"Love and Gold"
A showcase of my work as an FX Technical Director on Brigham Young University's 2025 student film, a College Television Award Finalist!
Shot Breakdowns
Responsible for all coin FX
This shot is one of the most climactic shots in the film, and the director wanted it to be a "wow!" moment. The coin waterfall needed to feel fluid and and natural, mimicing the shape of a real waterfall, while also not overshadowing the main characters. It was a challenge to achieve specific shapes with the effects while also managing the sheer amount of coins in the scene. I opted to use a Houdini rigid body dynamics sim with custom sources and colliders to get the desired shapes, and leveraged USD instancing to work with the coins.
Responsible for all coin FX
The director wanted this to be a big shot, with dramatic splashes, tons of coins, and a huge wave that rolled towards and over the camera, swallowing everything in the shot and providing a transition to the next one. This vision made this shot uniquely difficult. The sheer amount of coins in the scene made it difficult to control the shape and movement of the effect. In order to get the specific shapes that I wanted, I opted to use layers of Houdini FLIPfluid simulations to imitate the splashing and collapsing of the coin pile and the rolling wave of coins coming towards the camera, and used a Houdini POPS simulation to create the splash of coins covering the camera. The layered approach gave me more control over the movement of the coins, and I was able to add more layers and layers of coins with the extra time that I had to make it look even more dramatic. This shot was a unique challenge, and a fun one to solve!
Responsible for snow FX
To get the right blustery snow feel, I attached custom snowflake geometry to a Houdini POPS simulation set up with animated sources and multiple levels of wind forces. I used VEX to make the normal vectors of the particles spin, rather than just point in a single direction, so that the silhouettes of the individual snowflakes would change throughout the shot and they wouldn't all look the same. I shaded the snowflakes in Houdini Solaris and gave them a refractive glass material so that they'd sparkle as they spun and hit the light. Finally, since there were multiple shots in this outdoor set, I packaged the snow flurry setup into a Houdini Digital Asset and integrated it into our film's pipeline so that other FX artists could use it in their shots.
Responsible for snow FX
I used my previously mentioned snow flurry Houdini Digital Asset, which used a Houdini POPS simulation, to create the snow in this shot.
Responsible for dust FX
The director wanted this dust to be subtle, but still visible, while giving the skeleton an abandoned dungeon "Indian Jones" feel. Using a Houdini Pyro simulation,I played around with the shape and timing of the dust until I got the right "spewing" feel. I shaded the dust in Houdini Solaris.
Responsible for dust and snow FX
This was another shot where the shaping of the FX needed to be very specific in order to respond to the character's acting. Since the main character pulls back his hand, I wanted the dust to reach out towards him so that he had something to react to. I still wanted it to feel like natural dust though, so I used forces and turbulence within a Houdini Pyro simulation to push the dust towards the character, and then animated drag and gravity forces to pull the dust down and make its motion feel realistic. I shaded the dust in Houdini Solaris. I also used my snow flurry Houdini Digital Asset to create the snow FX.
Responsible for debris FX
This shot taught me the importance of creating FX relative to the camera, and that there are ways to fake an effect when necessary. This was one of my first assigned shots, and having never worked on a film before, I started trying to set up a complicated RBD simulation between the character's icepick and the stone wall. After meeting with my FX lead, I changed my approach and instead used a Houdini POPs simulation, with the source hidden behind the character's arm, to throw out some debris from the impact of the icepick - making an effect that felt the same as an RBD simulation, but was much faster and art directable. It was a valuable lesson that there are many ways to achieve the same effect!
Responsible for dust FX
I created the dust FX using a Houdini Pyro simulation, and shaded it in Houdini Solaris.
Responsible for coin FX
While not as dramatic as the coin waterfall or coin wave, this shot gave me more practice in Houdini RBD simulations. The trickiest part of this shot was again learning how to manage a massive amount of data. I ended up blending my RBD simulation, which only included the coins around the character's hand, with a static pile of coins behind him to reduce simulation time and cache size. I again leveraged USD instancing to work with the coins, and utilized VEX to control the amount of each variant of coins and jewels that I instanced into the pile.
Responsible for coin FX
Similar to the previous shot, I blended a Houdini RBD simulation with a static pile of coins to reduce overall simulation time and cache size. Using the same method as the last shot, I used VEX to control the amount of each variant of coins and jewels that I instanced into the coin pile, making it easy to adjust based on directornotes.