Visual Effects 2 - December 2014

This month I was taking both Visual Effects 2 and Compositing and Scene Finishing. Its probably been one of my favorite months to date, and I really feel like I am starting to know enough about using Nuke and Houdini (as well as Maya's Dynamic's) to start creating some great work.

This is my favorite project, project two. Here, I used the PyroFX solver in Houdini to create a volcanic ash cloud. Through this project I really started to understand the autodop, and how it relates to outside geometry and their import dop's. I am happy with the visual's of this project, but wish I had had a bit more time to sim out and refine the wind tool I created, which allows an artist to effect how much wind effects the ash and in what way's, as it gains altitude. In the future I will be using this setup and some skills learned in Nuke to comp it on a real volcano scene.

Below is project one, which entailed the use of Maya's Naiyad Fluid dynamics system to create an explosion. While I ran into rendering issues due to the size of fluid containers, there is a good preview of the effect below. However, this project really made me realize that apart from Bi-Frost, Maya's new liquid simulation simulator, and using the Basic Ocean FX, I really prefer the dynamics systems in other packages more. 

Key to creating this was an understanding of how energy converts from a fuel, when it ignites, and how efficiently it burns. By adding multiple levels of effects--here I used two-- you can really begin to have a semi-realistic effect. I also found that the opacity gradation over time, and the color emitted in relationship to heat was crucial, and very sensitive when making small changes.

My third project for the month was up to me to choose, and after researching Houdini's Solid Object system, and the FEM solver, I really wanted to implement that into my final. I did run into issues with the fracture in this process, however, also learned a ton about how FEM objects and RBD objects interact. Time was limited on this project, and I had to begin rendering early if I wanted to have something for turn in, so this is where I landed. 

I plan on moving forward with some heavier sim intensive ideas for a fix to the weight not correctly snapping the link in half (instead it stretches and breaches the tetrahedrolized geo of the solid object). I feel that my first inquisition after today on this will be changing the weight into a solid body. This was restrictive during testing due to the heavy amounts of tetrahedron's, even when adjusting edge length to reduce the number of calculations needed to run the sim.

I am the most satisfied visually with my volcano smoke, however I am most overall satisfied at my research project and final project, as I gained the most experience and understanding from them. In the research I was successfully able to have 2 static forces rip a gelatinous object in two in different pieces, simulating different materials and organics tearing. I plan on posting that render soon.

CAN2 Final

The process from blocking to final.


The goal of this assignment was to take a sound clip from which we didn't know the source (to rule out preconceived notions on the actions to animate) and animate an action along with the mouth and face of our character. Anty, just coming to from be knocked unconscious with a bowl, is reeling back as he realizes his worst fear may have come to pass.

I learned so much from this class, and project. My method of blocking has completely changed, and while I made many mistakes on how I started this project in terms of how to go about transitioning poses, I think that learning the hard way will only help me in the future!I think one of the hardest thinks about my clip was really defining the actions in a very compressed time span. While I think it could still be tweaked, especially on the exhale, I think it was relatively successful. But, a deadline is a deadline. Look forward to implementing this knowledge into future projects.

Rigid Body Simulation with Houdini

This month I took my first foray into using Side FX's program Houdini FX. Aside from doing some procedural modeling with it, I also did some research on how to to Rigid Body Systems for a marble machine. After creating some geometry inside of Maya to bring into Houdini for the sim, I created a geometry node at scene level, then imported my file with .obj's into the scene. This is where I ran into the first of many challenges to overcome. I didn't stop and think to export all of the pieces individully so that the doors and elevator could be seperate pieces inside Houdini. After re-exporting all of the geometry in pieces, I merge them together. Next it was time to animate the doors and the wheel as seen below which grabs the ball and brings it to the slide.

After all the animation was in, it was time to dive into rigid bodies. First, I created the sphere to work as the ball, and made it an active rigid body. I then selected the geometry and made them static objects. After playing I ran into my first issue. The ball fell but didn't collide with the geometry. After much researching I found that this was due to a bounding box issue with the default solver. To fix this I switched over to the bullet solver, and in the AutoDOPnetwork, I found the sphere node and changed the geometry representation in the collisions>bullet section to concave, which then allowed the collisions on the static geo to actually follow the geometry's actually normals.

The next challenge was getting the ball to roll past the first animated door. It seemed that no matter what was changed it thought the door was in it's starting position throughout the sim. I found that using the same collisions>bullet tab in autoDOP with the option "show guide geometry" on, I could see that indeed, the sim was only taking the static geometry into account. Because the simulation reads the geometry in its inactive state for the entire scene on frame one, you need to have it take into account moving geometry. This was done in the same menu subset, by checking on "use deforming geometry", "use object transform," and "create active object." This solved most of my problems.

Caching Out

Next was tacking the issue of slow and tedious caching. Through some more research, I found that by making a DOPimport inside a new empty geo node, connected to a ROP geometry node, I could create a folder for the cache and then render the cache file. This took about 40 minutes, but I plan on using flip book after, which essentially like Maya's play blast capability, to get a video to post here. Keep an eye out for it soon!

Post in Nuke.

Hey everyone! This is just a quick update to my scene for shading and lighting, after rendering in passes for each light (render layers) and adjusting in Nuke. Added some vignetting, and added some depth of field, as well as overall color grades per pass in each of the layers. Also, below that is a experimental comp to look like an instagram filter using grade nodes and ramps. Take a look!

Above is the final comp of my diffuse, texturing, reflection and refraction projects. The box uses projected textures, while the detail on the gear is created through a combination of shading networks and alphas in layered textures to get things like reflectivity to react with light differently depending  on whether light was hitting rust or paint. All objects use bump maps, and the bottle has bump on the bottle, akin to a manufacturers mark on a bottle. Maps were used to create the finger prints and dirt on the bottle, while index of refraction settings help differentiate between the glass, and the liquid within.

This month in VSD has been really great. The techniques we learned have already become extremely useful in a variety of situations. Just being able to comprehend why and what settings and optimizations should be made has made ridiculously long render times much less of a burden. Two of the most useful tools that assisted in this were the final gather maps and the photon maps. Being able to save these on freeze when you know they no longer need to be calculated really helps out a lot.  I really actually enjoyed (gasp!) doing the UV mapping in the way it was taught this month, as well as creating the texture efficiently in the 0 to one space. Another thing I really value learning this month is how to truly evaluate and make connection in the hypershade. While the OCD side of my brain wishes there was a way to clean up connections to make things more readable like NUKE, I can actually view a network now and figure out how a system is working.  Understanding how to use utility nodes correctly, along with mental ray nodes like portal lights are awesome tricks to have up my sleeve. 

Shading, Textures, and Lighting Progress.

A quick update from my shading and lighting work recently. Here are some renders of the scene which I have textured, created shaders for, and lit. I'm currently rendering out in passes to then do some corrections in post (Nuke). I've learned so much in terms of efficient work flow and shading networks recently, and will be implementing these into my future work!

Bottle before scene finishing.

The gear before post. Really loved working on this one. Efficient UV's and texture painting really made this one.

Soggy bottom and beat up box before scene finishing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I'll definitely be updating soon with the final shot cam renders with corrected colors, etc.

Character Animation 1, September 2014

Hey everyone! This month in animation has been really interesting! This video is my Eggy Walk, which was done for project one! I definitely appreciate the chance to work on walk mechanics, and am relatively happy with how this turned out. I think in the future I will be working on how to stylize individual walks by how much bounce and foot roll there is. Any comments would be appreciated!

The final project was great because we finally got to use all the things we've learned in fundamentals of animation and this months course. It was nice to have a little more artistic freedom in the acting of our character. I feel this turned out pretty well, however I am not totally loving the timing and amount of bounce going from contacts to passing, however those are things I will take into consideration when as I move forward with my animations. This animation was animated on 3's, which I may not use as often in the future, just for the lack of options on where to place foot roll sticks in terms of frame number! Looking forward to moving forward with CAN2 in a month. Any feedback would be appreciated. I'm still learning but feel my progress is pretty steady.

Visual Effect's 1 Update!

It has been a very busy month, but finally getting to do visual effects this month made it barely seem like work at all. 

 

This is from project one, focusing on rigid bodies! Given more time I would have changed some things in the scene. Most important is to figure out the lighting glitch at the end of the spring's path where it hits the cup. I thought it originally was due to not resetting the project when rendering the second half of the project, but I noticed this glitch in the same place for several other classmate's work.

 

This is from project to for intro to visual effects! I had such a great experience in this class and can't

wait for the next one! I was not happy with a few elements of this scene. While the particles were cached when they looked correct, the cached version shows the particles for things like the water not reacting with the collisions by the top pipe which were used to keep the flow looking more realistic. Also changed was the length of time the brown dust is being emitted. While it was keyed to be dead after the ceiling main chunks hit the floor, in the cached render they continue to admit.