Lavaman Part 2 - Lighting & Compositing
Taught by Ganesh Lakshmigandan
- Duration:
- 4 hours 21 minutes
- Software Version:
- 20.5
- Launch Date:
- August 2025
- Course Number:
- HOU243
3D
vfx
3D
vfx
In this final instalment of the Lava Man series, you’ll begin in Solaris, assembling all assets and developing shaders for the environment, character, and FX elements. Using Karma XPU, you’ll set up lighting, refine materials, and implement light linking to bring the molten and solidified lava to life. Procedural textures for molten, solid, and streaming lava are crafted in COPS, along with heat distortion maps to enhance the sense of extreme heat. Pyro elements are developed using Karma’s volume shaders to achieve realistic fire and smoke. The course then covers setting up passes and custom AOVs for precise control in compositing. Moving into Nuke, you’ll assemble and balance all rendered elements, integrating heat distortion and final polish to ensure a seamless, high-quality result. Throughout the process, you’ll deepen your understanding of Solaris workflows, COPS-based look development, and production-ready compositing techniques.
Ganesh Lakshmigandan brings deep industry experience to this training, with credits on blockbuster productions like Avatar: Fire and Ash, House of the Dragon: Season 2, Avatar: The Way of Water, Dune: Part One, The Jungle Book, and Dunkirk. When he’s not doodling in Houdini, Ganesh pursues his passion for street photography, capturing the essence of everyday life through his lens. Follow his journey on Instagram: @g.lakshmigandan.
Class Listing
Class 1: Shot Assembly - Solaris
Assembling the all the assets including the fx elements in Solaris and setting up textures and shaders for our environment and character.
Class 2: Lighting
Setting up lights,setting up basic shaders for our lava elements,adjusting shaders on the environment and character,light linking etc.
Class 3: COPS & Lava Lookdev
Procedural texture creation for our lava elements using COPS and we will be using those textures in the shader for Molten,Solid Lava,Lava Streams and the lava Threads.
Class 4: Pyro Lookdev
Using Karma volume shader will do the lookdev for the fire and other the smoke elements.
Class 5: Setting up Passes and AOVs
We will setup passes for all the elements in our shot and dive into setup AOVS (regular and custom AOVs for the lava elmenents,Volumetrics).
Class 6: Compositing - Nuke
After reviewing all the rendered passes and AOVs we will assemble all the passes in Nuke.