Visual Effects

Simulation and Rendering

Fire and explosion are simulated in Houdini and rendered in Karma.
The entire arch was converted into a single simplified volume for collision.

Environment Collision Proxy

Pyro Explosion Simulation

Fire Source

Smoke

Smoke Compressed

Select Voxels colliding with arch

Compress voxels colliding with arch

Smoke Simulation

Volume Lattice deformer adds the appearance of fire emerging after the blast .Explosion driven by Houdini’s Pyro Solver, with the fire source at the center of the arch.

Reacton to Shockwave

Asset preparation & proxies

Barriers modeled with built‑in proxy versions for RBD simulation.Procedural fence models placed in the scene.

The RBD simulation for the shockwave was created using a sharp gust of wind with a cone-shaped source.

stanchions

Chains

Rigid‐body simulation

Initial barrier pieces were simulated with the RBD solver using soft constraints.Proxy geometry driven by a Point Deform SOP to animate render models.

Chains are simulated and cached per piece via a For‑Each loop and automation nodes.

Camera shake

Camera animation timed to the shockwave’s arrival using CHOP nodes.

Camera Animation

CHOP Animation

Puddles and Ripples

Pavement Block

Puddles Block

Puddles

Puddle areas were defined using plate geometry combined with Boolean operations, while the cobblestones were enhanced with true OpenCL displacement that accurately matched the Megascans texture and noise algorithm from the procedural MaterialX shader.

Puddles and cobblestones were divided into arbitrary blocks, with increased mesh density applied near the camera and along the bike path to emphasize puddle details and surface realism.

Puddles Source Geometry

Puddles Particles

Pavement collision geo

Mask Box Front View

The process began with sequential simulations, starting with wind-driven shockwaves across puddles, followed by the bike skidding over cobblestones.

Ripples

Ripple detail was added by remeshing the first frame of the puddle geometry in regions where secondary ripples would appear. The base puddle simulation was projected onto this high-resolution mesh, a Ripple Solver was applied to generate fine detail, and the resulting ripples were then projected back onto the original puddle simulation, where they were visible.

Puddles before shockwave

Shockwave

Ripples after shockwave

Bike is staring passing by

Bike is passed

Ripples by bike

Ripples Spreading

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