Karma & Jonar

Karma & Jonar is an animated series rendered in Unreal Engine. Its effects carry whole scenes: a burning village, water that reacts to what moves through it, a waterfall, cliffs and a bridge that give way, and in the final episode a sky that catches fire. All of it had to be built and finished inside the engine.

• The final frames come out of Unreal Engine, so every effect is judged in the engine.
• Shots arrive with their cameras, environments and character animation already in the Unreal sequence.
• Effects have to react to what is in the shot: characters in the water, objects through the waterfall.
• Eight episodes, with an FX and tech team of six.

Fire and smoke. A fire setup in Niagara with its own material, so we could tune a fire while watching the shot. For the burning village, Niagara samples fire particles from the static meshes themselves, so any building can burn. A Blueprint tool emits smoke along a spline.

Water. A water simulation that previews in real time and reacts to characters, and a waterfall that responds to collision actors as they pass through it.

The sky blast. The climax of the final episode: an arrow tears through the clouds and the sky seems to burn. I built it with the art director, Kevin Broberg, from his concept: dynamic volume clouds and debris in Unreal, and his abstract flame shader.

Destruction. A bridge between Houdini and Unreal. The shot's Unreal camera sequence, with its environment and character animation, comes into Houdini, the fracture is simulated against it, and the result goes back to the engine. We used it for a crumbling cliff and a collapsing bridge.

Ambient. Volumetric fog, rolling fog and falling leaves in Niagara.

As lead I also took some shots from start to finish, and reviewed and guided the rest.

The series came out in 2022: eight episodes, from the first fire to the sky blast in the finale. Other artists built their destruction shots on the Houdini setup, with my reviews; Xu Han's bridge is one of them.