Final Destination 5's Bridge Collapse Recreated in Houdini

Motion Designer and FX Technical Director Kamal Chhabria has revisited Steven Quale's 2011 mystery horror Final Destination 5, recreating the iconic bridge collapse scene using SideFX's procedural 3D software, Houdini.

Having spent nearly two and a half months on the project, the author employed Houdini to simulate the bridge's destruction and then created several custom material-based fractures and a custom clustering HDA to quickly art-direct the bridge's breakage spots to match the original scene. He then utilized Vellum to simulate the bridge's cables, while the breaking was achieved by altering the stress attribute inside the SOP Solver node.

As an added layer of complexity, the simulation boasts crowds and ragdoll dynamics. Kamal acknowledged that this choice heightened the project's difficulty but was motivated by a personal desire to further his knowledge of crowd simulation techniques. Besides Houdini, the artist also utilized Foundry's Nuke and Maxon's Redshift. Attached below is a concise video breakdown shared by Kamal that offers a behind-the-scenes look at the project:

Interestingly, this is not the first time Kamal impresses us with his bridge-related projects. Just last year, he showcased a neat bridge Houdini Digital Asset (HDA) that allows its creator to quickly generate overgrown wooden bridges with customizable features such as height, width, length, profile, and the amount of vegetation covering them.

You can check out more of Kamal's awesome projects by clicking this link. Don't forget to join our 80 Level Talent platform and our Telegram channel, follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, where we share breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.