Riders Update: Nitro Complete, Blind Rider RBD Complete, Blind Rider trail in progress.

Improving upon simulation:

In the original sim the lightning was created using the labs lightning tool which is pretty good but I wanted to have a lot more flexibility over the lightning. I decided to use a setup from scratch that in a nutshell created two points on two different objects, created a line, resampled the line into a wire, and then did some L-System operations and noise vops to create the lightning fractal look.

Trying a different compositing approach:

Instead of trying to make everything work in render I wanted to see how much I could get out of a render without the environment and then adding the environment in post. It was fun using ramps to animate what beams of light coming from above would look like.

Render test for rendering bubbles in arnold:

Not any real documentation out there for getting bubbles to work in arnold for Houdini specifically but luckily is pretty much the exact same settings in Maya and Houdini, just hidden in different places with slightly different names.

Improved render with additional bubble sim:

Rendering out different AOVs and compositing them together to try to achieve a look where a nitro canister is underwater without rendering out the environment. I did this because I thought it would offer me more flexibility. It ended up being more trouble than it was worth and the other team members said they prefered the original rendered out environment volumes.

Recieved feedback from peers and improved all sims:

Theres a cool sim that is almost completely unnoticable in the final version. The nitro canister pushes bubbles away as it comes down. Additionally I decreased the size of the bubbles but increased the amount of bubbles.

Final Render:

I added a little ring of lights too add interest and to make the chromatic abberation impact frame look cooler. Used gobos for the lights coming from above. All the layers were composited in Nuke. In total there were 6 sim layers and three different types of simulations: RBD Glass Shattering, Particle for bubbles (3 layers) and lightning, and Pyro for the subtle tiny air bubbles that get carried along the nitro canister.

Blind Rider RBD Finished:

Now that the Nitro Shot was finished I was able to return the Blind Riders destruction in sequence 1. I finalized the setup for the RBDs to pass over to Storm so he could setup the Pyro in the following shot.

Setting up Pyro and dirt kickup for Blind Rider:

I am going to have to fine tune the look of this sim over the course of this next week but the setup is done. I might add additional tire tracks on the ground but the ground may change so I will hold off on that until we have finalized the environment for sequence 1.

WIP Flipbook: