Elemental - Fireshop floodwater FX

Amit Baadkar

Abstract:

In Disney and Pixar's Elemental, I was tasked with developing and executing flood water effects for the fireshop flooding sequence. The effect starts out as water spray emitting from gaps in the door and then grows in intensity as it breaks through the doors and windows with stronger force. This starts to flood the the fireshop and puts the main character Ember, who is made of fire in great peril. The characters eventually end up trapped inside a small reading room with water spouts spraying in from debris blocking the entrance. During the initial stages , we reviewed the storyboards, concept art and the layout staging and decided to group the shots in to 3 sections. The first part involved all shots with the water spouts spraying from the doorway. We created a sequence level effects simulation for the majority of the shots in this group. When the flooding got stronger and more turbulent, we decided to make a multishot Houdini rig to tackle these group of shots. For the water spouts in the reading room, we created sequence level effects simulation similiar to the door spray water. While crafting the effect we made sure to make the flooding feel progressively more and more turbulent and dangerous during the first 2 sections. During this time, we also identified dependencies with character/set animation and other effects like floating props and destruction effects.

Paper (PDF)

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