Exploding Balloon (Flippy)

This project was created for my Compositing 3 exam, where the goal was to seamlessly integrate a CGI element into a live-action plate. I filmed the footage myself together with my friend (Maxim Poma), and challenged myself to create a realistic simulation of a balloon being dragged across the scene, popping, and transforming into slime.

One of the biggest challenges of this project was that it was my first time working with Maya. Learning the rendering workflow, AOVs, and render layers from scratch required a significant amount of experimentation. The most difficult aspect was figuring out how to properly separate CGI elements into render layers while maintaining their contribution to reflections, which is a topic with very limited documentation available online.

The balloon and slime simulations were created in Houdini, while the final integration and compositing were completed in Davinci Fusion. This project pushed me to develop both my technical and artistic skills, and taught me a great deal about simulation, rendering, and compositing workflows.

While there are still aspects I would improve today, I am proud of what I achieved at the time. Looking back, this project marks an important milestone in my journey as a VFX artist, and I hope to revisit it in the future to further refine or completely rebuild certain parts with the experience I have gained since then.