Visual Effects 2: Lesson 3

Visual Effects 2 (VEF2)

Lesson 3: Final

That's the Way the Cookie Crumbles!

My Video

This project was a little more free in what we we're

able to do. We could pick any program and attempt

any effect, as long as it wasn't one we had done before.

This is where I finally got to play with Viscosity in liquids.

I also did another fire in this one to add to the scene.

Research:

For this last project I decided that I wanted to try viscous liquids. Something I haven’t had the chance to play with before. It was interesting to see the different viscosity in liquids. The way they could fall into a pile and keep its shape for a few seconds before finally melting into each other and just becoming one large seamless pile with no evidence of the form is originally had.

We we’re shown in lecture how to make viscous liquids in Houdini, and at first I was going to as well because I had already been shown how to and it would make things easier for me. I was challenged; however, to try it in Maya instead and so I did.

It didn’t take long to decide just what to do when I came across a video of chocolate. It looked fun and meant I could make something a little fun. I created a tin and a crust in Maya with the goal of filling it by pouring in chocolaty goo. To add a layer to it I decided I wanted to try and add a fire to it afterwards to show a sort of baking process, and to also add more effects to the over all final.

Getting to the point of pouring a liquid from and object into the tin proved fairly easy, messing with the settings to get it to look thicker and gooier was a small challenge however.

Every reference of chocolate I found, both real and simulated, had a different consistency and texture as it was poured.  I had a hard time perfectly mimicking any of them, but in the end I think I got fairly close to a decent melted chocolate look, even if it looks like a really thick and blobby chocolate.

The second part was not hard to do, considering we had just done a fire in the first project. So I mimicked my original fire to create the flame beneath it. I know most ovens you don’t see a fire, but I wanted something a little more pleasing to the eye; and of course to have a second visual effect in the project as well.

For a small final touch I played with the textures a little. They’re all basic and simple but I worked with keying them. The marshmallows became darker and the chocolate became darker as well as losing some of its shine, almost like a brownie might look after baking. It’s nothing big just something to add the extra touch of watching this dessert being made.

References:

3D Chocolate: http://youtu.be/P6TcW4zRV7U

Real Chocolate: http://youtu.be/muQLv8MJ9FY

Blender Chocolate: http://youtu.be/Egkyj9Kzseg

Thick Chocolate: http://www.shutterstock.com/video/clip-5939429-stock-footage-hot-dark-thick-creamy-freshly-cooked-chocolate-pudding-poured-into-white-bowl-close-up-white.html?src=rel/1816022:2/gg

Cooked Marshmallow: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjK7mgNpZIFmdx1TeOjHQPdQVkmlsQoGnjvf8iHUZIjX4nqOpFjN3KP1T16YdN4mvj-mwPg4qhloCm8szlHwIe1YMI5PVZxi3LYv9tUNJbK4U2O40xNJ812Ggsy4IzHhbnMSAlzz0jKopbm/s320/DSC07832.JPG

Chocolate Color Change: http://youtu.be/ZfO3Xmpr6ik

Visual Effects 2: Lesson 2

Visual Effects 2 (VEF2)

Lesson 2: Houdini Pyro

Smokin'!

(Yea, not sure what's up with the Jim Carrey references this month)

My Video:

This was a tricky project, Houdini is still fairly new

to me and it's still scary to step into every time. 

This time I decided to do smoke instead of fire, Maya

sort of drained me of staring at a fire every day.

Specifically I wanted to make dry ice, the flowing water like

effect of smoke. 

It was fun to make, and not as hard as I thought it might've been.

I did however run into a fun issue of Houdini not accepting

textures correctly, causing my renders to be horrid eye sores.

So it ended up being just a nice black and white video.

I thought it added to the spooky effect personally.

Research:

For this project I decided I wanted to try smoke rather than fire this time; just to work with different settings and movement. After looking around at what type of smoke effect to do, that wouldn’t also need a fire with it, I decided that it’s Halloween time, why not do some ‘spooky’ dry ice effects.

It wasn’t really hard to find video and photo reference of dry ice, its all the same very heavy almost liquid flowing over the container. I also think keeping it light and wispy might be a challenge too.

Another challenge I’m going to have to put some thought into it’s the flowing direction, most the things we do, with smoke and fire, flow up. Dry Ice; however, flows up and then back down, while forming around the shape of its container.

So coming back, getting the feel of the wispy light smoke turned out to be fairly easy, however it’s taking a few trial and errors to get it to flow like I want. I thought maybe keying its direction would work. It would flow up to the lip and then right back down into the cauldron; it wouldn’t flow out and over the edges. Asking for help, it was suggested that I just make the shape over the cauldron and slightly larger than the cauldron lip. I wouldn’t have the flowing up and out motion like originally planned, but it would for it to flow down and around the object.

It worked, it now flows down about half way before dissipating off into the air, the spooky effect I was looking for. Now I need to set up lighting and texturing to really set a good feel to the whole thing.

References:

http://youtu.be/ygyD9jQxQ7Y

http://youtu.be/8aFLYNiHitI

http://youtu.be/GNeVl6rjqrM

Visual Effects 2: Lesson 1

Visual Effects 2 (VEF2)

Lesson 1: Maya Fluids Fire

Allllllllll Righty Then

My Video:

My Inspiration:

Sadly I could not get my fire to move as fast as his

and still look decent as a fire. Something I'm sure

I could still work on in my own time if I ever get

curious and really want to see it done.

The main point of this was to make a fire using Fluids

this time in Maya instead of particles. It's a tricky

monster with dozens of settings to effect just

how its going to flicker and dance. But it certainly

looks much more like a real fire than the particles did,

but I understand how rendering particles is a little nicer

on your machine. 

Research:

My initial idea when told we we’re going to be doing a fire project was a torch. The idea stuck with me and I couldn’t create another idea to get away from it. The first couple of references I thought of we’re the movies; Indiana Jones and The Mummy. I knew both had torches at their moments, but I had trouble finding a video reference that had focus on the torch for more than a second or two. That’s when the idea of Ace Ventura popped into my head. I knew the scene in the cave he had a torch, and the torch was an important prop in this scene so it would have a little better focus on it.

Also the scene gave me a bit of a fun challenge. In it he whips the torch back in forth in a furious manner, enough to make the fire make sound. So I thought it might be fun to try and mimic this scene. Not only getting the torch to look like a real torch but to see if the I can create a similar fast movement to make the fire react as it did in the video.

I found the video reference I was looking for, but seeing at the movie is a little older the quality wasn’t the best, so I found a short video of an unmoving burning torch, so I can at least see how the fire acts on a torch, I also understand that there are several ways to make a torch and all of the ways would for the fire to act differently. Considering I can’t truly tell what the one in my reference is, I’m treating all torches the same to possibly save me some time.

I also ran across a few videos of other people using Maya fluids to make fire, and grabbed one for a movement/ ‘thickness’ comparison, to make sure that my fire really does feel like fire and not too light or too heavy.

The biggest issue I’m afraid of running into is not being able to make the fire look real while it moves, considering I want it to move with speed not in a slow manner. We were shown how fluids get choppy when they move fast, and I want to try and get past that, if it’s possible. Also in the video reference the fire sort of fades out as it moves, its doesn’t stay as solid when the torch moves away from it.

I also debated between using Maya to color the fire or using the suggestion of post coloring it. I have been shown a few tricks to make the fire a realistic color in Maya, so I may decide to play with it for now to save me some time for this first project.

 References:

Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONUe58qtjjs

Unmoving Burning Torch

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a65Z08jHIGY

Short 3D Fire Reference

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAXs1F7vb6k

Character Animation II: Project 2

Character Animation II (CAN2)

Project 2: Sound Clip

Back In Style

Our second assignment, probably the most freedom

I've been giving on an animation project. Our

goal was to pick a sound clip from a group given

to us, and then decide what might be going on in this

scene and create our animation from there. The

biggest rule was to not pick a sound clip if you

knew what movie it was from, which made sense;

it was to keep our animation from being influenced

by the original scene. 

I pictured my scene happening in a really ritzy mansion,

but considering we need to keep our props to a minimum,

I just gave him a glass of wine, and then made the picture

frame on the wall to show a sense of taste in the character. 

I struggled a little with figuring out how to make his

attitude and sass really show through in this scene. 

But over all this project was more fun to animate because

it focused on getting the facial expressions to match the

timing of the sound while making sure that these could be clearly seen

even with the movement of the body.

Pre Pro

Exploratory

This one was harder for me to decide what so of angle I

could use to tell this story. But I certainly had more

possibilities in my exploratory poses, the ways I 

could do it; sitting, bending down, belittling using

height. 

Storyboard

Took a bit to narrow down what I really

wanted to do for this, and in the end the animation

differs from this, as I ended up using more 

poses that I had not previously thought

of.

Breakdowns

Understanding anticipation a little more

this time around, I think I was able to

do this better. Thinking on things like pushing

a pose to far just to settle back into the

pose I really want, just to add a little more life

to the character.

Software Technology: Research Project & Vehicle

Software Technology (STE)

Research Project & Vehicle

Feels like 3DF All Over Again

To start out this class was to open our eyes

to programs that weren't Maya, yet are

used to do the same things Maya can.

We were introduced to two programs,

Soft Image and Houdini. Both we're

strange to learn, though Houdini

felt a little like the crossbreed of Maya

and Nuke. While Soft Image just completely

messed with everything we knew about

modeling programs. I picked two projects to

showcase, one that used Soft Image and one

that used Houdini.

Research Project

Marble Machine:

This was fairly simple, yet there were still complications.

It took several aspects that we had learned with various

mini projects throughout the months and threw them

into a single concept. Only with this project we had to

fend for ourselves, no helpful videos or guides, just

new knowledge and the internet. I did this with 

a partner (groups were permitted); Alex Lempel.

The hardest part of the entire thing was figuring out just

how to make the marble interact with the other objects properly.

It was a matter of a couple of setting changes, but when you're

still learning you don't always know of these simple things.

In the video you can see that we still struggled with

getting the marble to run smoothly through

the coil, the teacher afterwards told us a few quick

ways to fix it for future issues. It was an interesting learning

experience, but it really helped with understanding Houdini.

Vehicle

1967 Chevy Impala

Considering two things: One, I've never modeled a car before

and Two, I've never touched Soft Image before; 

I think this came out fairly decently. It took me the entire month

to get this baby done, obviously struggling with the new program

as well as trying to keep good topology; it doesn't have the greatest detail.

Also I wish there was a smooth tool, if there is one I couldn't find it, 

inside the program to help this thing from looking like its full of dents.

And most people would, hopefully, be able to tell what

this was from just a glance. I might take this into a program

I'm more familiar with, like Maya, and polisher her

up to make her look a little cleaner and more complete.

I'm personally proud of this, considering modeling isn't my forte,

and think that its a great first car.

Character Animation II: Project 1

Character Animation II (CAN2)

Project 1: Pantomime

Everyone smile! -Blue Steel-

Our first real animation project since CAN1, which I struggled

a lot in. This time around I think I may finally have gotten the

hang of how to do a walk cycle. Our current teacher expresses

strongly how important it is for us to really understand how

to animate a walk. So while teaching us new things, like facial

expressions, she continues to encourage the walk.

This particular assignment focused on an emotion change,

and how to really express an emotion based on a certain 

senario, all while doing both a walk and the other fitting

actions for the scene. This was my second or third time 

doing a walk cycle this month, and I had finally

began understanding it; I think it shows too. I also

got to have fun with the rest of my animation by going

Looney Tunes style with my reaction. 

Pre-Pro

Exploratory

Showing my possible camera angles to try and get the

best out of my scene and actions. As well as testing a few

of the more extreme poses to see how well they could

be in silhouette.

Storyboard

The story boards didn't need to show the walk for more

than a couple of frames because she wanted to make sure we placed

in everything we need for the proper reactions.

Breakdowns

Showing any anticipation that we need to go from

one extreme pose to another to make it more interesting

rather than just going from point A to point B.

Visual Development: Lesson 4

Visual Development (VSD)

Lesson 4: Compositing

Oh how I missed Nuke

This project, was really fun and really simple. We needed

to render out our last project in passes with each light in

a different layer. Then we needed to bring them into Nuke

and relayer them together, all while giving any color corrections

we may feel are needed. I made my warm light warmer and more

orange in color, my cool light was given a soft blue color

similar to the sky. And my key light was made softer and less bright.

After all the color corrections were made we had to add

a vignette and a blur to it. There we're any boundaries, it was

all mostly to make us explore in Nuke and to really just have

fun with our project. So I made two renders, a more serious one

and then one that looks like it belongs on instagram. 

It was all fun and I loved being in Nuke again, its a program that

I understand with ease and was happy to be able to learn more

in it. All my changed were subtle but all of that adds up to make quite a

different image than what I started with.