PB10VFX - Portal Project Blog Week 1

Concept Art Made with Open Ai

SANM 560 Project "Max Commercial"

In my SANM 560 class we need a more immersive portal to use for the transition at 00:00:14:00 since the current one feels a little too cheap and flat. The idea with using a sim is to created a more organic and immersive portal that interacts with the foreground to have a more embedded look. With permission received from both professors I will be using this portal for both SANM 560 and VFX 428 to allow myself more time but also to work more efficiently.

Reference

For this reference I really liked the way the portal started by using a velocity paths to swirl that the smoke instead of just opening a circle. This would be behind the light paths to add more depth.

(0:52-0:59) I found a great example of how I want the "light paths" to look. Although it would be more of a comp effect, I still need a smoke sim to drive the animations of the paths

(2:49-3:25) The use of particles and the follow path constraint is what I am really looking at. The way it has very organic feel and flows so lightly would achieve the look I'm going for.

(0:57-1:00) This is another example of the light paths but the colors will be more diverse and random

(0:00-0:05) The start of the portal is a little too flat for the effect but when we go inside the portal I like the way we see all the little particles and lights trails stretch.

Overall plan

The effect begins with a smoke sim that rises from the ground and spirals into a ring shape. To achieve this, I plan to use a custom velocity field that guides the smoke along a helical path, giving it that magical, upward-twisting motion. I'll likely create the velocity using a combination of curves and VDB velocity volumes, possibly with some VEX or VOPs to fine-tune the flow.

Once the smoke forms the ring, the portal activates, and a burst of particles emerges. These particles will stretch toward the camera with a very organic, fluid motion. I'll drive this with a pop simulation, layering noise-driven forces and maybe some curl noise for turbulence. To push the magical feel, I’ll assign varied colors using age or velocity attributes and render with motion blur or trails to enhance their stretch.

Compositing and rendering will play a big role—I'll use emissive shaders for the particles and soft volume rendering for the smoke. This should create a nice contrast between the misty portal entrance and the vivid energy reaching out. But separating these into AOVs will give me a chance to comp a more transparent and galaxy look.

5/9/25

For the past few days I have been working on getting my swirl sim working and cleaner. Originally I was using a tube with animated displacement with velocity vectors to control the particles but this technique was too cumbersome and resulted in a stiffer particle sim. Luckily a better solution was simplifying the technique and using a curve with a POP curve force. This gave a much more organic and smoother animation of the swirl portal.

SWITCH LIGHT AI

Here I have been testing out AI relighting with Beeble. The software is able to quickly put out all the needed passes to relight like diffuse, normal, specular, roughness, depth, and ambient occlusion. Although the results are not perfect they still provide a very functional use for my project so I can add more lighting interaction with the FG plate