Particle Simulation In Houdini

For this project, I decided to be a little random and give a turtle a shower. To do this, I used Houdini's particle emitter to simulate a shower and a model of a tortoise set to be a static object. This project seemed  to take me a ridiculous amount of time. I think mostly because my lap top isn't powerful enough to handle such a heavy load. This was not my favorite project.

Maya Fluid Fire Simulaton

This is a fire I created in maya using Maya Fluids. I wanted to create a calm cozy fireplace scene.
I enjoyed this project a lot. However I do not feel that this was my best work when it comes to Visual Effects. I feels as though my fire is too orange and too fast. I do, however, feel like how it looks over all is not bad. I think with more practice I can improve greatly when it comes to using maya fluids.

Facial Rig WIP 02

http://youtu.be/uocZQq71Yto

An update on my facial rig. I am using the text book "Stop Staring" by Jason Osipa as my guide. So far it is going pretty well I think! as of right now I only have the jaw and subJaws set up and working. I did run into an issue with naming my multiply divide node and  I have recently discovered that it is better to  place each joint individually instead of mirroring them. When you mirror a joint, the orientation gets reversed which works fine for an arm or a leg, but for a jaw when using multiply/Divide nodes in the node editor, it causes the nodes to work in reverse for translations. It was a simple fix, all I had to do was duplicate the joints and their groups from one side and just move them to the correct position. As of now, nothing is bound yet but I am getting the layout set up. That should be done soon.

Facial Rigging WIP 01

I have begun the process of learning joint based facial rigging. As of now I am working on getting my joints laid out so that I can start connecting them. I am using the text book "Stop Staring" by Jason Osipa as a guide for this project. I will be using sub jaws for the mouth movement. These will be connected to the root jaw through the use of multiply/divide node, which I will be connecting in the node editor. This is my first advanced facial rig so I am excited to see how it comes out.

Space Soldier: Compositing in Nuke

In my compositing class, we are fine tuning our skills with integrating live action footage and CG in Nuke. I enjoyed this project, but it was a little difficult since I haven't even looked at nuke in quite some time. I think my colors may be a little off for the soldier. But over all I am happy with my work.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0BXrfomI_0&feature=youtu.be

Volcano Smoke in Houdini

http://youtu.be/yKuxqjMgaVE

This month in my visual effects class I have been learning more about visual effects. I have currently been learning about Houdini's  pyroFX. For this particular effect I utilized Houdini's built in Volcano Shelf button, just to give me the base structure for my node tree. I then dove into each of the settings and adjusted the attributes until I reached my desired effect. For the look of fire, instead of eating up render time, I  put a put light in the origin of the smoke. This saved me a lot of time when it came to running the simulation. Which still took quite a bit of time. The hardest part of this project was figuring out what each attribute and setting did, I still have a lot to learn with this program. I had a lot of fun working on this project, It made me realize that it might be time to get a more powerful computer though.