Testing Fire and Cloth

One of the things we may use in the environment is cloth, either swaying in the breeze to populate the environment - for example hung up or on the doorway of the Mongolian's Yurt - or for his clothes. The above video is a basic attempt of practicing with cloth to get a feel for the settings, and then I followed this tutorial to make the cloth look as if wind is acting upon it:

Firstly took the cloth:

Then made it a softbody so that it will react to the wind:


I had to paint the softbody weight onto the cloth so that the force acted stronger at the bottom of the cloth. This is due to the cloth being held in place as it would on the Yurt.

Finally I used the expression editor in order to make the movement of the cloth more random rather than it all moving in exactly the same way at the same time, which is more natural.




This cyclinder is to show the positioning of the Yurt:


And here is the result:

Again experimenting with fluids to create fire:

I do not even know if these tests will be used in the final film depending on the direction and simplicity that the group decides to take, but I have found that I enjoy creating these kind of effects and hope that I can pursue it in the future. This would probably stand me in good stead for visual effects work, especially if I can combine it with a compositing package such as After Effects.

Blend Shapes: Marmot Update

Eyebrow shapes:


Expression shapes:
Cheeks puffed and thin:

Ok I had a bit of a problem when I tested them in Maya, because I used only the Marmot's head it said that the whole body could not be deformed by the blend shapes.



So... I had to have two versions of the Marmot, one without the body and one without the head. The blend shapes then worked on the head. And after I just combined the meshes to get one whole body... I just don't know how this will affect the rigging if at all

Marmot Problems

Ok so the Marmot does not have enough verts on it, when I smooth it, it becomes better but they aren't in a round pattern around the mouth.


I tried using curves to influence the face and as you can see there is not enough to make nice shapes...
So I went into Mudbox, which will be able to make the shapes really easily, but it says that there are some faces sharing more than one edge. I think this is where there are a couple of thick lines of verts in the head... I can do the facial shapes pretty easily if this can be sorted by the end of the week please

Photoshoped Pose

Trying to get our scroll style:

Mongolian Tests

Run Test, i've done this on 2s compared to 3s before. I know its really quick but I think this will be better rather than more of a jog.

Towards the camera:

Away from the camera:

And a quick test when the Marmot jumps on him, obviously it will be better with proper controls and more joints

I'm getting excited about animating the film now... go team! x

Mongolian mesh problem?

I quickly rigged the character with a very basic skeleton so I don't know if painting weights etc will help this, but when I moved the legs the mesh breaks. I dont know if it is worth making the clothes in cloth? I can look into this if you want? As the clothes are really low to the feet this may limit what we can do if they are rigged together

More Tests

These couple of videos are just tests with a different rig for inspiration for the Marmot's movements.

Untitled from Hayley Allen on Vimeo.

I have been looking into effects work as well this term, and I wanted to do a few more tests with water.

I also found this water dynamic tutorial on using Softbodies to make the wave movement:
http://legacy.renderfast.com/tutorials/water/

Playblast:


Render:


I do like the movement of this water, I think if I toned down the turbulence then perhaps it could be used. My only reservation is that there is not much detail on the surface and this may get lost in the style of film we are using for Snatched.

This could probably be rectified quite easily, but as I am party colour blind I am not the best person for the job. Perhaps a texture could be applied to the water to make it look more cartoony?


In this next instance, I used a cloud texture in order to create a more cartoony look, as I think this is more suitable to the look of our film and realistic water will not be needed. This will also render faster than using dynamics for example.





In order to make the water look like it is moving, I simply animated the texture. You can see the results below:





Playblast:

I tried adding a light to see how this would look. It is only a simple point light, but it would be interesting to see how different lights make the water look and changing the Opacity and reflection of the Blinn shader.

Playing around a little more:

I like the movement of the dynamics but the style of the texture test, so I decided to combine the two. I used the Softbody and turbulence in order to make the plane move, but then added the Cloud texture and played around with the colours (as I say I am not the best at this).

It may also be possible to make one of the colours black and use the Luma key in After Effects like I did with my render tests to hint at the water in the scene rather than having a block of colour like in these tests, but I will feed back to my Director before I do so. Combining this with my particle water test may also create some interesting results and add more depth to the environment.