Rain & Elastic Cord Effect
Initially, I assumed this would be a quick and straightforward project, but I encountered several challenging obstacles that required creative solutions to ensure everything worked seamlessly together.
For the elastic tightening, I used Vellum with curves and hair constraints. To prevent the curves from shifting, penetrating, or jittering, I added glue constraints to secure them to the cloth. Animating the rest length of the hair curves delivered the exact look I was aiming for.
To create the rain effect, I researched efficient methods in Houdini and discovered two excellent resources: a tutorial from CG Forge by Tyler Bay and another from Nine Between by Moeen Sayed. By blending their approaches, I achieved the desired result. The rain effect comprises four layers of detail:
The first layer is the downpour, created with a simple POP particle effect.
The second layer is the collision splash, using POP Replicate.
The third layer features rolling water on the surface, also using POP Replicate but with added constraints.
The fourth layer is the wetmap, generated in a solver.
This project also served as fan art inspired by the Salomon S/LAB ULTRA jacket. As a huge fan of the brand, I enjoyed bringing this concept to life.
