VFX student Mark Rijs' deep dive into creature simulation

What drew you to studying VFX at BUas? 

Mark: 'I've always been fascinated by films and the creative possibilities they offer. After secondary school, I knew I wanted to work specifically on films with special effects. The course at BUas focuses on visual effects for film and games, which was exactly what I was looking for.' 

Which films or VFX work have inspired you most? 

Mark: 'Primarily the big blockbusters with impressive creature effects and science fiction elements. Films like Avatar and Star Wars really show what's possible with modern VFX. But the work of independent VFX artists like Ghost3Dee has also been enormously inspiring to me.' 

Can you describe the project you've been working on? 

Mark: 'For my year 2 project, I created a creature simulation in Houdini, specifically focused on vellum soft body simulations. The project is called "BOB", named after the creature I created. I really wanted to delve into how you can realistically simulate soft, organic creatures.' 

Can you walk us through the development process? 

Mark: 'I did the entire project from A to Z. First, I tracked the footage with SynthEyes, then rebuilt the corridor geometry in Blender. For the creature itself, I chose a procedural approach, I generated the mesh and UVs in Houdini because I wanted to focus on the simulations and didn't want to spend too much time on manual modelling.' 

'After generating the base mesh, I textured "BOB” in Substance Painter. Then came the real work, the vellum tetrahedral softbody simulations with custom constraint setups. I also applied Houdini's wrinkle deformer to get extra wrinkle details.’ 

'For the finishing touch, I created a viscous FLIP simulation for the slime effect and generated a wetmap for both the creature and the slime. I rendered everything with Karma XPU and finally brought it all together in Nuke for compositing.' 

Tell us more about the final result! 

Mark: "BOB is the first creature I've ever made, and I'm quite proud of how he turned out. He's a soft body creature that moves realistically through the corridor, complete with slime effects and surface details. You can see the final result on my ArtStation.' 

What did you learn from this project? 

Mark: 'I was following Ghost3Dee's creature simulation course on YouTube, which helped me enormously in tackling this project. I learned not only the technical aspects of Houdini simulations, but also how to structure such a complex project and bring it to a successful conclusion.' 

What are your future plans in VFX? 

Mark: 'I'd prefer to work at a smaller studio where I can be more of a generalist rather than specialising in just one area. In smaller studios, you often get the opportunity to work on different aspects of VFX projects, which really appeals to me. I enjoy the variety of working across multiple disciplines rather than focusing solely on one specialisation.' 

Connect with Mark: 

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-rijs/ 
• ArtStation: https://www.artstation.com/markxtp