Cici Zheng
VFX ARTIST
Thawed
Thawed is a collaboration piece between animator Joshua Lewis and me. The project is my original concept, inspired by the Disney movie Frozen. I want to make something that's magical but also comical and light minded.
We had a blast working on this piece, while Joshua got to explore the cartoony style of animation, I got the chance to break down different layers of multiple magical effects and challenge myself to achieve specific art directions of the pyro and pops' behaviour.
Responsible for FX, USD pipeline, Texturing and Look development, Compositing.
Software: Houdini, Maya, Nuke, Photoshop, DaVinci Resolve, Karma, Corpernicus, USD, Adobe PhotoShop.
Breakdowns
Snowflakes
Procedual snowflake using lsystem.
i used multiple pop sims, combining with custom adjustable attributes to art direct the behaviour and shapes of the snowflakes.
Snow Sim
Masked out the interactive area to prep for MPM sim.
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different MPM source material for different velocity interaction.
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debris source based on MPM's speed and stretching.
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secondary debris pop sim.
Render snow in volume form and mesh form seperatly, then blend them in compositing using Nuke.
Melting Ice
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Use a ray node to blend from the original shape to the target shape.
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added noise to mimic the behaviour of ice melting.
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Turn the mesh into VDB to carve out the area for the little dino.
More breakdown coming soon...