Swapped: Bringing the Four Elements to Life with Houdini | Skydance | Annecy HIVE 2026

A behind-the-scenes look at how the FX team at Skydance Animation brought Swapped to life — seamlessly blending fire, water, and destruction into a single, cohesive cinematic moment. Alex Caballer Williams is an FX Artist at Skydance Animation Madrid. Born in Barcelona, joined Skydance early 2021 after graduating - and since, has worked on several feature animated films including Luck, Spellbound and Swapped. Loves to work and explore on all sorts of FX and procedural setups. Valerio Tarricone is an Italian visual effects artist and FX Lead at Skydance Animation with over a decade of experience in film, television, music videos and animation. Specialising in advanced simulations such as fire, smoke, water, destruction and large-scale physics-based effects, he primarily works with Houdini by SideFX to build scalable, production-ready procedural systems for high-end projects. He has contributed to major films including Blade Runner 2049, Wonder Woman, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Godzilla vs. Kong and Star Trek Beyond, and was part of the DNEG team that won the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects for Blade Runner 2049. Known for combining strong technical expertise with artistic sensibility, he continues to push the boundaries of simulation-driven visual storytelling. 00:00 - Introduction & Skydance Animation Department Reel 05:48 - Pipeline Overview: Harnessing Houdini for Global Simulation Challenges 06:18 - Dam Collapse: Setting 1,000-Frame Long FLIP Simulations for Layout 07:37 - Merging Caches: Masking Workflows via Vorticity and Velocity Attributes 08:44 - Art Directing Rigid Bodies: Activation Mask Control Systems for RBDs 09:41 - Custom White Water Solvers: Scaling Sim Targets Past 250 Million Particles 11:22 - The Tsunami Asset: Creating Custom Fields and Adaptive Gravity Modifiers 15:36 - Waterfall Pipeline Strategy: Cluster Sims across 70 Production Shots 19:20 - Firewolf FX: Sourcing Temperature Wedges and Face Velocity Shapers 22:00 - Forest Fire Propagation: Instancing FX Variants and Volumetric VDB Proxies #houdini #SkydanceAnimation #Swapped #FLIPSimulation #WhiteWaterSolver #RBD #PyroSolver #VFXPipeline #SideFX #CGI #CharacterFX #WaterSimulation #Compositing