Breached
Personal project
Year
2025
Breached is a cinematic VFX teaser created during my second year at Gnomon. Starting with music, I built a sequence around rhythm, tension, and atmosphere, combining dynamic cameras with environment work, cloth, fire, smoke, water, and destruction.
01 Music & cinematic direction
For this project, I took a slightly different approach. Before diving into references or shot planning, I started by searching for the right soundtrack. Music plays a huge role in how I visualize scenes—once I find a track that hits the right emotional tone and pacing, the visuals begin to form naturally in my mind. The soundtrack helped me shape the rhythm, tension, and overall atmosphere of the teaser, allowing the shots to evolve in sync with the beats and mood of the audio. This method kept the narrative tight and emotionally grounded from the very start.
02 Environment assembly
Due to tight scheduling with classes, I didn’t have time to model every asset from scratch. Instead, I relied heavily on kitbash kits and free models from Sketchfab to quickly build the environment. This allowed me to focus my efforts on crafting dynamic camera moves and combining various VFX elements to create impactful visuals within the limited time frame.
03 Previs, rendering & VFX
I used a variety of software to cover as many technical aspects as possible. I began by previz-ing all the shots in Maya to nail down the sequence and pacing. Once satisfied, I started building the environments—most shots were created and rendered in Maya using V-Ray, while the opening Earth shot was done in Houdini. Throughout the project, I integrated a wide range of VFX elements, including cloth simulation, smoke and fire, water simulation, and RBD destruction, aiming to showcase a broad technical skill set within the short timeframe.
04 Fire, smoke & compositing
Fire and smoke simulations, including the building explosion, were created using Embergen, while I used Flip Fluids for the liquid simulations. I composited all shots in After Effects and Nuke, then brought the sequence into DaVinci Resolve for final editing, color grading, and sound design. Overall, this project was an incredibly rewarding experience that allowed me to explore new technical skills and gave me my first hands-on experience with VFX. It also boosted my confidence and inspired me to dive deeper into Houdini for more advanced effects in future projects.
05 Simulation integration
Embergen made my workflow much faster, allowing me to quickly iterate and push the simulations to achieve the desired effects. While it’s easy to create standalone effects, integrating them seamlessly into a larger environment—where they interact with various elements—requires a solid understanding of the technical pipeline. This project helped me deepen that knowledge, learning how to bring different components together cohesively for a believable final result.
Production tools
Maya · V-Ray · Houdini · EmberGen · Flip Fluids · After Effects · Nuke · DaVinci Resolve
Asset sources: kitbash kits and free models from Sketchfab.