Magic Smoke Vase
I made this magic effect in Houdini using several pyro simulations. A vase is dropped and breaks on the ground, as skulls made of smoke rise up from the debris. A magic sigil begins to form on the ground, adding to the light created by the smoke. This was a fun exploration into creating a stylized magic effect and a lot of great practice working with pyro simulations.
Splitting up Simulations
For this project, I used several separate pyro simulations in order to segment my project into several easily controllable parts. All of my separate simulations are list below.
Vase Shattering RBD
Debris from Vase
Smoke from Debris
Smoke trail from Vase Dropping
Popnet for Skull Movement
Smoke Emitted from Skulls
Smoke Emitted from Skulls Passing Up “Through” Ground
Smoke Emitted from Ground Downwards
Having separate parts for each simulation allowed me to tweak secondary effects without taking a while to re-simulate everything on the machine.
Below are a few of the WIP renders that I took while working on this project. I did not have a clear goal in mind when starting this project beyond making something that I would find visually appealing. While that is not the usual creative process for me, this was a great exercise in understanding how smoke works and the advantages of segmenting my file.
The look and color of the smoke changed several times over the process. Lighting was one part of this project that was particularly challenging for me, as I had lights coming out of the eyes of the skulls as well as from the smoke being emitted. Each set of lights from each of the sources of smoke was handled differently, allowing me to tweak the temperature thresholds and the colors from each separate source. The magic sigil in the center was created by me in Adobe Illustrator and animated to come out from the center, with the intensity changing over time in accordance with the timing of the effect.
