// Personal projects
The break, frame by frame.
A dissolution study: a figure breaks apart into tens of thousands of vellum grains and drifts out of frame. The whole shot lives or dies with the sim — grain size, constraint stiffness and air forces were tuned until the break reads as weight, not as confetti.
Everything downstream of the sim stayed lean: one USD look, a tight AOV set, and a comp that only had to sell depth and grain motion. Built shot-first — the camera move was locked before the first sim was cached.
- Year
- 2025
- Tools
- Houdini · Karma XPU · Nuke · DaVinci
- Disciplines
- FX · Shading · LookDev · Lighting · Compositing
Vellum Disintegration The shot, scrubbed by your scroll
000 / 000
Keep scrolling — the playhead follows you
End of the shot — the breakdown follows below
// Project breakdown
Step by step.
Every stage of the pipeline, one slide each — scroll or use the arrows.
Growth CurvesHoudini
Curve-driven growth masks define where the dissolve starts and how it spreads across the figure.
Vellum FractureHoudini
Constraints stress and tear along the growth curves — the figure breaks apart into vellum grains.
Main ParticlesHoudini
The primary POP sim carries the bulk of the debris — mass, drag and air forces give the break its weight.
Pyro SetUpHoudini
The source and force setup behind the burst — pressure and turbulence shaped to push the fracture outward.
Smoke LayerHoudini
A separate ice-smoke pass adds the cold, dense haze that wraps the disintegration and sells the volume.
