The Deathveil - Magic FX

One of my favorite topics in Houdini: Magic FX :)
This one was even harder to finish......there are just so many options and possibilities in Houdini regarding magic fx. But so much fun of course :D

I started by converting the main assets to work properly in Solaris/Karma and set up a modular scene structure to keep things flexible and work with the amount of shots i had planed.
The environment was built using the heightfield terrain tools in Houdini, with layered erosion, masks, and a procedural tree/shrubs/grass scatter system.

The core effect centers around a cursed, purple cloth-thingy that attacks a village by shooting a crystal arrow (that of course you never see: But it was shaded, i swear!). The FX work includes FLIP-driven water impacts, pyro smoke trails, basic cloth sim, magic trails, embers, and a virus-like infection that spreads through the scene.

On some shots the layers got quite heavy due to the amount, for example that closeup shot of the arrow impact:
Split the environment (each part consists of: Main, Interactive passes of FX, fog, additional lighting of lanterns) in:
- BG Mountains
- BG buildings
- MG (the well being impacted)
- FG (building on the left)
Then the fx part:
- RBD of the well (Smoke, sparks, debris, interactive light)
- infection effects (main infection, masks, veins, lighting pass, embers, smoke, particles trails 2 versions)
- arrow trail fx (arrow beauty, volume trail, particle trails 3 different styles mixed in comp, embers)
- magic impact effects (smoke, particles 3 different styles mixed in comp, embers)

The whole scene is rendered with Karma XPU, using denoise on some layers to speed things up. In total i think it was almost 600 Frames to render. About 60 days of rendering (and re-rendering of course :D)
I also created animatics and cameras to match a story-driven progression, keeping everything organized with a sequence/shot-based folder structure.
So, everything built from scratch, except for the buildings which i got from KitBash3D.

Created this one for a online course on Pixelfront: https://pixelfront.net/the-deathveil-production-series-magic-fx-in-houdini/