Ghost crab

Ghost Crabe sculpted in ZBrush. 
Sand simulation with Houdini : the crabe was rigged in Houdini (my first time rigging in Houdini instead of Maya), then a VDB version of the animation was cached as a collider object for the sand. 
The textures of the crabe were made with Substance Painter (first time using it), and I made 11 grains and shaders that are randomly instanced on the sand sim, following a Poisson distribution (size and color). 
This exercize is greatly inspired by the Pixar short "Piper" and the article made on it on FXGuide : https://www.fxguide.com/featured/the-tech-of-pixar-part-1-piper-daring-to-be-different/