Visual Effects 2: Project 2 - Houdini Pyro (Final Project)

At last - I have finally finished my Houdini FX Pyro fire! For this project, I created the effect of a house catching on fire. I wanted to create the effect of bright red, hot fire with dark, thick smoke billowing from within that fire. These kind of house fires generate enough smoke that it emerges upward for quite a long distance.

To create this effect, I went into Houdini, imported the geometry of the house, and then created 3 emitters (cubes that were placed just on the surface of the roof). Each of these emitters had a "fire" effect placed on it, which contains smoke with it. Each of the fires' containers were scaled up in the y-axis so that the fire and smoke could float up at a higher distance. I adjusted the fires smoke by adding in red and making orange and red dominate most of the fire's color. I also adjusted the smoke's color to create a dark smoke. To create the 3D appearance of the fire, I added in a distance light and adjusted the smoke density so that the smoke would have darker shadows from the the light - giving it more depth. The smoke and fire's dissipation was adjusted respectively to the fire that was being worked on.

In the end, I am happy with the final product. The only issues that I really ran into was realizing how sensitive the fire and smoke are to the dissipation numbers, and the render times took a long time. The flip book took five and a half hours to render out (170 frames), and the fire took six and a half hours to render out (120 frames). This was the most difficult part of the process. Other than that, I now realize how amazing projects can become by using Houdini Pyro and I will be able to make great use of this in future projects!

Below I have attached my final render, along with the flip book of the final render. Thank you and enjoy!