Peter Dravecky - A Year of Tech Art

WARLOCK'S END

a short cinematic focused on stylized special effects

My final project for my university course is a cinematic short about a mage preparing to fight a massive monster, paying homage to game cinematic trailers.

As a single person in charge of the visuals, throughout the process I've implemented over 40 individual visual effects (sparks, fluid simulations, smoke and more) while also working on everything from pre-production to final compositing.

Fun fact, the entire cinematic is rendered using the Houdini Viewport! I did make some higher-quality renders for the hero assets though:

Progress photos and technical breakdowns:

Software used:

Maya (Rigging), Blender (Modelling), Substance Painter (Texturing), Nuke (Compositing), Houdini (Layout, Procedural Geometry, Visual Effects, Lighting, Rendering)

DRUID MAGIC FX

Implementing an impact effect into set animation

This project was an university assignment for the DNEG Masterclass. I created an effect of the character summoning sharp branches which pierce the victim. All the geometry (vines & background trees) and effects (smoke) were created procedurally inside Houdini and rendered using Karma XPU.

Gravity Simulations using Houdini & OpenCL

A custom micro-solver node for simulating influence between particles

This project uses an approximation technique used for cosmological simulations to increase the solve time of N-body Simulations - this scene contained about 2.5 million particles with a solve time of cca. 1.24 seconds/frame!

The spaceship was created using the Spaceship Tool described below :)

Procedural Spaceship Generator

A Houdini tool for artist-friendly procedural spaceship creation

This tool works as a HDA, real-time inside Unreal Engine - it allows the user to create their own spaceship style using the parameter menu and then easily apply it to many shapes and sizes.

National Slovak Folk Dress

A Marvelous Designer simulation-ready garment

Thank you for looking through my Rookies entry!