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05/28/25
HD Final Still Shot
HD Final Render
Here are my final renders of my 428 Final project. From the critique I received on the 25th, I was able to go back in to make proper adjustments before my re-submission.
My Corrections:
1. Integration: I thickened my ground plane to show vertical depth inside my portal and made sure to add shadows underneath my particles to create volume. I also made sure to start my pyro and growth sims a couple of seconds later to really capture the environment before my shot.
2. Lighting: The god rays glowing through the ground were giving everything a yellow tint regardless if it was exposed or not. I fixed this through a light linker and adjusted the light and shadows. An animated light was also included and was used to integrate my tornado particles into the scene. I think this was done effectively.
3. Compositing: I went back in and adjusted some minor color correction stuff I was nitpicking earlier to soften my scene. I also rotoed some of the plants in the foreground that the particle tornado swept across to better integrate my render layers.
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05/25/25
Here is my most updated high resolution mp4. I don't like how boring it gets after the particle tornado appears and I'd like to keep the time up to around 8-9 seconds, so I may speed up the symbols and particle tornado on a gradual ramp. First, I have to grab a reference to explain my thought.
High Res Render
Here is my current breakdown for my final. I have a series of different simulations to show my process through layers. I have my pryo, growth, particle tornado, and particle twinkles all shown in "visual technical breakdown". Depending on the critique this upcoming Monday, I may update this based on the feedback. I've never had to do one of these before! It's cool seeing everything separated.
Visual technical breakdown
Updated high res stil
Outdated high res still
Here is my most recent progress with my portal for the 26th's upcoming due-date. I wasn't happy with how the background looked in "outdated high res still" after rendering it through SCAD's farm. I figured I had some time to work on it quickly before the farm became busy this afternoon, and so I changed around the grass and added more shrubbery. I'm pretty happy with the integration. I like how the light subtly reflects off the fern bushes.
While editing the background, I reworked the pyro USD I exported. My pyro was slightly off center from the growth sim because of the newly-added Y-axis rotation to the ground. Rendering that fix was my biggest concern today and took priority over smaller problems. Because of the clog in the farm, this was one of the biggest renders I could complete in time. I hope to fix some little details for Wednesday's due date shortly.
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fig. 13
fig. 14
Twinkle ref
I thought my simulation looked a little bland with just the pyro and particle tornado, so I thought blending them a bit would help balance my piece out. I did a simple particle sim with 'popwind' and 'popforce' adjustments. "Twinkle ref" shows the variation in size before they were put through a velocity blur to shape them into what I am referencing in "fig 13".
05/17/25
TO DO:
- Boolean: There are a handful of frames being cut from my ground due to a problem inside my boolean.
- Pyro: Slow down the boolean to show off the pyro sim better. Adjust look settings.
- Lighting: The particles need to be condensed.
- Look Dev: Work on the materials for the rocks and finalize the grass and ground.
OPTIMIZATION
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I've had to troubleshoot a multitude of problems this weekend, the biggest being my USD. My karma USD would constantly crash when exporting from how large my scene was. I had to resize everything down. It took easily 15 minutes for all of my caches to cook. It entire process was so slow. So, I remeshed all of my models and reduced their polygon count by half (this surprisingly didn't impact the look of my sims too much). Anyways, everything was optimized and recached to quicken my workflow. My caches take around 3 minutes to complete now and my USD exports significantly faster.
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Optimizing my workflow at the start of my project would have really helped and I think going back in took time away to work on other things. This won't be looked over again.
grass caches
fire caches
fig. 11
fig. 12
Today I focused a lot of my time on look dev and optimization. I created variation in the grass through height and spread and added rocks to match my 'background references' images. I really like the look of them so far, but I still need to work on the materials. I was prioritizing the look of the flame and light today, which still needs corrected. I would like the boolean to slow down a little and the lighting needs to be less pixelated.
05/12/25
fig. 10
I believe Professor Fowler and I discussed the idea of integrating my portal inside an environment rather than the normal black background. I knew that compositing the rest was very possible; however, I really learned the importance of properly integrating from my past exercises. And so I'm testing out a nice grass simulation! 'Fig 10' shows the general shape of the field I'm getting so far, with my constraints laid out in 'fig 9'. I have a list of things to check off so far:
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fig. 9
1. Attribute Paint: I want to make splotches of grass with the center of the portal covered with a rock or dirt texture. I have to add variation.
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2. Boolean: I want the grass to expose the portal the same way the ground is doing in fig 8. I need to work on combined the two together.
Background References
I'm also looking ahead to the look dev portion of my project so I have general idea of what I'm going for. The look of old stone circles could really contribute a lot to the scenery of the environment. 'Background References' share these thoughts.
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I did a little tonight to troubleshoot a problem I encountered in class today. I'm using my pyro spread as an animated boolean so it "carves" into the ground as it's being exposed. The model I originally remeshed for my symbol portal needed to be filled in with a 'polyfill' to make sure the boolean was being subtracted as the spread continued. It was such a little fix, but it makes a difference.
I'm still seeing some problems inside the boolean on a couple of frames that still need addressed, but the majority has been fixed. 'Fig 8' shows my work-in-progress on that boolean.
fig. 8
05/10/25
fig. 7
Final thing on my bucket list today was adjusting my particles. I added more rings to mimic the symbol portal. The rest is pretty much the same. I need to figure out a way to slowly expose the particles once the pyro spread is complete.
As a side note, the flames will not be orange. I want them to be a green like the rest of the sim. (super hot fire!) fig. 5
The black around the edges references the temperature attribute. This will help control my pyro. fig 6
The portal was brought in through a trace node and quickly extruded and remeshed to create my geometry. The orange points shown on top of my model, shown in 'fig. 1', are the starting points of my pyro spread. In order for those to work I made sure to create my temerpature attribute before importing into my 'pyrosourcespread'.
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I seperated my sim between 'GROWTH' and 'FIRE'. The former was created from seperating out my temperature points through a blast and blurred out with an attribute blur. This will help me set up textures later.
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The later was made from scattered points inside of my temperature blast. I still have lot of work to do for the 'FIRE' portion of the spread, but it's a start.
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fig. 3 & 4
fig. 2
fig. 1
I wanted to get started on the basics of my symbol portal today to make sure everything I had in mind of doing would turn out alright. I wanted to create a growth pattern to gradually expose my portal from the ground. This was going to be done originally with a vellum peel, but I thought a pyro source spread would fit better within the criteria of this project.
05/06/25
I changed a little from yesterday. I increased the particle count to around​ 550 thousand and in all honesty, I don't think I should've added more. If the particles are translucent then maybe it would take away from the portal, but this is something I have to consider. Besides that, I removed the vertical spiral. Aesthetically, it doesn't fit with my concept. The photo on the right is the potential portal I will use. Excited to see where this goes.
Today I focused on solidifying my portal's particle rough concept. While I touched up the design to fit my reference better, I found this GIF. I really enjoy the glow effect coming through the symbols on the ground. This is something I want to include in my Final. The spiral effect is something I will be ignoring as the particles already complete that criteria.
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I have learned an ample amount from this tutorial. It's incredibly informational and less intimidating than I thought originally. The set up of the simulation is well organized and the rendering process, although different than what I originally thought, was quick to set up. I learned how to incorporate wedges inside my exports and how to introduce a clean workflow into a particle system. It's really interesting so far.
05/05/25
My progress for the day is a rough version of the tutorial for a mock up approval. As for personal preference, I created a list of details to change for the portal so I stay on track with my progress:
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1. Point Count: Increasing from 400k is ideal for a better, smoother look. Looking somewhere between 500k - 1mil.
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2. Flow: I plan to ignore the animation of the entire portal and have it stationary with rotational movement.
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3. Shaping: The particle funnel at the top needs to be corrected. This might be removed in the final product as it doesn't really reflect the look I'm going for. This is shown in the bottom two reference images.
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These are some of the references I have in mind for my Final. From the Magic FX tutorial, I would like to integrate that effect inside a stylized, symbol covered ground portal. The video in the center would be a nice addition to include along the edges of the portal as 'magical torches'.
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Requirements:
The specifications and criteria for this project are purposefully as broad as possible to allow you
to explore Houdini in the manner you are most interested in.
• shot will be 5–10 seconds.
• resolution will be 1920 by 1080 pixels.
• you will present your progress in dailies in blog format and the class before the due date.
• integration with a background plate is optional, but encouraged only if you have those
skills
• Your project must include one of the following: pyro, fluid or crowds
• You will be producing a visual technical breakdown for the shot
This blog will focus on my progression through my Final for my 428 particles course at SCAD. I would like to thank Sadjad Rabiee for his magic video as I will be using this as a reference for my simulation.
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As of now, I plan to complete his Quick Tips video to set up a solidified plan for my creative additions.
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