My Portfolio

The physically not at all accurate ferrofluid

Made using Blender

Focusses on procedural displacement

Ferrofluid is something really fascinating. It is a suspension of tiny magnetic particles in a liquid. So it reacts in presence of a magnetic field. For this animation, it is assumed that a magnet is under the table.

The main thing I wanted to do is to replicate the ferrofluid's attraction towards a magnet. First, I took a cylinder, scaled it down, and filled the top using grid fill for more geometry.

I need spikes. I used a Voronoi texture with zero randomness to get the circles with fall off. Then I made an empty to control where the spikes are to be shown. So I multiplied the circles with a spherical gradient having object coordinates of the empty.

This is plugged into a displacement node and fed to the material displacement. This only works in cycles and in displacement settings of the material, displacement should be chosen as 'displacement only' only or 'displacement and bump'. I chose displacement only. For the surface, I have a principled BSDF for a metallic look. After tweaking the textures for the required shape, this is the result.

This is the final node setup I decided on.

This material is completely procedural and can basically be applied to any object.

To animate the motion of the ferrofluid, I applied an object constraint to the empty to follow the path of a bezier circle. I deformed the circle into the shape I want and added keyframes for the offset factor to have a perfect loop.

Then I modeled a petri dish with glass material and set up a scene with a marble table with some depth of field.

After a while, it felt lifeless and static. So I added some camera shake and made a few small modifications. This is the result.

Made using blender

Focusses on texturing, geometry nodes, rigid body dynamics

I guess you develop a certain eye for details once you start trying to texture anything. This is something I wanted to make after eating a raspberry popsicle. The modeling in this one is quite simple. I made sure to maintain quite a bit of geometry throughout which is something I never do. Following a few reference images, I made the ice, popsicle stick, and ceramic plate. The popsicle stick material has a tiny procedural wood texture and the ice I ended up changing a lot.

To add more visual interest I decided to add some raspberries to the scene. For the raspberry, I subdivided a cube and made an indent at the top. Instanced the small druplets on it with geometry nodes. I decided on node setup.

Now, for a natural position, I technically dropped the raspberries onto the plate. I made the plate and popsicle a passive rigid body and the raspberries active. When I was satisfied with the position I baked the simulation into keyframes and deleted unwanted ones. I decided to add a few under the popsicles as well.

It still felt a bit empty so I added a few leaves. Not to waste much time on them, I downloaded an image with an alpha channel and slapped it on a plane. The main challenge for me was the ice material. I tried a bunch of different node setups. Nothing was good enough though. Finally, I figured the volume absorption node is the key. It makes perfect sense too. The denser it is, the darker it should be.

(without volume absorption)

(with volume absorption)

I finished with some lighting changes and a vignette in compositing.

Detours can lead a long way.

Made using blender

focusses on displacement modifier, texturing

This project was not intentional. I was trying to replicate a frame from the Loki trailer which has a deformed rock in space. (nothing else is known about it as of now)

As I was messing around to get the exact shape, I changed the noise basis of the displacement texture to cell noise. I thought it was so cool and hence came this! It is a torus with a displacement modifier with this texture.

The size and contrast are keyframed for the morphing look I wanted for the animation. Then came the material. An antique metallic artifact look I thought would be cool. I don't know why now there is lava coming out of it though!

I experimented with different focal lengths and then added a gradient background and lens distortion in compositing and took some sweet renders. Here are some of them.

Whosoever holds this hammer, if he be worthy, shall possess the power of Thor.

Made using blender 2.92

Focuses on modeling, texturing

For this project, I downloaded a bunch of reference images first and modeled the basic head shape of the Mjolnir with correct proportions. A fairly simple thing. But I wanted the handle to have procedural material that I can change as I wish. It would've been easy to probably use a screw modifier with boolean, but I buy my own complications so procedural it is. Not gonna lie, I am pretty proud of the result.

After the handle, I moved to the runes and inscriptions on the head. In a sneaky way, I searched for black and white images of the runes and used them to drive the normal. For other simple indentations, I used booleans. With a metallic material, the head was complete.

Then I moved to the strap. That is just a curve extruded with a leather-like material. I then set up a basic scene. The ground is a plane with Displace modifier and stones scattered on it through a particle system. I developed a reluctance towards PBR textures lately. I want everything to be procedural with full control. but I was not happy with the stone material I made. So I finally just used a PBR texture for them. In the compositing tab, I made a sky gradient. Depth of field will make anything look realistic!