FX TD & Artist DemoReel - Marc Mesa

HOUDINI FX TD & ARTIST DEMO REEL 2022

Hi to everyone again! This year I’m sharing my lastest Houdini portfolio which includes almost every part of the software. What I’m going to show you is a variety of different projects that I made during my learning path that took me 6 months to conclude.

The most exciting part of creating those artworks was to connect all of them someway to create my own style and to find out and experiment different ways to optimize massive scenes.

I’m really proud of what I did and, hope you like it too!

MAIN TITLES

This is my first Houdini sequence where I decided to get into the main aspects of CGI. In this project I added some shading, modelling, lighting, lookdev and compositing work.

I was inspired by Elastic’s One Dollar Main Title where the most important object is placed right in the center of the entire sequence whilst he other objects around it explains you the story that happens to the dollar.

I was impressed by the project, but I decided to make it a little bit different. 

POP

This is my very first dynamic project made in SideFX Houdini. In order to start understanding the entire world of VFX, I really think that POP is great way to do it.

After some feedbacks and tweaking different parameters, I reached this result.

To find out a cool reference to implement into my Demo Reel, I chose to look for a project which involved DNEG (Altered Carbon).

Special thanks to Andreu Pellisa Cortiella for the character animation.

RND

I tried to do some cool stuff referenced from REBELWAY courses. Due to I didn't have enough economic resources I gave a try to create something similar.

In order to give my own artistic perspective, I decided to add some details to the drone that help the scene become a little more interesting.

RBD

This is my RBD project. In this case, I decided to ask for my teacher for a different project in order to test if I could do a work out of my comfort zone.

At the beginning was quite complex due to the speed of the fracturing nodes that I was using to shatter different materials. So, I decided to create my own ones in order to solve some issues and, it worked! I made RBD Material Fracture from scratch, but I split the different materials in different nodes, so that means that the fracturing process was faster. Besides, I solved some problems related to shatter tiny pieces.

I had a great time creating some tools and giving final details to the project. 

FLIPS

This is my Flip project which is inspired in Lost in Space TV show. That show includes this kind of massive scenes where you can find huge waterfalls. The idea started just right after seeing Juri Bryan 's REBELWAY MasterClass where he explained the workflow and the way they managed information.

The most difficult part of the project was trying to understand how to work with the enormous amount of particles in the same scene and how to optimize all simulations in order to run them on my computer.

Once I made the entire setup, I created the tool that allowed me to run all the caches from the height fields simulation to the final whitewater and liquid simulations.

The compositing part was tough too, but I gave my best to reach the best result.

CROWDS

As you might know, I keep improving my skills playing around with different effects in SideFX Software.

This time, I'm glad to show you a crowd project inspired in a shot from DNEG.

The most difficult part was trying to create a great atmosphere merged with different lightning techniques as well as pretending to apply all the main aspects of crowds.

I worked with vellum too in order to give some details to the project. I'm not too fan of CFX, so I tried to create a fast pipeline to work as efficiently as I could using wedges.

PYRO

This is one of my latest projects that I've been involved. Pyro is one of my favourite aspects in houdini, so I decided to take the risk of making a bigger project. 

In this case, I was inspired by DNEG's project from Fantastic Beasts. The first time I saw this work I decided to give a try to do it. 

I splitted the projects in different parts: the dragon, the environment and the atmosphere.

As you might see in the breakdown, there are even more than 25 simulations in this project in order to give this kind of smoky look.

Something interesting that I did for this project is a new cache node, which includes the possibility of caching a High Quality version and a Low Quality version based on my Pipeline. Both qualities represent the same simulation but I did it because I just wanted to be allowed to see the simulation in the viewport.

I spent a lot of time doing the environment too. The entire environment is fully procedural which means that I'm allowed to make any kind of change.  

Special thanks to Andreu Pellisa for the Dragon animation!

ARTWORKS

Apart of the sequences that I made, I decided to create some stills.

Just for fun, slide to see the power of compositing.

Special thanks to Ernest Monter, Enrique Zancajo & Francesc Bolló for feedback.

Thank you a lot for taking your time to see my portfolio! Leave a comment or feedback as you wish in the comment section!

Have a nice day!