Toxic Crystal — Work in Progress
I combine my main disciplines in a one-minute short: FX work, environment creation & lighting, and procedural systems & pipeline building — all done in Houdini using a USD pipeline, rendered in Karma XPU.
All assets are built USD-compliant and structured as components — sourced from Megascans, Evermotion trees, and custom builds. Scattering follows dependency rules: trees are placed first, then surrounding vegetation is automatically distributed around them to avoid overlap.
The toxic, mushroom-like growths around the crystal were built procedurally in Houdini using TOPs — multiple shape variations generated and refined through wedging, with LODs created automatically for different camera distances.
One part of the process I really enjoyed was the storyboard and previz stage. I started with an animated storyboard using only typography.
It let me quickly nail down timing, camera work, and motion before touching any geometry. Highly recommend the technique.