VFX Reel Early 2014

Here It is, My New Reel:

Niall Horn VFX Reel 2014

Thanks For Looking!

Water Blast- Realflow 2013 FX Test

Here is my Last test before I go Back To College!

I have been looking at ways to do water explosions for a while but this turned out to be such a simple setup that worked really well.

My Method:

I used a pretty low res Hybrido Domain for the core fluid. To Create the blast I used a Sphere hitting the bottom of the fluid and then scaling down very quickly. It saves messing around with scripts and having to buy plugins and I think the result is just as good.

The Splash and Foam is what adds even more detail, I did not use Secondary Splashes as they make the foam look very powdery where as the default settings with some tweaking give the best looking foam. I made the creation thresholds very low and also the emission rate very high so theres a lot of Splash and Foam Particles been generated.

As you have seen in my past Realflow Tests my Water Shader has looked awful but this time I found a Material Online . I have now learned how the shader works and it gives the impression of whitewater when the water splashes as you can see below with the render test. Now all my renders are going to look so much more realistic!

You Can see the white translucency on the splash and the really nice surface detail. Also I was using Global Illumination with V-Ray.

I also rendered the Splash And Foam with Krakatoa and then Did some compositing in After Effects.

I feel the need for better edited Show-reel so that will be coming online very soon!

Final Shot:

 

EDIT:

28/01/14: Done better colour correction on Foam in Comp so it does not look so dark. (See Below)

Added tint to the foam to get rid of black shadow you get from the krakatoa pass, changed black to a near white/blue colour, also add some blur to make it not look so much like particles and make it less sharp. This Looks a lot better!

As Always Thanks For Looking At My VFX Blog!

UnderWater Bullet Bubbles FX Test

About a Month a go Graham Collier uploaded an FX Test he did using Fume FX and Frost in 3DS Max to create underwater bubbles. I wanted to try and recreate the effect but I do not have Frost (ThinkBox Frost is a meshing plugin which can mesh Fume FX Sims).

My Method:

I first did a low res FumeFX Sim of some particles been shot down and then deleting after 8 or so frames then using wind along with some temp advection the FumeFX to make the smoke rise out of the top of the FumeFX Container.

Then using good old Particle Flow (PFlow) I used Fume FX Follow to create a particle system based on the smokes velocities. I then created smoke spheres and used some FFD's and Noise Modifiers to make them look like bubbles. Then I used some turbulence in the PFlow System to give the bubbles some more movement.

The Bubbles were rendered using V-Ray and in the end I used a Material I downloaded as I was having a hard time with the Prisim/Rainbow effect you see in bubbles.

Composited in After Effects with some Motion Blur.

FINAL SHOT

Thanks For Looking!

Air-Burst Explosion Fume FX

This was completed in just two days, I think its my best FumeFX sim yet and hope you do to!

I got reference for this explosion from the game Ace Combat Assault Horizon, now I know its not the best to get reference from other 3D work but I really liked the look of the explosions.


I used Fume FX for the explosion using 4 PFlow (Particle Flow) Systems for the Fireballs and then one system for the Smoke Trails/ Tendrils which should have been a bit thicker. The Sim was quite high res, my PC could of gone higher but due to the shots motion blur I would be comping it into it was not needed. Render Time was nearly 6 hours alone! I Cached Colours in Fume which enabled me to have diffrent coloured smoke of each emitter so two fireballs have black smoke and the other two the more grey smoke you see, which really sells the shot even more! I used a value of 0.5 for multiple scattering to add some smoke illumination (but not too much!).

The Live Action Footage was shot on my Canon 550D last year at Captain Cooks Monument! I rendered the Explosion trying to match the light of the footage as best as possible and then just comp'd the explosion in After Effects Like Stock Footage

Screenshot of the Max Scene-

  Final Shot On Yotube

Final Shot On Vimeo

Thanks For Looking!

Fume FX RnD 5- Fiery Explosion

                                          Final Sim ^

I set this up a week or so ago and left it rendering while I was out yesterday.

I was trying to achieve a fiery explosion look with lots of fire detail. The Gradient still needs work but I am getting closer to what I am wanting!

Thanks For Looking!

Ash Decay System- Rayfire and PFlow

So I worked on this while waiting for a Realflow Cache. I was Inspired by Will Wallace's Ash Decay system that he made with TP (Thinking Particles). I thought that it could be done using only Rayfire and PFlow.

Method:

First I modelled a crappy cigar model and some ash. Then Fragmented the ash with Rayfire and animated a box to pass over the ash in 200 Frames. Using Rayfire's Activation by Geometry the Ash only falls when the box passes over it so makes a kind of Progressive Fracturing look. I used a low time scale of 0.3 and low gravity of 0.4 as well as some Rayfire glue to make everything clump together.

Then I Created a PFlow system to birth particles on the Fragments at Frame 0 and then using speed test when these particles go over a 20cm/s velocity it spawns particles which are instances of the rayfire fragments effected by some wind and gravity so we get more fragments and more detail. Which adds to the overall look.

I Recorded a Making of Video Here:

Final Shot On Vimeo

Thanks For Looking!

Little Bird Crash Work In Progress

I have been really busy recently, I have been working on a test shot for an web-series that I may be working on very soon, Its very exciting and more info coming soon. I have had little time to work on personal projects but I have started on two new projects: A New Realflow 2013 RnD and a LittleBird Helicopter crash shot, These are both big projects and each will need a considerable amount of time to work on them, these are bigger projects than anything I have done in 2013 so I am sure I will learn a lot from them. So I will be working on these and possibly my first proper Freelance project so will have some cool shots coming soon, Keep Checking Back.

Until then, Here is a preview of the LittleBird Crash:

Thanks For Looking And All The Best!

Fume FX Mortar Explosion RnD

So I Got inspired by The Mortar Explosions in Stalingrad (2013 Movie) and Operation King fish by Playfight VFX. Using 3 Emitters, One Thin Trails, One Thicker Trails and One Fireball Emitter. The Trails are made with PFlow using the Spawn operator, the thin trails use only a small bit of inherited speed whereas the thicker trails use around 30-40 inherited speed. Colours are Cached in the Fume FX Grid which enables each Particle Source to have its own smoke Colour.

 The Thin Trails Are White/Grey, The Thicker Trails are have a Dirt Colour and the Fireball smoke which is based on Temp Emission is Dark Grey. I had a really hard time with the Trails looking bubbly not just when they stop but the trail its self looks like loads of circles, best way to over come this was using Turbulence that only lasts a few frames that just messes the trails up a little bit to hide the particle emission, also messing with the Radius of the Particle Source and the Amount and Lifespan of The particles. These Trails Spawn and then get deleted in 4 frames with a small variation value.

I discovered key framing the Time scale Value so that the initial blast is really fast and then the explosion slows down.  See Settings down below.

Note These Settings are just the foundations, the real settings you need to be playing with are the particles themselves.

Thanks For Looking!

Death Of Waterman- Realflow RnD

Yes More Realflow RnD,

My shots are starting to get more and more ambitious and now I am in the swing of the New Year I am gonna focus on taking a bit longer on the shots so I can take on more ambitious ideas and make sure I deliver with quality.

This Sim had very big Cache files So I am going to be investing in another 2TB HDD also I am in need of more speed so am Going to be upgrading to an 8 Thread Haswell I7. Hopefully this will make a diffrence and also take less strain off when I want to bump particle counts up to the near 50-100 million.

Sim Time for this was 10 Hours and Render Time another 5. I was trying hard to get nice looking Foam this time so the Foam was using a diffrent Gravity node than the core fluid so that it did not look so fake, also it starts to become stringy which is the look I want.

Realflow Previews:

I also wanted the mesh to be very High quality so took a lot of time with meshing the sim.

Final Shot on Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/83485927

Thanks For Looking, All The Best!

Don't Shoot Red Barrels- Fume FX Fun!

Welcome to 2014,

Dont Shoot Red Barrels:

Have Big Plans for this year, expanding my computing power and have some cool FX ideas lined up and maybe even a short VFX Sequence!

This was a little bit of fun while waiting on a Realflow Sim. Fire Emission from the barrel is not great. I was testing caching colours so you can use more than one smoke colour in one grid.

Final Shot on Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/83345551

Thanks For Looking!