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"The Dragon's Breath"


Scratch

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Hey Folks!

I'm very happy that I can finally present to you my latest Houdini Demoreel-Project: "The Dragon's Breath" including some (hopefully) interesting FX- and Compositing Breakdowns. Enjoy! :)

THE DRAGON's BREATH

"Somewhere, in a dark, enchanted forest, lives a ancient Dragon which is feared by all men for his deadly, roaring..."dragon's breath"

http://www.scratch-a...et/demoreel.php

I've furthermore put together a detailed project making-of including more detailed Breakdowns, the Previsualisation, the FX-Prototype and a Dragon Model-Turntable for those of you who want to get even more insight in the process of creating this vfx-shot. http://www.scratch-a...f_082013_EN.pdf

Some more Still Images: http://www.scratch-a...t/portfolio.php (first entry in the list)

Cheers from Austria!

Philipp Kratzer

http://www.scratch-arts.net

post-7428-0-16075700-1376669663_thumb.jp

post-7428-0-82511200-1376669689_thumb.jp

post-7428-0-62267000-1376669716_thumb.jp

Edited by Scratch
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Very cool. The only thing that catches my eye is the way the flames fade away. Looks like it's standing still and everything fades away simultaneously.

Me too... I think that´s because he is sourcing the fuel from the particles. One workaround I think should work, would be sourcing vel from the particles and feeding that to the simulation...

But the project is very cool. Did u made the dragon´s animation in houdini too?

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Hey guys,

Thanks for your comments, glad you like it! :)

It's right that the pyro sim behaves a little strange when it fades away like this. There are (as allways when you finish a project like this) lots of things I would change or approach differently now. Nevertheless thanks for pointing it out, I will certainly try to fix that for my next projects.

Rigging and Animation of the Dragon was done by Patrick Zeymer (Animator based in Vienna/Austria) using Maya, and exported as obj-Sequence which I imported back to Houdini.

Here are some more facts about the project, the team, and pipeline:

Team & Responsibilities of the Project:

Philipp Kratzer: Idea, Direction, Production- and Pipeline Management, Set Dressing, Effects, Shading, Lighting, Rendering, Compositing & Editing

Phil Amelung: Dragon and Environment Sculpting, Dragon Texturing, Previsualisation and Camera Layout, Art Direction

Patrick Zeymer: Dragon Rigging & Animation, Creative Advisor

Dominik van Reich: Sound-Design

Special Thanks to: CAD-Network GmbH for sponsoring some incredible Renderpower and Filipp Elizarov as Technical- and Creative-Advisor

Pipeline&Tools:

Main Tool: Houdini

Modeling/Sculpting/Texturing: ZBrush (Polypaint), 3D-Coat, Modo, Photoshop

Rigging/Animation: Maya

FX: Houdini

Shading/Rendering: Mantra PBR (Physical Based Rendering)

Renderfarm: CAD-Network remote controlled 4x8core 2,4GHz Xeon-Renderblade

Image Editing: Photoshop

Compositing: Nuke

Edit (Reel): AfterEffects

Project Facts:

Production: November 2012 - May 2013, 7 Month (total), 5 Monate (production time)

Rendering: June-July 2013, 2 Month, 1 Month (total sum of real rendertime) on a 4x8core Xeon 2,4GHz remote controlled renderblade sponsored by CAD-Network GmbH

Rendertime: ca. 5min - 45min per frame/pass on the blade, 10min - 2h on my i7 3930k 6core 3,2GHz)

RAM-usage: 9-24GB

Total-Diskspace-usage: 2TB (becaues of the FX- and animation-caches)

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wonderful project! Regarding the reel itself, the sounds effects are ok for the first video, but I would just play some music for the breakdown, because it gets rather annoying after the second or third part.

Edited by Netvudu
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Thanks Scratch, inspiring as always.

I showed it to a coworker who commented on the wing textures, that they seemed a little low res. For me the veins seem a might too large for such a big surface area, or that there's not enough visible scale to the vein widths (if that makes sense). Or maybe they seem a little too painterly, like as they were drawn instead of grown. like this: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:A_bat_wing_%282863151252%29.jpg

Not that dragon wings have to look like bat wings, but that's the only suggestion I can find at the moment.

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Thanks Kleer! Very cool reference image!

The Dragon was sculpted and texture-painted by Phil Amelung, so it was a bit out of my hands, but that doesn't excuse it of course. You are right!

I especially learned that I have to be carefull about such details....it's what makes the difference.

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