To create a lightning strike destruction effect we tackle RBDS, custom fracturing, destruction, POPS, pyro, various simulation tasks, lightning creation, and more (and this is only the Houdini part!), before brining it together in Nuke.
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⏳ 7h 33m
duration of the course
⚙️ Nuke & Houdini
software needed to complete the course
👨 Intermediate
level of difficulty
Course lessons
Lightning Strike Destruction
Fracture Setup
Simulation
Lightning FX
Rays & Debris FX
Render – Redshift
Compositing – Nuke
About the course
Creating the terrain
We will be creating this entire scene in Houdini from scratch, including all the effects, geometry, and compositing.
We will start by first creating a terrain, using the heightfield workflow.
We are going to use multiple cutting techniques to obtain fractured pieces only where we need them.
For the simulation we will create a custom vector that will drive the movement of our pieces.
And then we will create some small rock debris which we add on top of our simulation to add more variation and realism.
Lightning FX and Rays
For the lightning we will create the geometry in various ways. We will use a combination of POP simulations, copy to points techniques, and attribute vops to have complete control over the lightning.
From our fractured pieces we will create some volumetric rays to add on top of the lightning.
Debris Smoke and Dirt
And finally we will use our fractured geometry to create the smoke debris and another layer of particles which will essentially act as dirt.
Render and Compositing
In the rendering section I will go over how we can setup different renders for each layer that also contains AOV’s, to have complete control over each of our elements.
In the Nuke section we will bring everything together to complete the final look. This part will be fairly
straightforward, with the occasional tips and tricks, and some of my favorites nodes that I use on daily basis.