate range across Houdini's core FX disciplines in a naturalistic, environment-driven context.

Story
Toxic Crystal (working title) — A micro-universe nature documentary. A meter-tall crystal sits in a moss-covered puddle, its precisely milled openings leaking a viscous resin that mutates the world around it: plants crystallize, larva-like dumpling crystals grow, crystal dust drifts onto new hosts. A final pull-out through one of the crystal's openings reveals an outer world that mirrors the inner one — still young, still untouched — closing the loop.


Youtube WIP Playlist [www.youtube.com]

NEWEST POST [www.sidefx.com]


Please feel free to give feedback on anything you have in mind. I appreciate any comment, thank you!

I generated some images to visualize what was in my head.





For the first time I tried creating a font animatic (thats what I call it) as the very first storyboard, to quickly get an idea of the timing and the focus of the shots. This I really liked!






Then I combined the images and the animated fonts for a more detailed storyboard.

I created a first previz in Houdini.

That is looking quite foul already

Very cool. I like idea of using fonts for storyboarding.

Looking forward to the next phase.

Previz V2
I drafted some sound design and got rid of the unlicensed film music. Also ramped the transition between sh01 & sh02 and added a rolling motion to shot 10. The last camera was tricky since I already had some rotation on the x axis to keep the hole in the centre. When I would rotate the z axis additionally the cam would wobble around, but luckily I tried around with the rotation order of the transform sop and that did the trick 🎉
I wanted the roll to start after we pass through the whole, so it doesnt get to disorienting. I am happy I put in an other day into this.

Reynold Dodson
Very cool. I like idea of using fonts for storyboarding.

Looking forward to the next phase.

I got inspired by Koala who won the last Render Challenge of pwnisher. The breakdown of his process is definitely worth a watch!

https://www.youtube.com/live/4nNF09-_Scc?t=1237&is=ApnlmuB1fsBjF4iA [www.youtube.com]

It took me quite a long time to get to this step. I created a whole USD pipeline for this, even though I am working on it only solo. This is probably overkill, but I want to work in a production setting to feel more comfortable with USD in the future. Until now I mostly did FX in Houdini, so setting up a complete and robust pipeline was new. But when set up correctly its a lot of fun.

- Shot based project structure

- Asset library file to save out all the components & master materials to be referenced.
- Creating subnets with custom parameters, where I only need to change one string and
all the files get pulled in automatically

- Master Materials for different assets types saved as USD
- Component for assets ( trees, plants, rocks etc )
- Variants for plants

Assembly layer files:
- Environment Far
- Environment Mid
- Environment Close

- Rendering File ( includes Lighting )

If anybody is interested in USD here are 3 great courses by Peter Arcara :

https://www.sidefx.com/tutorials/usd-basics-with-solaris/ [www.sidefx.com]

https://www.sidefx.com/tutorials/usd-authoring-with-solaris/ [www.sidefx.com]

https://www.sidefx.com/tutorials/usd-asset-building-with-solaris/ [www.sidefx.com]

First version of the env rendered.

Lowered samples quite a bit to 300 (min72) and denoised in cops this time, used simple upscale and reformat in nuke from 3k to 4k.

With the whole USD pipeline and scattering set up correctly this is super nice to work with. Added one more layer of small vegetation and rearranged some assets.

I worked on the crystal. Basically its just a fractured shell with translucency, two noised up meshes and some smaller debris. I didn't use any volumes to save render time.


There are some great tutorials about crystals on Arvids channel [youtu.be]

Did an over paint in photoshop to see how it feels with all the elements in there. quite complex and maybe overloaded already.