Yup you guessed it, those little sand particles at the beginning was mine I created them inside of Houdini using Pyro solver in addition to a particle system advected by the pyro field nothing complex.

And here you can see the sand pass isolated.

The second effect was what's called 3D Kaleidoscopes you can find more about the term here... and the style is inspired from Dr Strange the movie, where I watched the Master Class "MAKING OF DOCTOR STRANGE" by ALEXIS WAJSBROT, I found alot of good information there that helped me block the effect. Well the theory was something and on the ground was something else there are literally over a thousand animated piece in this shot alone so dense that the play back speed in 3ds max viewport was 0.25 fps and I had to mix between Houdini where the majority of animation took place and 3ds max (you can see alot of Symmetry modifier there). In addition to that I should pay attention that there is no polygon overlapping or else there will be alot of flicker in render time.

The final version of the effect.

And here this post comes to an end, I really enjoyed sharing my experience with you guys and I hope you find it useful, and as always thanx for dropping by and see you in another post.

Kindest Regards

Alaa Alnahlawi.