BREAKDOWN: 1. Magic Skittles - Began with simulating skittles with rigid bodies, and cached out the results that worked best. Then solved for the impact puffs of smoke using a Pyro Solver, and saved that result to disk as well. The popping shape of smoke used animated prims. The sparkles were advected particles. All work was done in Houdini over a 2 week period.  2. Pop-up Trees - Animated the tree popping out of the ground, and the hair was done using Houdini’s hair solver. This piece also served to explore design and style of 2d art in 3d during the early parts of the film Izzy. Completed during 3-4 days. 3. Canopy/Topiary Look Dev - Built a system to populate leaves over arbitrary geometry in order to achieve a balance between detail and realism, and the film’s style. This geometry would be then sent back to Maya/Slim to generate a render- efficient version with normal maps in the shader. Used Houdini, this version done in about a week, but built on work started in March 2009. 4. Shattered TV - This was my mentored final project while part of the Pixar Undergraduate Program. Took original tv geometry, and pre-shattered the wood and glass. Used Houdini’s fracture rigid bodies to get desired timing across the breaking pieces. The outer shell of heavy wood was shattered first, then the lighter plastic in the front, and finally the glass screen. Completed over 4 day period. 5. Hot Chocolate Steam - Personal project, learning to control fluids simulation to achieve steam. Simulation, rendering, and compositing done with Houdini over a 2 day period. 6. Orange Juice - A work-in-progress exploring how to get plausible fluids using Houdini’s SPH fluids solver. 3-4 days of total work so far. 7. Smashed Tumbleweed - Imported the truck and tumbleweed animation from Maya into Houdini, where I shattered the tumbleweed and collided it with the moving semi truck, balancing readability with the destruction necessary for the story point. Completed over a month wh...