Burning Car
This project was inspired by the burning cars in The Last of Us: Part II. I explored fire simulation using Houdini's Pyro Solver after watching YouTube masterclasses, with plans to try Axiom. For embers, I utilized Niagara, and for puddles, ripples, and screen drops, I followed Ben Cloward's Rain Shader tutorial series. I also created a rain system with Niagara. The car model is from Sketchfab, and the environment is "ABANDONED FACTORY / Industrial railway zone (Update V.2)" by Aleksandr Zhdanov.
Final Render
I made a mask to generate puddles on the landscape, adjusting their size with a control and ensuring they only appeared on flat surfaces. The puddles have parameters to control the puddle color, opacity, and water accumulation.
Puddle shader with cloudy noise for growth and shrinkage, limited to flat areas. I added wind and rain ripples using normal maps and wrapped it into a function for easy adjustment of parameters like wind speed and rain intensity.
In this post-processing shader, the raindrop shader that simulates rain on the camera lens, distorting the background image as the raindrops refract it.
Rain Niagara System Overview
Rain Material Overview