Eric White 2023

Rain City

This was a really fun project to work on! It started out as a simple rain effect that eventually led to this piece. My favorite part about it has to be the water splashes, which are essentially a collection of simulated splashes, scattered on points, based on their surface. So, for example, flat concrete splashes differ from water puddle splashes. And although they’re pretty small and hard to even notice, its just nice for me to know that its there.

Although effects were the key factor in this piece, I also very much enjoyed playing with lighting and how the billboards and signs reflect in the water. It just brings the piece together for me. Below you can see a small breakdown of this shot.

All of the effects were created in Houdini. I blocked out the scene in Maya, created textures using Substance Painter, rendered it in Redshift, and finally composited it all in Nuke. The character and animation came from Mixamo, while the building models came from KitBash3D.

Fire and Water

This was another fun project to work on. I had started working on this while I was taking a Liquid Simulations class at Gnomon. I wanted to do a cool water effect where something speeds by and causes the water to splash outwards. Prior to that I had been wanting to attempt a fire sword effect, so I decided to mash those two ideas together to create this.

The effects in this one were also created in Houdini, blocked out in Maya, textured in Substance Painter, rendered in Redshift, and composited in Nuke. Character and animation were from Mixamo.

Barn Fire

Now this was an interesting project to work on. I had never really used Unreal Engine (or any game engine for that matter) prior to this. I took a VFX For Games class at Gnomon and this was my final for that class. I wanted to do something with fire because at the time I had just learned how to create flipbooks for Houdini to UE5. I also want to point out that some fire and smoke assets were from a starter kit and not my own, I just liked the look and style of them over my own in certain areas; However, other fire assets were created by me in Houdini. I also really enjoyed playing around with post process volumes to create the look and feel of the scene. And I used Niagara to simulate the ashes and embers. The environment came from the Unreal Marketplace.