Lanterns in the Rain

I decided to rebuild the lantern shot I did a few years ago, to hopefully increase the visual fidelity with new tricks I've learnt since then - this version uses a shader I wrote that achieves the swaying effect in an inexpensive way, with various controls such as subsurface intensity and internal light boost to achieve a more art directable asset. Houdini was used to generate the lantern geo as well as the textures and layout, From here, I built a quick environment/shot and decided to create a rain system - this began as an exploration(as you can see in my janky planning doc) into techniques such as flowmaps, VATs and morph targets, but eventually I decided on a texture-based approach for ease of use. The final shot has a master Niagara rainfall system, as well as droplets, explosive splashes and bent cards for the rainflow.