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Qiwei Zhang
Art Creation
Procedural Hyper Modular Vehicle and FX Systems
My thesis artifact demonstrates a procedural hyper-modular , destructed spaceship and interactive FX ( special effects ) system , which has over 100 variants that could be customized in Unreal Engine at runtime . The artifact shows the destruction of module pieces and the inner structure . There is a laser attack on the spaceship , the shield dissolves dynamically , and the impact with explosion effects process seamlessly in real time .
I chose this mastery because I wanted to learn the workflow for cinematic effect systems and procedural content creation . In this project , I focused on designing the different modular parts of the spaceship with organic hard surface shapes , as well as separating different connectors for
various functional parts , such as those that connect to the wings , weapons , and engines . I ’ ve tested Houdini and Blueprint instance mesh methods and established the pipeline to align those meshes and randomly swap them out .
I researched the alignment functions and RBD ( Rigid Body Dynamics ) simulation in Houdini , rebuilt the workflow with Zbrush dynamic simulation for static destruction parts , and established the workflow to bake the explosion smoke textures from Houdini to Unreal . To better show dynamic materials and cinematic effects , I also researched how to customize the user interface and blueprint to transform and update positioning , as well as how to impact normal attributes and keep them updated in Niagara systems .
24 ART CREATION