This show was heavily focused on magical FX and energy-based effects, and my work was divided into three main areas.

The first part was shot-based FX production, including daily iterations, art direction, refinement, and adapting the effects to the needs of individual shots.

The second part focused on the look development and design of the dark energy effect—how it should move, react, and behave visually. I also worked on the more technical side of the setup, developing procedural workflows, custom tools, and HDAs that could be shared with the rest of the team and reused consistently across multiple shots.

The third part involved working on hero action sequences where several major FX elements were happening at the same time. Different artists were responsible for individual effects, but the overlapping areas required close collaboration to make sure the interactions worked visually and technically as one coherent result.

This became especially interesting in shots where different types of magical energy collided or interacted with each other. Although my main responsibility was the dark energy side, I also worked on some shots involving the light-energy effects.

The technical work included a combination of particle systems, RBD, pyro, advection, custom solvers, and custom forces to control the motion and behavior of the energy.

Because the show contained a large environment and a high number of FX-heavy shots, consistency across the sequence was very important. Houdini and HDA-based workflows helped maintain that consistency while also making updates easier to propagate across multiple shots.

As the project developed, automation and shot-update workflows became an important part of the task, helping the team manage changes efficiently without rebuilding or manually adjusting every effect from scratch.