Breakdowns

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Mickey 17

Crafted photorealistic atmospheric and environmental FX to seamlessly blend live-action plates

Key Contributions

Blizzard & Environmental Snow

3-Depth Camera Layers: Divided snow elements into Near, Mid, and Far camera passes for accurate scale, parallax, and depth-of-field integration.

Multi-Tiered Particles: Layered 3 distinct particle passes with varied scale and density to create rich blizzard depth.

Custom Ground Velocities: Applied targeted vector fields near the ground to drive realistic surface turbulence and wind-drifted snow dynamics.

Volumetric Cold Breath

Dynamic Volume Simulation: Built fluid simulations fine tuned for density, turbulence, and cold-air dissipation to match sequence lighting.

Lip-Driven Emission Rig: Engineered a procedural setup driven by VEX logic to track lip separation-automatically sourcing volume only when the mouth opens for perfect dialogue sync.

Snow & Surface Interactions (Characters, Vehicles & Creatures)

Procedural Footprint & Tire Track Setup: Isolated foot and vehicle tire geometry to automatically detect ground collision
procedurally generating dynamic snow displacement and tire tread prints upon impact.

Procedural Creature Kick-up System: Designed an optimized particle pipeline for crowd/creature sequences using 50 pre simulated cache variants to drastically cut sim times while maintaining rich visual diversity.

Ground Impact Particle Simulation: Simulated dynamic upward particle kick-ups for footsteps, tire spin, and creature movement to add weight, realistic snow displacement, and natural environmental grounding.

Nyad

Crafted photorealistic underwater fluid dynamics.

Key Contributions

Character-Sourced Bubbles & Volumetric Velocities

Body & Surface Emission: Generated bubble particles directly from character body geometry and surface contact areas to drive realistic underwater displacement and motion.

Pyro-Driven Velocity Fields: Used custom Pyro volume simulations to drive bubble velocities, creating natural fluid drag, realistic turbulent rise, and organic micro-movements.

Water Simulation (FLIP)

Character Water Dynamics: Built foundational FLIP fluid simulation setups to capture water displacement, surface interactions, and localized fluid turbulence around the swimmer.

Procedural Seaweed & Environment System

Proximity-Based Attribute Transfer: Developed an automated setup using Attribute Transfer and group logic to calculate real-time distance between the character and surrounding underwater flora.

Dynamic Geometry Culling: Automatically deleted seaweed within a target distance threshold of the character, procedurally preventing geometry clipping and keeping focal shots clean during close encounters.

The Traveller (异人之下)

Crafted complex energy trails, and procedural magical rain using custom solvers.

Key Contributions

Stylized Magical Energy Trails FX

Custom POP Path Follow Tool: Built a custom path-follow node to replace the native POP Curve Force, delivering strict, artifact-free trajectory control along complex 3D paths.

Particle Driven Curve Filaments: Generated fine, dynamic streak lines directly from the guided particles to produce high-density glowing energy strands.

Post Sim Art Direction: Decoupled curve thickness and density downstream, enabling instant lookdev tweaks and faster iterations without re-simulating.

Energy Skeleton Breakup & Ground Debris FX

Vellum Wire Skeleton Dynamics: Built a thread-like skeleton cage using Vellum hair constraints with randomized breaking thresholds to simulate snapping, organic energy filaments tearing away from the body.

Inward Dust Attraction: Simulated localized volumetric dust driven by suction forces toward the character to ground.

Volume Advected Nano-Debris: Sourced fine ground grain debris points advected strictly through the Pyro velocity field using POP Advect by Volumes, producing naturally swirling particulate motion with minimal compute cost.

Procedural Magical Rain FX

Dual Tier LOD Setup: Established an optimized workflow deploying pre-simulated point caches for distant/wide shots and running live POP simulations for hero close-ups.

Hero Collision Dynamics: Simulated live POP particle dynamics against accurate high-res scene geometry for close-up shots to capture crisp physical impacts.

Kalki 2898 AD

Crafted atmospheric environmental dust, and dynamic tire smoke and dust trails.

Key Contributions

Vehicle Wheel Dust Trail & Debris FX

Rotational Velocity Transfer: Extracted wheel rotational velocity to inject custom directional forces into the Pyro emitter, ensuring tight physical coupling between tires and dust kick-up.

Volumetric Dust: Simulated low-density volumetric dust trails responding to ground contact friction and vehicle speed.

Secondary Debris: Integrated fine particulate and ground debris scatter emitted synchronously with the dust plumes for added tactile ground detail.

Environment Dust & Atmospheric FX

Surface Normal-Based Emission: Isolated terrain emission regions using a Group node filtered by surface normals to target only the desired upward-facing ground points.

Wedged Simulation Architecture: Handled the extensive trail distance by splitting the environment sim into 10 distinct wedges, significantly reducing memory overhead and solve times.

Atmospheric Volume Integration: Layered finely dispersed environmental dust volumes optimized to capture dynamic illumination from the vehicle headlights.

Sky Force

Crafted dynamic explosions, RBD destruction, and bullet tracer FX for high-stakes combat.

Key Contributions

Aircraft Destruction & Environment Interactions

RBD Aircraft & Glass Shatter: Simulated multi-material destruction across the plane frame, including fine metal cracking, plastic deformation, and dynamic canopy glass shattering.

Shockwave-Driven APU Advection: Built an automated setup using custom proxy geo and POP Advect to realistically react and propel nearby APU ground equipment as the blast shockwave hits.

Debris & Secondary Elements: Generated high-detail secondary metal debris and micro-shatter elements synchronized with the main explosion impact.

Large-Scale Explosion FX

Pyro & Explosion Setup: Simulated high-density primary fire and smoke volumes for a massive ground explosion.

RBD & Multi-Tier Trails: Integrated rigid body destruction with two trail variations fine spark trails and heavy debris trails.

Ground Dust Integration: Layered dynamic shockwave dust across the ground plane to ground the blast in the environment.

Bullet Tracers & Impact FX

Procedural Curve-Driven Setup: Automatically generates sequential bullet hits and incoming tracers along custom path curves based on a target frame.

Multi-Layered Elements: Combined four distinct impact layers-tracers, sparks, smoke, and debris.

Comp Flexibility: Outputted dedicated RGB utility passes for precise control over tracer size and intensity in post.

Fighter

Crafted dynamic explosions, RBD destruction FX for high-stakes combat.

Key Contributions

High-Energy Explosion & Shockwave FX

Pyro Asset Deployment: Implemented and integrated core high-density explosion volumes to drive the main blast impact.

Dual-Tier Trail & Debris System: Generated secondary rigid debris layered with dual trail variations—fine spark trails and heavy smoke trails emitting from flying debris chunks.

Ground Shockwave: Simulated an expanding ground-level dust shockwave to enhance dramatic scale and environment integration.

Helicopter Mid-Air Explosion FX

Mid-Air Pyro Blast: Simulated high-velocity primary fire and combustion volumes attached to the moving helicopter fuselage.

Radial Smoke Trails: Built high-speed projectile smoke trails erupting outwards from the core blast point.

Secondary Debris Scatter: Layered fine metallic debris and micro-shrapnel elements to add realistic micro-detail and weight to the explosion.

Fighter Jet — Procedural Contrail & Thruster FX

Non-Sim VDB Contrail Setup: Built a simulation-free contrail workflow using procedural curve geometry converted to noisy VDB volumes for ultra-fast generation and rendering.

Automated Thruster Tool: Developed a procedural afterburner setup featuring automated engine detection and attachment, with optional manual selection overrides.

Utility Passes for Comp: Rendered dedicated RGB utility passes to give compositing direct control over contrail length, density, and falloff in post.

Plankton: The Movie

Crafted stylized smoke, magical tentacle auras, ambient dust, and dynamic text FX.

Key Contributions

Stylized Tentacle Aura Lights FX

Procedural VDB Setup: Converted incoming animation curves into custom VDB volumes with directional upward noise for organic flow.

Animation Ingestion: Automated curve ingestion from Anim, delivering shot-ready setups with minimal per-shot tweaking.

Noise-Driven Lookdev: Modulated volume density and glowing light emission independently using custom noise patterns.

Stylized Magical Text Reveal FX

Particle-Driven Reveal: Used wand-tip POP particles to drive the sequential reveal of letters along the animation path.

5-Layer Architecture: Combined edge outlines, internal fill, sparkles, soft VDB volumes, and randomized particle trails.

Controlled POP Dynamics: Clamped particle lifespans tightly around text contours, outputting utility passes for comp glow.

Stylized Toon Exhaust Smoke FX

Non-Sim Workflow: Converted POP particles into smooth VDB volumes, bypassing heavy Pyro sims for crisp silhouette control.

Modulo-Driven Cadence: Used modulo math (@Frame % interval) to trigger rhythmic, cartoon-style exhaust puffs.

Volumetric Shaping: Controlled particle growth and dissipation over lifespan for snappy shapes with zero sim overhead.