The Fallen King

This is my final project that I presented in the advanced VFX master at FX Barcelona Film School.

We had 6 months to be able to present a project with all the knowledge learned during the 2 years of the master's degree.

I decided that creating the hair effect on a lion would be my main effect to try, but the grooming seemed too simple to present as a final project, so I decided to turn it into a zombie and thus use a lot of other knowledge that I acquired during the course.

I mainly based it on the zombie tiger from the movie Army of the Dead. The entire process was carried out with Houdini, Nuke, Substance and After Effects, and this was the result:

I got the lion model, called Zeke the Lion, from the Ziva Dynamics website. This model is a very detailed model of a lion that includes a walking animation. It also included the muscles and skeleton, which did not contain animation and I had to create it myself with Point Deform in Houdini. Later, I also added a procedural system of veins around the skeleton.

I started by doing all the grooming of the lion, and then I did the "zombification".

I started by creating all the grooming. Grooming a lion in vfx is a great challenge. It has many areas with different types of fur. So it took me a while to study the fur and create all the necessary masks. 

After the zombification, I had to ruffle the lion's fur and create dirt and blood stains. Also, I had to put the textures in substance to create the dead skin texture and visible muscles.

The real challenge that this project was for me was creating the holes in the skin. I had to design a patch system and optimize it as much as possible. So through the UV attributes I managed to create those patches that would then independently have a Vellum simulation to create the broken skin effect.

I realized that the hanging skin would need a simulation, so I chose different hanging pieces and added an animated vellum simulation to each one.

When I thought about evironment, I wanted to do something that wasn't very common, so I thought about snow. I started by creating the snowy ground and playing with erosion to break up the uniformity. Then I added the rest of the elements from Bridge.

Another challenge I faced was creating the footprints in the snow. I thought using vellum grains would be the most realistic option, so I did. To do it in the most optimized way possible, I created the straight path that I then integrated with the rest of the ground.

Finally, I had to adapt the UV of the ground to the deformation of the footprints.

CONCLUSION

I have learned a lot with this latest project and I want to thank all the teachers at FX Barcelona Film School who have given me all the knowledge I have acquired during these 2 years.

Also, thanks to everyone who has seen the entire project. Feel free to see more work on my profile, give me feedback and comment :)