In the fall of 2023, I participated in an intensive three-month simulation course at The Animation Workshop, VIA University College, with a primary focus on learning Houdini and simulating a chosen natural phenomenon.

My idea involved creating a concrete colossus—a ruined creature resembling a man-made brutalist structure from the post-Soviet era, animated through procedurally generated effects.

The initial concept provided a large degree of creative freedom and space for exploration, while the limited timeframe helped me make decisive choices and focus on the most essential elements of the project.

The technical development included:

• Procedural geometry generation
• Rigging with KineFX
• Particle effects
• Rigid-body simulation
• Smoke simulation
• Environment setup and rendering in Unreal Engine

At first I was working with simple geometry and tried to find the shape of my creature considering the most interesting possibilities of motion.

To achieve this objective I implemented a procedural system based on premade building blocks to generate different variations.

Finding the perfect number of legs was quite a challenge but in the end I stayed with the two-legged human shaped creature as it was the most capable of dynamic and interesting motions.
I used an animation from Mixamo, extracted the skeleton and combined it with my existing procedural system.

I set up the environment for rendering in Unreal Engine 5.3 and created tertiary effects based on the main animation in Houdini. For importing particle systems, debris and sparks, I used the Houdini Niagara plugin. To bring my pyro sim into Unreal I utilized UE 5.3’s new VDB support.