Matan Ziv Reel + Breakdowns

Spaceship Explosion

Rendered in multiple passes for more control during compositing with Nuke, starting with the base ship lit from the explosions, grading the explosions themselves, adding trails on top of it all and finally adding glow from the explosions.

Rope Tear

Close up of a rope tearing, done first by modeling the rope.

First image has surface visualization, for the sim the rope is just curves.

Using groups to randomly cut a single spot on each thread on the rope, followed by making a soft pin constraint so the rope is more dynamic in the middle and less dynamic near the end parts where I animate it to rip apart.

Setting vellum constraints so my rope behaves the way I want it to

Finally having some bits of hair copied on the rope so it's not completely smooth

Magical Skull

Started with a simple pyro simulation of the symbols on the ground that I've drawn with curves

Starting with the forming of the skull, I simulate smoke inside of a skull-shaped collider so it fills it up and takes  its form, I then remove the collider and add some forces to make an interesting downward motion while dissipating the smoke, and then I simply reverse it in comp so it looks like the skull is forming instead of dissipating.

Then the skull is being blended in comp with 2 other versions of the skull. One with more violent forces inside the skull so it looks more interesting and one with the actual dissipation of the smoke which is made similarly to the smoke forming, starts off in a skull collider which is being removed later with forces blowing the smoke away.

Finally added some particles coming from the summoning circle and the skull itself.

Worm on Leaf 

Start with modeling the worm, once low poly and once high poly with more segments so we can sim low res and deform the high res geometry later. The low res worm is made with a tetrahedral softbody and its movements are 100% controlled by forces.

In order to have the worm operate as if it has a brain the head has its own forces pulling it upwards.

Later I'm making a simple sphere with high viscosity particles to be used as fluids in the vellum simulation and behave as a droplet. In order to have the simplest simulation I can get, I'm simulating twice.
The first one is the main simulation. That one has everything dynamic and where I'm drawing both my worm and leaf from. Then when I have the leaf behaving the way I want it I simulate again with the leaf being static so I get just the right droplet behavior I need without having to fine tune both the leaf and the droplet.

Then to add a wet trail to the leaf I'm emitting non-moving particles from my droplet and projecting them onto the leaf, then I simply surface them to be a very thin coat of reflective material that sits on the leaf and I have a wet trail coming from the droplet.

Thanks for watching!