Directed by Zhang Yimou
This film was a unique opportunity to enhance the action by adding a procedural workflow to add flying ( sometimes breaking, sometimes sticking ) arrows to a sequence of shots.
A system in houdini was built to emit on the fly rigidbody dynamics with constraints based on flying arrows from archers. The arrows were also proceudrally animated in a loop to give the frenetic energy arrows given when launched from bowes and to flex, spin, and otherwise fly into the air and collide with the environment.
The system catered to directly rendering in the Mantra renderer with deformation motion blur as well as with motionvectors where needed for compositors to dial up or down the amount shot to shot. This also included separate set of passes for shadows and reflections onto the environment.
I delivered all of the work for the arrows myself as well as was responsible for adding additional water elements where needed by the VFX Supervisor.