Project Ember

Project Ember is a personal VFX and compositing project focused on creating a tense, cinematic fire-lit environment with a strong sci-fi atmosphere.

The goal was to take a relatively simple forest setup and push it into something that felt grounded, atmospheric and filmic. The fire became the primary source of illumination, driving the color, contrast and interaction between the environment and the character.

A large part of the project was spent refining the fire integration and lighting, including using a VDB fire cache to generate interactive illumination in Blender. I also created additional embers using Nuke particles, built atmospheric elements, and experimented with relighting to make the fire feel naturally embedded within the scene.

The final compositing pass included camera movement, fire and ember integration, rain, reflections, lens effects, grain, chromatic aberration and color grading. I wanted to maintain a restrained, predominantly fire-lit palette while using the secondary lighting and environmental effects to add depth and separation.

The project was originally intended to be a short personal study, but it grew considerably as I explored each stage of the shot. It became an exercise in not only compositing and VFX integration, but also in understanding how lighting, atmosphere, camera movement and grading work together to sell a cinematic image.

Software & Techniques

Nuke — Compositing, particles, embers, integration, grading and final image treatment
Blender — VDB fire integration and lighting
Houdini — Fire and simulation exploration
ComfyUI — Background motion and generative experimentation
Beeble AI — Relighting tests
VDB integration
Fire & ember compositing
CG/live-action integration
Atmospheric effects
Lens simulation
Color grading