Urban Sand-Snake CG Simulation

I’m working on a movie-style sequence set in an urban back alley where a large CG snake bursts through drifts of loose sand and slithers in pursuit of its target. The live-action plates are already locked; what I need now is a photoreal sand simulation that reacts convincingly to the snake’s mass, velocity, and path, then composites seamlessly over the original footage.

KEY TASK
• Build a physically plausible granular-sand system (Houdini, RealFlow, or similar) that allows the ground to deform, spray, and settle as the snake moves.
• Animate or ingest the supplied snake rig so its body drives the simulation, matching camera-tracked data from the shot.
• Deliver the layered EXR passes (beauty, shadow, matte) and the .hip/.max/.ma scene files so my comp team can pick up at any point.

ACCEPTANCE CRITERIA
• Grain scale, colour, and motion blur must match the live sand reference I’ll provide.
• No visible intersections between snake geometry and sand particles once cached.
• Final comp should pass a frame-by-frame review at 4K with no artefacts.

I’ll share the footage, camera solves, HDRI, and lidar scans as soon as the contract starts, and I’m happy to jump on a quick call to align on pipeline.