Project Summary
Finally, I have finished project 02. I learned a lot in this project, and enjoyed the hardware crisis that it brought to my computer (smile).
This is a personal project which focusing on volume, RBD destruction and liquid simulations in film VFX. This project doesn’t covers any story and is more like a demoreel. It can be considered as a technique preparation and test for my final major project.
What I would like to do in my final major project is an urban legend (or creepypasta) theme short film. The main idea of this film is to tell an abnormal or horror story. It is quite different to other horror topics like zombies or ghost. The film may base on some ideas from Control, SCP (Secure,Contain,Protect), The Backrooms or The Thing.
It can be foreseen that there will be some VFX shots in this short film, and some other VFX represent abnormal effects to create weired atomosphere. At first I want to be more focusing on the VFX that creates horror atmospheres. I then did some research on horror effects in films like The Thing (1982 and 2011), Alien series and zombie films and realized that there are plenty of character VFX and some special effects made by real props in these films. The quality of character VFX is highly depended on the quality of customized rig, cloth effects, animation and compositing, which can be a huge area for me. Therefore I decided to start with traditional effects rather than such kind of specific VFX. If I have extra time after I finished the traditional part, maybe I can do some character VFX.
I decide to focus on volume, RBD destruction and liquid simulations, which are the main traditional effects in film production. As for the abnormal effects, which I think are more like some motion graphic effects, will be researched and prepared at the beginning of July.
The software that I used is Houdini, which can give me enough freedom to finish these effects. At the end of this project, I have finished several explosion sims, smoke sims, destruction sims and a liquid sim. These techniques will also be applied in my FMP project.
During the production of this project, I met some problems and realized the limitation of my hardware. Therefore, I find out what area that I need to focus on in next step and what kind of hardware that I need to prepare for my FMP. I also got some feedbacks from my classmates, which helped me a lot. All these reflections are quite valuable and useful.
In next month I will start to prepare for my FMP project. I will do more targeted preparations for the FMP based on reflections in project 01 and 02. These reflections can also help me to prepare for the script and storyboard, and effectively control time budge and the speed of process.