Dr. Strange VFX Recreation: A Fresh Start

Long time no see! As promised, I’m back this semester with another Houdini VFX study—though this time it’s extra special since this will be my senior capstone project. That being said, I’m sure you can understand why choosing what exactly I wanted to do for this project proved very difficult. I’ve done a fair amount of experimenting with what Houdini has to offer, but even so I’ve barely scratched the surface of all it can do. Amongst all the possibilities, a few simulations did stick in my mind: revisiting magic particle simulations, continuing my exploration of pyro simulations (though more so through smoke), and rigid body dynamics.

So, off I went to hunt for a suitable professional-quality shot to recreate, hoping to tackle my desired types of FX through it. As I looked through countless movie clips, I found myself drawn back to the Marvel movies, which I’m sure is no surprise if you’ve seen my portfolio. Marvel’s VFX remain one of my biggest inspirations, I’ve always been very impressed by their ability to create powerful and energetic supernatural effects along with hyper realistic real-life effect recreations.

The Scarlet Witch is of course, still my favorite Marvel superhero and has my favorite VFX by far, but a close second has to be Dr. Strange. The realm of Dr. Strange opens up many new possibilities when it comes to potential FX, namely due to his connection to time magic and his ability to manipulate reality. This piqued my interest as I was looking through clips, leading me to end up selecting a shot from the newest Dr. Strange movie.

The shot that I chose is from the 2022 film Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, depicting a moment from early in the movie when Dr. Strange uses his magic to displace some cobblestones on a roof in order to create a makeshift grave for himself from a different reality. After placing the body in the newly created pit, he then magically shifts the stones back into place so that it looks like they were never touched.

After selecting my shot, I went about the usual process of creating an FX breakdown to really study the shot and figure out what individual elements I needed to create to achieve the final piece.

Although it was very tough to narrow down, I’m happy with the shot that I settled on and am excited to start delving into Houdini again! I think that this shot will be a great opportunity for me to combine the knowledge I’ve gathered so far about Houdini VFX simulations, while still challenging me to learn new things since it undoubtedly contains effects that I’ve never executed before.

I also am hoping to continue to improve on my compositing skills, especially since I had a real trial by fire last semester in learning a whole lot more about Nuke thanks to the shot from The Nevers I worked on along with the Black Adam shot I worked on for a group project. Though I will be creating this shot entirely within Houdini instead of using real-life footage, I still believe the techniques I learned are transferrable in any shot, and should hopefully help me to make the quality of my final piece even higher.

I’ll see you next week once I actually open up Houdini and start getting to the nitty gritty of this new project!