From an idea that first inspired me to pursue vfx for creating Astronomical images. Many painful hours trying to wield Maya for sims finally made me cave and take up Houdini. Now I'm in love, and my girlfriend is jealous.

Anyway, I'll be tracking my progress in finishing out this short animation I'm doing of flying close to Saturn as it was forming nearly 3 billion years ago, as some theories predict. For my reference I'm using images from astrophysics simulation results and this crazy video of a tornado forming [youtube.com].

Currently, I've gotten the sim to a place where I want to start working on Look Dev. So I'm learning all I can about shading volumes, but I haven't found much, so I'm open to suggestions if you have any.

Saturn Formation WIP Video Link [youtube.com]

Thanks for Looking!