Aurora Drift.
Role FX & Comp Lead
Year 2025
Studio Framestore · London
Format Feature · 1.85:1 · 6.5K
A sky that shouldn't exist.
The director wanted an aurora that behaved like weather — present, but unreliable — across fourteen minutes of screen time. We built the system in Houdini, ran four hero simulations per shot, and live-pre-comped into plates shot at -38°C in Tromsø.
How it was built.
R&D 01
Custom VEX wrangle for volume scattering — three-octave noise driven by per-shot wind data.
Aurora Sim 02
Pyro solver + custom emitter. ~14h/frame on 8x H100s for hero plates.
Beauty Pass 03
38 AOVs layered in Nuke, deep data integration, lens breathing matched to source.
Reference 04
HDR light probes + sky captures for accurate color and luminance matching.
The team.
Director
Anya Solberg
Framestore · London
VFX Sup.
T. Ferrante
Supervision
Producer
Lena Park
Production
FX Lead
Mira Volkova
Effects
Comp Lead
Mira Volkova
Compositing
CG Sup.
R. Okafor
CG Supervision
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