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