Magnum Opus
HOUDINI · Unreal Engine · Maya
Magnum Opus is an animated short film created as a group project during the second year of my studies. I was responsible for the rigging, retopology, FX, grooming, and rendering.
The film follows an artist trapped in a cycle of obsession as she attempts to escape both her mental and physical prison. Blending gothic horror and dark fantasy, Magnum Opus explores the thin line between artistic creation and self-destruction.
This was the first large-scale group project I worked on during my studies. We were assigned to teams of three and tasked with developing an original concept, creating a storyboard, and producing an animatic. In the following semester, we brought the project to life using the tools and techniques we had learned throughout the program.
Our initial plan was to animate and render the film in Maya. However, during production we decided that Unreal Engine would be a better fit, so we transitioned the entire pipeline. While this significantly improved our rendering workflow, it also introduced new technical challenges. The grooming system I had created in Houdini was not compatible with Unreal Engine at the time, so I developed a workaround by converting the hair curves into geometry that could be imported into Unreal.
One of my main technical responsibilities was creating the effect of the artist merging with the painting. This sequence was built in Houdini and combines several procedural effects, including animated canvas ripples, particle simulations, and a growth simulation. In Unreal Engine, I developed a custom material that samples the colors of the painting and generates a wave-like texture, allowing the effect to blend naturally with the canvas and reinforce the transformation.
