The Deathveil - Magic FX
Jul 31, 2025
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/
COMMENTS
justforwork1973 1 month, 1 week ago |
Holy shit man this is my first time visiting this site, what you have done is absolutely insane. Amazing.
DennisSchmidt 1 month, 1 week ago |
Thanks a lot! Appreciate the kind words. Had a lot of fun creating this.
istratesculuigi 2 weeks, 5 days ago |
Hi Dennis, with a 16gb RAM laptop, in i7 and a 3060 RTX, would I be able to follow this course? Please let me know :)
DennisSchmidt 2 weeks, 5 days ago |
Ahh, nice, that sounds like a fun challenge :D
I guess the rtx should do most of the work. I would be mostly concerned about the RAM. If you are able to do normal work in Houdini, render with Karma and are able to do pyro/particle sims it should be possible. Might be that you can't go as highres in sims as in the course but since the course is not focused on heavy FLIP sims, it is manageable. Ah and also depends if you are planing on creating a detailed environment like this one, that might also be a challenge where you have to optimize quite a bit. If you do decide to take the course and need help optimizing your scene, let me know.
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