The Mountains of Lucaithia

The Moutains of Lucaitha:
I trek atop crests that topple heaven above
Gaze onward; I persist
Forweary, but nay coward
I stand tall this hour

This cinematic features Lucira, The Cursed Knight, fighting a dragon atop the Mountains of Lucaithia.

I was extremely proud of this work. I made some mistakes, but the accomplishments I made to achieve this render were very groundbreaking for me.

For this render I wanted to use FX for the lightning and the dragon's fire breath. However, I was acutely aware of Blender's limitations with its particle system. I thought of working in Unreal Engine for this project, but I really wanted to push the boundaries of what I could make happen. Therefore, I made a custom node setup that allows me to take an image plane, scroll through the flipbook I put on it with a custom shader node setup, and then using a custom geo node setup, instance that plane onto points I am able to manipulate as I see fit.

I was able to integrate FPS for frame speed, intial velocity, particle lifetime, scale over time, color over time, etc. Essentially, I create my own custom realtime particle FX system using Geo Nodes in Blender. It currently has its limitations, but I am extremely proud of the outcome.

NOTE: I also custom made the lightning texture I used.

For the cape and hair, I opted out of using a cloth simulation this go around, because I wanted to try something less memory intense. So, I used a lattice connected to the mesh with a softbody simulation. Then, on top of that, I added displace modifiers attached to an empty object that was keyframed to move over time and look like waves. However, the cape ended up much more stiff looking than I wanted it to. So, in my next project I ended up going back to cloth simulations.

After rendering the PNG Sequence, I took it into Davinci Resolve to add final touches and color grading.

Date: May 3rd, 2026
Medium: Blender, Davinci Resolve