TENDRILS PORTAL & SHIELD FX

I started by modelling the environment in SideFX Software Houdini — generating a procedural terrain using a mix of heightfield noises and other heightfield operations, and also creating a larger version of the same terrain to use as an extension for the background terrain. I kitbashed a quick castle fortress by using both free Kitbash3D and Megascans assets, and other VDB-based procedural assets. I then scattered rocks, stumps and trees along the terrain surface. To add a bit more interest to the castle, I copied remeshed grids to points at the top of the castle to serve as flags, simulated them using the vellum solver, and also created a torch fire pyro sim to copy and time offset around the castle. To complete the environment, I created some cloud volumes using the cloud shape generate node and other volume operations and created an environment fog volume. For the main deformed cloud volume, I first created the base, noised-up geometry and used a mix of volume operations and wrangles to animate a portal opening in the cloud. I then created the shield geometry and a quick particle sim to get my impact points. I then used a mask attribute to displace the shield geometry, and used the ripple solver to get some nice ripples on impact. For the tendrils/lightning, I created lines, added multiple noises, animated the pscale to fade in and out, and meshed the result. For the shield splashes, I used several FLIP sources with custom velocities and simulated them with the FLIP solver within a DOP network. I also used a geometry VOP to get my particles to stick to the shield surface. I then moved to Solaris, set up a render stage for each shot, split the scene into passes, assigned AOVs, created materials and set up initial lighting.