Snow White and the Huntsman - Dark Fairies Scene

Credits: "Universal Pictures"

Dark Fairies scene was done by Double Negative using thousands of rigid bodies and instancing in Houdini. I`m personally using Houdini and Max equally, depending on deadline but in this case I was short with time so I decided to go with Max. Same techniques works well in Houdini as well, but, by my personal opinion, it`s just faster and easier to control all events, rules and rbd grouping in max with TP4. So, I had few groups of rigid bodies controlled by some events and by some rules. First event was: `if impact force is strong enough shards will break a part and will move into new group called fractured
grp.` (blue coloured frags.) 

Meaning, all shards from `pile group` (red frags.) will be divided into two groups if collision is strong enough - `pile grp.` and `fractured grp.`. I also had rule which will send only `fractured grp.`(blue shards) fragments into new event. New event was called `goal` and his job was to form Dark Fairy shape. 

At the end I had few other events/rules controlling how much and when rbd`s will glue together while forming target shape and I also had custom goal null object which will drag rbd`s around. My plan is to work on rest of Dark Fairies full forming scenes once I get some time off. They are much easier then this procedural forming. I also noticed that original effect uses backward cached simulation in few shots. Thanks for watching !

(better quality video)

This procedural simulation is digital asset, meaning it`s fully customisable and adaptable to almost any production pipeline. If you think this could be useful for your studio pipeline, contact me personally.