In my role as Technical Director for the “No Son of Mine” music video by Foo Fighters, one of my all-time favorite bands, I was fortunate to play a crucial role in its creative and technical development. With a focus on simulation, asset build, and lighting tasks, I meticulously oversaw all technical and pipeline issues throughout the production process to ensure an exceptional final product.
Far from an advocate of drug use, but couldn’t deny that I was at least excited about the technical challenge that this shot provided. Here is some early R&D showing the ‘cocaine’ simulation using vellum grains inside SideFX Houdini. I later decided to use this simulation do drive a cleverly shaded VDB mesh in order to help match the style and aestchetic we were trying to achieve.
Despite the somewhat unsavory nature of these actions, I had the opportunity to create another set of distinctive simulations for the vomit and urine scenes in the video.
Utilizing the FLIP solver within Houdini, I produced basic liquid simulations to replicate the protagonist’s less-than-appetizing behavior. Fortunately, the video’s distinct style enabled us to steer clear of excessive details that could complicate the simulations and risk being too vulgar.
Thankfully, on a less grim note I produced some more simple RBD simulations in order to enhance the gambling scenes in the music video.
Using the Bullet solver inside Houdini, I ran some basic dynamics on the dice and ball objects to get a more realistic motion on the ojbects and prevent any need for manual animation.
You can watch the full video in its entirety below, and for project breakdown and full list of credits, visit Bomper Studio.
