Duration

October 2022 - January 2023

Role

VFX artist

Tools

• Unreal (Niagara, Blueprints, Material Editor)

• Houdini

Highlights

• Created 3 main effects for the show:

  • “Exploding” moon

  • Kinetic sculpture - configurable Niagara system for multiple rotating objects forming complex structures and movement patterns

  • Intro room shatter and warp tunnel sequence

• Two versions, one with heavy optimization for mobile VR and another much higher fidelity for live stream

About

This was Wave’s first VR show since the last VR show pre-pandemic. Everything about this show was completely new, including a brand new multiplayer platform built from the ground up in Unreal engine (previously Wave was Unity based)

As a freelancer/consultant, I brought my years of experience working at Wave designing and building VR and interactive live stream concerts to create some fun and notable visual effects moments throughout the show, working closely the art director at Wave.

The effects had to run in mobile VR (an incredibly constrained system, basically rendering twice on mobile hardware + constrained by not being able to use many common post effects like bloom) and also had to look good in a version for the live stream, which was running on a powerful desktop computer at Wave’s broadcast studio.