VFX
Happy to share my work on Sicaria, a 3rd person stealth game. I was responsible of VFX and worked with other passionate students to bring the atmosphere of Antwerp during the Eighty Years' War.
For this project, I learned about pyro simulations in Houdini and EmberGen, rendering techniques for flipbooks and bringing them in Unreal Engine, in Niagara. I also explored techniques that would increase the performance, without losing the quality of the effects. I also learned about material fracturing in Houdini.
Showcase of decal material under the fire to add the effect on the burning wood.
I added multiple user parameters for adjusting size, speed, embers and smoke.
For optimization reasons, the fire was used only behind objects and it would rotate the sprite to face the camera on Z axis, so the bottom seam would always be hidden.
Same fire effect, with different parameters.
Fire done in EmberGen
Glass fracturing was done in Houdini on a bottle mesh done by the Prop artist. For shattering the bottle in Niagara, I used multiple emitters with randomized fractured pieces, while always keeping the bottleneck intact. All of them had collision.
Smoke bomb done in Houdini and implemented in Niagara with flipbooks
Steam for mechanical arm used for dashes and enemy takedown.