Dr. Strange Portal FX
The goal of this project was to recreate the effect of the Dr. Strange opening portal. I use a few particle simulations and a few pyro simulations. I did all the modelling and shading of the environment in Houdini.
Creating the main shape of the portal
The key to this effect is the base shape of the portal. It has to have a good weight, and a good feeling. For this, I created a circle and then modified it with some noises and some VOPs to give it a good feeling. Then from this I animated it and scattered it with a mask to emit the particles from where I wanted. I did a few variations to render them separately. With the trail node and the use of the ID of each particle, I could stretch each particle so they are a little line exactly as I wanted.
Adding smoke to the effect
For more reliability, I added three layers of smoke. Two of them are driven by the velocity of the rotation of the portal. I used negative disturbance in one layer to drive the smoke to the center of the portal, creating a vortex effect. Also, I added an ambient smoke that dissipates when the portal opens for further integration with the scene.
