Interstellar Arc (2025) #
At Felix & Paul Studios, I worked as a Senior Technical Artist creating VFX assets and tools for the Interstellar Arc project in Unreal Engine, primarily using the Niagara particle system. Interstellar Arc is an in situ virtual reality experience where participants are brought along for a voyage across the galaxy to a new habitable planet.
My galaxy VFX at the bottom of the frame. Created with Niagara and generated meshes.
The major challenge was achieving visual realism within the strict performance constraints of the Meta Quest 2. My tenure was brief and early in production, as I left to pursue graduate studies at CalArts. However, my key contributions remain in the final experience, including a realistic bonfire, the Milky Way galaxy, and the Celestia musical sculpture. It's currently open to the public in Las Vegas, NV.
I did some early material FX on this funny little dude. He's changed a lot since I worked on him, but it looks like my hexagon effect in the material is still present, as well as the little particles that shoot from his tail.
The Aurora Borealis effect was created in Niagara.
The bonfire was the first VFX I did on the project. There were tight texture budgets, so I used a short repeating flipbook animation with panning UVs on a mesh with a flickering vertex movement shader to create flames that whip around and sputter realistically. Smoke, sparks and ash were done in Niagara.
The Celestia #
Our team was tasked with creating a kinetic musical sculpture that would generate triggers for sound. It works like a musical instrument running in the background, creating the music you hear while on board the Interstellar Arc. Whenever a sphere passes a crossbeam, it flashes and generates a trigger.
The Celestia, in the main room of the Interstellar Arc
I jumped at the opportunity. As the resident Niagara specialist, I realized immediately that we could make this beautiful and performant if we ran it all on the GPU. I created the framework for the rings and rotating spheres in Niagara, along with the Blueprints to make the audio team's job easier. They could trigger their sounds and control how the Celestia moves, in order to tune the musical performance to their satisfaction.
Each ring rotates at a slightly different speed, creating a mesmerizing pattern and an aleatoric music generator.
I had to leave the project before the Celestia was completed, so the rest of the team finished the metallic appearance and lighting effects.
I want to give due credit to the wonderful team that I was working with, especially my colleagues in the Tech Art department:
Alexis Morin
Evan Montpellier
Elysha Poirier