Ashraf Ghoniem Reel Breakdown

Ashraf Ghoniem Reel Breakdown

Shot 1

Intro Animation

Gears animated and rendered within Houdini procedurally then composited together with Shake.

Shot 2

Cloth simulation for The Polar Express

I was responsible for simulating the cloth of the main character Chris. In this shot I had to use a Volume Axis field to give the cloth an appearance of being blown by the high speed wind that would take place when he is on top of the train and being swung around.

Shot 3

Cloth simulation for The Polar Express (at half speed)

Shot 4

Tornado debris for The Day After Tomorrow

I was responsible for the small particulate matter picked up by the tornado and flung around (not the volumetric tornado itself). This system used meatballs upon the tornado spline as force objects to animate the particles. The debris itself was instanced geometry. The i3d files of the volumetric tornado were then read into Houdini and used as a holdout so that the debris would appear to be traveling behind and in front of the tornado.

Shot 5

Tornado debris for The Day After Tomorrow

Refer above.

Shot 6

Tornado debris for The Day After Tomorrow

Refer above.

Shot 7

CG Hair for Constantine

I used Maya Fur, MayaMan, And a Custom PRMAN shader to create the cg hair.

Shot 8

CG Hair for Constantine

Refer above

Shot 9

CG Hair for Constantine

Refer above

Shot 10

CG Hair for Constantine

Refer above

Shot 11

CG Smoke for Constantine

I created this smoke using Maya Particles, birthed of splines that were tracked to represent the characters face.

Shot 12

CG Eyelashes for Constantine

I created these eyelashes using Maya and Shave and a Haircut rendered through PRMAN.

Shot 13 (student work)

Vex Displacement Shader

I wrote this shader to have the appearance of water. This shader has controls for ripples, waves, noise and wiggle, all of which are animateable. The waves and wiggle can be moved through S and T so that one can control where these displacements happen.

Shot 14

Softbody System for Toyota Spot

I created a system within Houdini for putting road lines with softbody dynamics on them to create the appearance of a tail, for any input of animated points.

Shot 15

CG Eyelashes for Constantine

Refer above

Shot 16

Particles and Shader for Toyota Spot

I created the VOPS (Houdini’s built in shader networking tool) shader used for the smoky effect in this shot and most of the particle animation for the elements. I also created custom tunnels that had different textures of various star fields on them for the compositor to mix into the shot.

Shot 17

Refer above

Shot 18

Tornado debris for The Day After Tomorrow

Refer above

Shot 19

Tornado debris for The Day After Tomorrow

What was different about this shot is that I had two tornadoes to deal with. To make it look convincing I had to have my particles pulled from one to the other and look like they are interacting with both.

Shot 20 - 23

Tornado debris for The Day After Tomorrow

These shots were difficult because the client wanted the debris to look like real trash since they were actually in mid to close range. The debris also had to appear to be bouncing off the freeway and off of cars. Since the plate, including the cars, was all live action, we had to develop a system to make the debris look like they were interacting with the live action. We created a shader in which each color channel represented a different car, and one channel represented the road. This shader used the UV’s from camera and mapped the different roto shapes onto the individual cards. These cards were parented on top of the recon geometry representing the cars in 3d space, thus allowing us to use the rotos as 3d holdouts within the scene.

Another thing that I developed for these shots was a system I dubbed “trash compacter”. This system took models from a library and then ran them through a series of deformations to give them the appearance of trash. It also randomly applied textures to the geometry to recreate the color of trash. All of this was completed within Houdini.