THE FINAL POST

okkkkk so here it is, here is the shot i've worked up over this project. I still think there is obvious room for improvement, but i have learned soo much over this project!

I would still like to address how the petals fall as i think they have the right kind of speed now, but they need to last longer, i dont like it when particles just "disapear" but this is somthin i will be implamenting houdini for.

THINGS THIS PROJECT HAS TAUGHT ME
-i have learned what a voxel is, and by doing this, i have learned what sort of voxel grid resolutions to work with, then step up to render with.

-i have learned about the different render systems such as scanline and raytracing, and why you would prioritize raytracing in voxel fluid rendering as it steps rays right through your fluid to calculate accurate shadow maps based on density

-i have learned that volumetric emmiters work much better with voxel systems rather than the standard omni which is essentially a mathmatical "point" with extended space.

-i have learned all about the fluid shader, and how best to control it for different applications such as fire, smoke or combustion.

- i have learned about the various dynamics (fields) rigid bodies and types of fluids (particle, volumetric and voxel) and their best uses.

-i have learned about ppInstancing in maya and its drawbacks

-i have learned the benefits of using 2D voxel containers with raytracing.

i could go on and on, but basically i have loved this project, and I am more or less pleased with my results. here is a break down of what i think worked well and not so well.

THE GOOD:
-I like the trail from the spell, the body of it atleast.
-i like the look of the flower petals
-i'm sort of hapy with the shockwave

THE BAD (well, not bad, but stuff to improve on)
-the motion of the trail of the spell, more interesting and less uniform
-the flower petals i will need to take into houdini to get more complicated procedural dynamics working upon them
-the shockwave can be improved and i plan to do this soon!

HOW HAVE I INTERGRATED IN A TEAM?
-i have used animation from nick and joe to use as a base for my spell development. without their help, my work would be very boring and linear

-i have used Ollies model, which i rigged and gave to the animators, which feeds back into my first point.

-i have mimicked Stephanie Joy's beautiful matt paintings for my environment creation

---AND i have constantly been asking for feedback from everyone in the group, which they kindly ablidged with and without their feedback again i think my effects would be very bland and boring. so thanks for all of your help guys!

submision to MY group (aka spellbound)

so before i came and showed dan and mike, aswell as the rest of the students on my course, i wanted to pitch this to my group so they had the chance to give last minute feedback.

the feedback i got from this concerned making it a little faster, and have the flower petals fall slower, and die out quicker. I implamented these changes which i will show in the next post.

more workings (11 - 19)

soooo heres a few more videos showing development. I decided to implement a placeholder backdrop so i could start playing with how the spell would stand out from the colours of the plate. i will get around to creating a little environment before presentation time.

I really like how this is going in. I feel that each element of the spell is looking better together than it did before, and many things have changed now.

for instance i have decided to use a particle system to make the wand sparks look a little more like flower petals, as he is quite feminin and vein. these are working ok for a first draft and will be further developed before the last test.



v11



v12



v13

---sorry, didnt conform a few---



v18



v19a



v19b

working up presentation test (1-10)

rather than comenting on every single video of this series i though ti would just talk about what i am, and have been doing. So our presentation is next week, and i believe i now have all of the knowledge i need to get going on implamenting a spell in a scene with a character and an environment (which will come a little later)

so below are the first 10 verisons. I took certain assets from previous tests rather than re-doing everything. i found this efficient, especially for some of the spell containers that hold the "look" which i developed in previous tests.

knowing this means that it will be easy to get good continuity between our shots in the final film!

(the following videos, when watched in order, show the development of this shot. here are 1-10, more will be included in the next post.)

v1


v2


v3


v4


v5


v6


v7


v8


v9


v10

pushing the limits of thickness!

ok so i wanted to see how far i could push the thickness of my fluids. this was following suggestions from my team about getting it more smokey. i didnt just want to immediatly start fine tuning somthing before trying to understand it so i went ahead and did this test to see how solid looking i could get my render out. this in my mind looks like cement!

obviously not what we want for our spell but was a good test and has taught me a lot about the opacity curves and transparency float slider.

developing further again

ok so in this test, i tried making the emmision smaller, but the fluid thicker, with what i think is quite a nice result. Please note that the black patches on the spell are a product of low quality rendering


here i tried to push the movement as much as i physically could, in order to see how much looks good and how much bad. i like the above test but i would like to see a more varied movement still!

longer tests. this one mucked up!

i have decided to start doing some slightly longer tests, firstly to make sure that the fluids im using are consistant enough to be used over long periods of time. seccondly as things like dissapation and diffusion you can only really messure over these sort of time periods. and thirdly i am mimicing this video I found! (shown at the bottom of this post)

as for this spell, i am getting quite happy with the trail. i think it is still a bit tame, but its a great direction and my group seem to like it too. they have offered some very useful feedback as to the shape and motion which i will now be developing up aswell as incorporating a few of my own ideas!

here is that video i mentioned:

some further development

OK, SO I HAVE BEEN DEVELOPING THE FLOW OF THE SPELL FURTHER. i HAVE FOUND THAT USING MOTION AND VOLUME EMMITERS SEEMS TO BE A GOOD AWAY OF GETTING INTERESTING FLOW TO THE SPELL. i STARTED OFF BY JUST USING SPHERES BUT NOW I HAVE STARTED ACTUALLY SIMMING SOME CLOTH FIRST, WHICH I THEN CACHE OUT AND USE AS AN EMMITER ITSELF. THIS SEEMS TO GET SOME REALLY NICE RESULTS SO I WILL CONTINUE TO DEVELOP THIS FURTHER!

my influences - revisited

I have mainly been looking at 3 sorces for my research.
1.) harry potter!



or link
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEYkVedmboQ

harry potter is the most contempory source of inspiration into creating abstract spell effects!

2.) cloudy with a chance of meatballs!



or link
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h92oK9u3pzI

watch for the smoke trails left by his contraptions! THIS hehe

3.) this video of effects i found!



or link
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7c4WYzr30B0&feature=player_embedded

these are amazing! but i think they were probably cached and rendered over days and weeks, i just dont have the time to spare for this!

I love the second effect though, i believe this would be good for our crude wizzard!

lightning...y?

i thought i would do a little breakdown of the end of the spell at the moment. i am experimenting with the dynamic lightning built into maya, which creates a curve, introduces a noise/fractal into its structure, then applies a seed value on a per frame basis. this allows some variables to change the look and shape of the curve over time. by then extruding a tubular surface along it you can give it substance, and applying a shader with inbuilt incandesense and glow, you can get quite an electrical look.

I'd just like to bring up a point about PRESETS.

I hate PRESETS.

my honest opinion is whats the point. If i can get an amazing looking spell by using other peoples work, i dont want to use it. it would kill me for someone to highlight a preset in my work and i would have to own up. I also think it teaches you nothing to hit a button and click render. no point whatso ever. at the end of the film, autodesk would have to stand up and take a bow, you know.

BUT

i do understnd the value of taking a preset and breaking it down. for this lightning, i applied it, observerd it both in the view port and the hypershade, then looked at the node structure that goes into creating it. its not a special thing that you can only get by clicking the preset button, it can be built from scratch, and thats what I will be doing for the rest of the project. i think this method does teach you somthing because i see no difference in observing a preset (or copying or just clicking it in for that matter) to observing anothers painting if you are a fine artist. you cant just copy it, its plagerism, and the least satisfying feeling in the world. imagine just downloading an image and using it directly in your work.

not good enough.

getting there,, but no cigar!

here is a test that i spent a total of 13 hours on. and guess what, i'm not happy with it.

i like the movement, shown better in the play blast below, but the rendered substance i think could use some work. Again, this was also stated by my team, and I will completely focus on this rendering issue from now on. I think it may have something to do with the fact that im using incandescense values to display my fluids, this makes some quite dynamic looks, but possibly a more smokey fluid rather than a reactive fiery fluid may be best.

heads and tails

this is a test that I did with getting two fluids into a single scene by referencing them, and importing the cache files. This isn't really a test on how good i can get the fluids to look, but of how we can utilize referencing and cache to our advantage over the project.

spell head!

so going on my new method of using different pieces to make up the final spells, i have tried crafting the spell head. I was reasonably pleased with these results, i like the way it moves, but i dont think there is enough substance to the spell. i would like a higher level of detail, with a thicker overall body. This point has also been raised by my group, so i will be concentrating on this for the next few attempts