Francesco Bianco
Francesco Bianco
Senior Houdini Technical Director

FX, crowds
& the systems
behind them.

Art-directable simulations, large-scale crowds and production pipelines for film, episodic and high-end commercials — built to stay fast, stable and easy to revise.

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11
years in Houdini FX & TD roles across film, TV and advertising
40+
credited productions for global brands, Netflix, Sky and Rai
14
sports covered by a single reusable crowd framework
4+
films and stills delivered end to end, solo, through FRANK
01

Core expertise

Colour key used across the site

FX Simulation FX

FLIP and thin-film fluids, Pyro, POP particles, RBD destruction, Vellum cloth, hair and grains — from R&D to final pixel.

Crowd Systems CROWD

Agent prep and LOD, behaviour and state systems, paired-clip sync, stadium population, variation shading, publishing and caches.

Pipeline & Tools PIPELINE

USD/Solaris, colour-managed ingest, render and farm management, versioning and QA. Python, PySide2/6, VEX, C++, hython, Nuke Python.

CG, Look & Comp CG

Karma XPU, MaterialX, procedural product CGI and environments, Nuke compositing, camera tracking and AI-assisted workflows.

02

Selected work

Full reel on Vimeo
Coming soon
2026 · Seasonal campaign · Solo, end to end

Four films and a set of stills — one artist, one pipeline

Ingest, camera tracking, FX, look development, rendering, compositing and final delivery, all run through FRANK. The signature effect: a layered gold pixie-dust system, later productised as a reusable HDA.

FXPIPELINECG
2026 · Selected Works

Nike — Rip the Script

Procedural supporter distribution for full stadiums, crowd publishing into layout and lighting, volumetrics, water sprays and contact-driven dirt.

CICLOPE Grand Prix Post · Bronze VFX ↗
Full credits
Client
Nike
Agency
Wieden + Kennedy Portland
Production company
Somesuch
Director
Dan Streit
DOP
Norm Li
Production designer
Ruth De Jong
ECD
Caleb Jensen & Blair Warren
VFX company
Selected Works
VFX supervisor
Francois Roisin
CGI artist
Paul Donnellan
Editing
Trim Editing
Sound
Field Day Sound
Music
The Crystal Creative
Production services
TwentyFour Seven
Producers
Julie Sawyer, Kwok Yau, Filipa Jesus, Nayla Soffita, Michelle O’Brien, Whitney Jackson (2nd unit)
Executive producers
Seth Wilson, Ryland Burns (production) · Mauricio Granado, Kerli Teo (agency)
CMO (brand)
Nicole Hubbard Graham
Head of production (agency)
Orlee Tatarka
Copywriter
Thomas Corcoran
Art director
Felix Heyes
Agency producers
Lauren Hill Vaughan, Stephane Fevrier

Official CICLOPE entry credits. I worked on crowds and FX as part of the Selected Works VFX team.

CROWDPIPELINEFX
2025 · Selected Works

Nike — So Win

Super Bowl LIX. Vellum tickertape with controlled spin, basketball-driven glass shatter, aerodynamic cloth.

Super Clio 2025
FX
2024 · Selected Works

Coca-Cola — An Olympic Hug

Paired A/B clip instancing keeping thousands of hugging agents in sync for Paris 2024.

CROWDPIPELINE
2024 · Selected Works

bet365 — Breaking News

One procedural crowd framework for stadiums, cities and live broadcasts across 14 sports.

CROWDPIPELINE
2025 · Selected Works

Battlefield 6

RBD building destruction, pyro and debris, volumetric jet exhaust with shock-diamond patterns.

FX
2026 · Laconic

SACMI — Packaging & Chocolate

Engineering drawings rebuilt as procedural folding and wrapping rigs; Vellum wrappers; modular chocolate pours for a 4096×1280 LEDwall.

FXCG
2025 · Selected Works

Coca-Cola — The Futbol Match

Crowd owned end to end, from setup to export pipeline, plus tickertape FX.

CROWDPIPELINEFX

Also: The Sandman (Netflix) · Romulus & ZeroZeroZero (Sky) · Il Primo Re · Nike So Win · Tylenol × NWSL · Xbox The Caretaker · Usyk vs Fury 2 · M&S Christmas · Squarespace · Sky F1 · PlayStation · Ray-Ban Stories · Dyson · Ferrari 488 Pista

03

Pipeline & tools

Personal R&D used in production

An end-to-end VFX pipeline I designed, built and run on live jobs. One artist-facing app inside Houdini and Nuke, backed by a per-project manifest that tracks every plate, version, render and note — from ingest to final delivery.

Python · PySide6 · Houdini · Nuke · USD · Karma
Ingest & ColourPlates and elements with manifest-tracked transfer curves — EXR and review mov match exactly.
USD Shot PrepScenes ingested with dependency resolution; cameras, geo and FX recipes rebuilt per shot.
Render ManagerKarma settings capture, resolution guard, project-wide ledger of frames and hours.
Nuke ToolkitWrite and colour sanity checks, comp retarget across shots, version time-machine.
Review & NotesBrowser A/B wipe player with auto-transcode, delivery flags and shot notes.
Runner & FarmHeadless chains — prep → Karma render → comp → notify — locally or on the farm.

Quality gates: every release passes a static reference check and a 470-check self-test suite before it reaches production.

PixieDust

HDA · Solaris · Karma

Deterministic particle-trail system with layer families, on-disk presets, sibling sync and auto-built render branches.

Materializer

LOPs · MaterialX

Drag-and-drop look assignment that identifies assets, builds LOP networks and applies studio material libraries.

Crowd Toolkit

HDA · PySide6 · VEX

Mood-based state randomisation with epicentre and heatmap preview, agent publishing and texture variation.

AI-assisted

ONNX · Gaussian splats

Depth pre-scoping for tracking, an opt-in module that learns artist habits, splat-to-USD set reconstruction.

Tools in action

Two of the tools behind the work.

Live previews of the interfaces, rebuilt for the web with demo data. Every project, shot and layer name below is fictional.

PRJ NAME.
FRANK's control centre · Houdini & Nuke

One window for the whole job. Browse every sequence and shot with live previews, prep a shot in one click, track renders and review cuts without leaving Houdini or Nuke.

  • Browse sequences and shots with posters, status and the last thing you touched.
  • Shot Prep builds camera, plates and scene from the manifest, the same way every time.
  • Render Manager captures Karma settings, guards resolution and logs every frame and hour.
  • Review opens an A/B wipe player in the browser, with delivery flags and notes.
PRJ NAME 3.80 — HALCYON_2027DEMO
PROJECTHALCYON_2027
SEQSEQ020 · NIGHT MARKET
SHOTSH040
DELIVERYin 6 days
SEQ020 · NIGHT MARKET 6 shots · last opened SH040
SH010● FINAL
SH020● FINAL
SH030● COMP
SH040● FX
SH050○ PREP
SH060○ PREP
▶ RESUME · SH040 · fx_pixie_v012.hip · 2h ago
SHOT PREP · SH050 one click, same result every time
✔Plates · EXR linear + proxy · 1001–1096
✔Camera · tracked solve → /obj/CAMERA/CAM_RENDER
✔Scene USD · published v004 · 7 assets unpacked
⟳FX recipe · RBD + collisions rebuilt from manifest
○Render branches · Karma XPU · AOVs for comp
PREP SHOT
RENDER MANAGER project ledger
18,420frames rendered
212 hrender time
½proxy res · ctrl-scaled
SEQ010
SEQ020
SEQ030
SEQ040
⚠ SH030 · pass DUST_FINE renders at camera×½ — flagged as intentional proxy
REVIEW · SH040 A/B wipe · v011 ↔ v012
v011
v012 · DELIVERY
DELIVERED 2 notes open · "more sparkle on the turn"
PixieDust.
Particle-trail system · Houdini HDA + control room

Magical dust trails, art-directed from a single curve. A family of layers (fine dust, foils, hero sparks) shares one animation and stays in sync, while each layer keeps its own look and render stream.

  • Guided path: Animate → Foils → Pixie Dust → Forces → Simulate, one confirmed step at a time.
  • Shared parameters: a leader layer drives the motion; any value can stay shared, own, or only here.
  • Instant trail preview before simulating, plus substeps suggested from speed and acceleration.
  • Render-ready: one Karma branch per layer with comp AOVs, built automatically.
PIXIEDUST 1.1 — AURORA_SPOT · SH030DEMO
HOME GUIDED EDITING · THIS LAYER
✔ ANIMATE✔ FOILS● PIXIE DUSTFORCESSIMULATE
LAYERS
DUST_FINELEADER
FOIL_LARGE
HERO_SPARK
PARAMETERS
travel time48 fSHARED
emit radius0.035SHARED
pscale0.0012OWN
birth rate42k/sOWN
spin2.4ONLY HERE
SPEED · ACCEL suggested substeps: 3
▶ PREVIEW TRAILSIMULATE LAYER
04

Recognition

CICLOPE
2026

CICLOPE — Grand Prix Post Production & Bronze VFX

Nike "Rip the Script" · Selected Works team · winner page ↗

2025

Super Clio — Best Super Bowl LIX Commercial

Nike "So Win" · Selected Works VFX team

Cannes Lions
2018

Cannes Lions — Film Craft Lions Finalist, VFX

WWF "Orso" for Earth Hour, dir. Gabriele Muccino · credited as Environment FX · certificate ↗

Laconic · Post Production Agency
Signature Talent

Part of Laconic's curated roster of senior artists, since 2025.

View on laconic.it ↗
05

Selected clients

Nike
Coca-Cola
Ferrero Rocher
bet365
Battlefield 6
Xbox
M&S
Squarespace
Vaseline
PlayStation
Sky
Netflix
Ferrari
Dyson
Ray-Ban
06

Experience

Present
since Mar 2025

LACONIC ↗

Senior Houdini FX TD · Signature Talent · Milan · Remote

FX, procedural CGI and custom tooling for advertising and branded content, from look exploration to final delivery.

Present
since May 2023

SELECTED WORKS

VFX TD · Crowd TD · FX TD · London · Remote

Designed the crowd pipeline from the ground up — agents, LOD, behaviours, USD assembly, publishing and caches — plus hero FX for global sport and brand campaigns.

2024–25Cardiff · Remote

CR.STUDIO

FX Artist

Isover Building Better Together — the film's main real-to-CG transition.

2021–22London · Remote

UNTOLD STUDIOS

Crowd & FX Artist

The Sandman E10 (Netflix), Sky F1 Season Launch, Sky Glass, PlayStation, Ray-Ban Stories, Dyson, DFS.

2017–19Milan

EDI EFFETTI DIGITALI ITALIANI

VFX TD

Romulus, ZeroZeroZero, L'uomo senza gravità, Cosmos, Il Primo Re; Ferrari, Kinder, WWF — Cannes Lions Film Craft finalist.

2015–17Milan

INKY MIND

VFX Technical Artist

TV commercials and the U-Hugs animated series.

07

Education & certificates

Click to open the originals
Politecnico di Milano
2011 — 2014

BSc Industrial Design — Politecnico di Milano

Final grade 102/110. CAD, mechanical design, materials and production systems: the engineering grounding behind how I build simulations and tools.

Let's build something
that holds up.

francescobianco.designer@gmail.com