A personal project in which I studied animating using MetaHuman Animator for motion capture, Layered Control Rigs, and a custom animation blueprint. Along with various Niagara particle and material effects.
The teardrop effect is achieved by modifying the normals, roughness and specular of the skin material, using textures baked from a 3d geometry in Houdini
Houdini Asset
Height Map
Normal Map
Result
Mocap using the Metahuman Animator plugin
Character animation is a combination of layered control rigs with keyframe animation on top of motion capture data and animation sequences.
All baked into a single animation sequence for a more reliable render
Modified Animation Blueprint to adjust at which bone does body animation end and head animation begins
Blend Weight animated for demonstration. Weight 1.0 means the neck derives its animation from the face animation, whereas 0.0 takes from the body animation
Smoke
Sparks
Error Wall
Niagara Particle systems
Modifying World Position Offset gives the impression of thickness to the skin as it burns
