“Cambrian Explosion” Senior Film 2020 - Volcano

 Lava animation

In my process of simulating large amount of lava for the scene, I realized just how overkill this process was for the purpose of the film. Since this is a stylized toon-shaded film, highly detailed lava simulation will be unnecessary. Therefore I decided to animate the lava geometry.

To fine tone the animated geometry, I made use of blend shapes to adjust how the animated geometry interact with the environment.

Lava Splat

To tackle the lava coming out from the volcano with vertical force, I used nParticles in Maya. It was tedious to find a balance between the threshold value and polygon size value.

Render Layers

Splitting up scene elements into different layers for rendering and compositing.

Out focus and mirage effect

I used NukeX for compositing. The mirage effect is powered by a noise alpha and a ramp.