Swarm Technical Demo by Gray Horsfield

Gray Horsfield is a former WETA Digital FX artist for Valve Software. He began working at Valve in 2006, and apparently stepped down earlier this year. If you don’t know him by name, then you probably know him by his work. He worked on the LOTR series as a visual FX artist at WETA. More recently, he was responsible for the stunning destruction effects in Valve’s games, like the bridge collapses in HL2: Episode Two, the opening container scene from Portal 2, and the zombie gibs in the Left 4 Dead series. This video titled ’swarm design test’ shows a swarm of flying creatures following a single object, in this case a manhack (although this is probably just a placeholder model for the test, don’t hold your breath for a Half-life connection). Gray tagged the video “Giger“, and with good reason. The environment in this Source Engine tech demo bears an eerie resemblance to the Alien movies. Join the discussion here: