Underwater
Responsible for all FX, animation, lighting, rendering, compositing.
Programs used: Houdini, Nuke.
Rendered with Karma.
This is my latest project that I started in Liquid Simulation class at Gnomon and was able to finish in DemoReel class. I am a huge Avatar: The Way of Water fan, and this project was inspired one of the shots from the movie. Water and specifically underwater elements were always something that I wanted to tackle.
To create the animation of school that reacts to the statue, I decided to use proceduralism over simulation in order to have more control. I made a simple curve and multiplied it by the amount of fish I want to have in the school. Later, I deformed every curve using masks that allowed me to drive the frequency and amplitude of noises that I needed along the curve.
I knew that I wouldn't be able to animate the statue so that its movement feels natural. So I started testing 2-way simulation of RBD and FLIP solvers, since I've never done anything like this before.