World Destroyer - Houdini and Redshift

Detailed breakdown : https://www.arctiem.com/worlddestroyer
The scene was worked over five months, going through countless iterations, mainly over the fracturing and texturing of the RBD simulations happening on the ground as well as a fair bit of look dev to achieve the dystopian / end of the world look I had imagined at the start of the project.
This piece was worked on in SideFX Software Houdini, rendered in Maxon Redshift, and composited in Nuke. Responsible for all aspects except building models (sketch fab / kitbash)
Created as part of Dynamic Effects 4 at Gnomon School of Visual Effects

Socials :
Portfolio: https://www.arctiem.com
email: rahul18gpt@gmail.com
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rahul-gupta-595073179/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/arctiem/

This FX piece was essentially a tribute to my childhood. I referenced some of my favorite comic books and movies that I used to read/watch as a child.

Process
I started by referencing The Man of Steel, taking inspiration from the countless heat vision scenes and scenes of dystopia/destruction from The Last of Us to lay out and imagine the city where this destruction would occur.

I rendered 13 AOVs inside Redshift to have complete control over the lighting and look without having to go into Houdini and render all the frames again. I then spent a week compositing the AOVs to reconstruct my beauty render.

Ground Fracture Setup and VEX

Edge Glow Procedural Material Setup