∘ All Aspects
∘ SideFX Houdini
∘ Adobe Substance Designer
∘ Renderman
∘ Sea of Sand was my Undergraduate Capstone at Texas A&M
∘ Inspired by the Surrealism Movement, "Sea of Sand" aims to juxtapose ocean and desert
∘ Using various workflows within Houdini, this project relied heavily on custom system within Houdini to procedurally model, generate, simulate, and scatter the various layers within the final product.
∘ Sea of Sand was a project focused on exploring the link between Procedural Instancing system to enhance Look Development
∘ Professor: Caleb Kicklighter
∘ Mentors: Megan Walker ∘ Dave Walvoord ∘ Jon Gutman
∘ Pixar Animation: Piper
∘ Approach focusing on blending multiple workflows to achieve various sand
∘ Primary GEO and high poly displacement exported from Houdini using Dune Tool to base layout
∘ Scattered, Simulated, and Deformed point system to blend between the various caches
∘ Sand Look Development is balanced between instancing and shader development
∘ Layering various 3D noises within Houdini allows for increased displacement and Volume based instancing
∘ The final Look is composed of three layers: the Base, a fine Dust, and large scale Hero GEO
∘ The Shader utilizes a Pixar Layered Surface to blend between a Diffuse and Glass shader for increased specular glints
∘ Utilizing a attributes from Houdini as a mask, with the final result allowing 3/5 particles for diffuse, 1/5 for glass, and 1/5 to blend [which mirrors a pseudo-subsurface]
∘ The Shader's softness is heavily due to distance between instanced points in order to soften cast shadow and increase internal light bounces
∘ Dune tool utilizes an input curve [outline of Dune crests] and a Apex location [location of Height] in order to output a Dune GEO
∘ Polar Coordinate Deforming system [designed to be used with or separately from Dune Tool] used to achieve iconic wave curl shape
∘ Scattering on Points dressed to camera using LOD's for increased optimization and detail within the final scene
∘ The primary reference was generated through the use of Midjourney [an AI art genorator]
***AI utilized for concept based on user input reference images***
high quality renders, supplementary images, and miscellaneous
