NFL25 KICKOFF
NFL KICKOFF 2025 SET
What a way to kick-off the 11th NFL season on FOX Sports (see what I did there?) – it was truly magical to bring this set to life. While this was a big team effort, I was one of 3 artists on the Unreal team that handled the primary modeling and texturing. It was one of the first virtual environments to debut on FOX Sports’ brand new all-LED Stage B, marking a huge milestone for our virtual production workflow.
This project also marked the first time we brought Houdini into our pipeline, using HDA’s inside Unreal to create procedural assets and workflows. Learning and integrating this toolset was an incredible experience and a big step forward for our team. Bringing this set to life was both challenging and rewarding, and it set the tone for the season ahead.
Realtime Team: Michael Adames, Oscar Carrillo, Ethan Clark, Ethan Ching, Gina Izerel, Jesse Larson, John Martin, Jason Phipps, James Reed, Alex Seflinger
Producers: Jim Rodman, Chris Smith
THE MAKING OF: HOUDINI TO UNREAL PIPELINE
We built our base models in Cinema 4D and Maya, then divided the set into sections, which would each be converted to a Houdini Digital Asset (HDA). Inside Houdini, we scripted custom tools to handle beveling and texel density procedurally, which meant we weren’t locked into those details during production. By exposing those parameters in Unreal, we could adjust these properties on the fly – giving us far more flexibility to respond to creative and design changes quickly.
HOUDINI DIGITAL ASSETS
Within our HDAs, we also made elements of the set procedural. For example, the spotlights were designed to point toward random locations defined inside the HDA, giving us both variation and flexibility. To enhance the look, we paired the lights with emissive materials that simulated a soft, art-directed glow. This approach provided the visual punch we wanted while keeping performance costs low.
EARLY CONCEPTS
The concept was originally created by Van Brandenburg, a New Zealand based architectural firm, and our team translated it into a fully functional real-time environment inside Unreal Engine.
