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Crop Duster Over Cotton Crop


Allegro

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Hey there,

I'm working on a scene for my graduate film where I want to have a biplane passing over a cotton crop, and dropping pesticides onto it.

My problem, is that I know how to work with l-systems satisfyingly enough to build the cotton plants , and have them behave dynamically in Houdini.

I don't know how to do shading or lighting at all in Houdini

I'm not sure how to get the pesticides to look nice in Houdini, and had been thinking of doing them with fluids in Maya as I think I know them well enough to get the look I want.

I figured that I could build the plants in houdini, then bring them to Maya to light and shade them, and have the fluids there, but then I'm not sure how to make the plants act dynamically in Maya without rigging them there... which kind of defeats the purpose of doing it with l-systems in Houdini. And I'm not sure of an efficient way to texture the plants if I import them to Maya... since it'll be a crop and not just a single plant...

Anyone have any suggestions as to how I should approach this?

My leica reel, is http://www.allegromation.com/Anim/JANLeica.mov

I'm thinking that I should try to learn how to do the texturing and lighting... as I was thinking of doing the later on scenes of the blood cells in Houdini as well... but I'm not sure how I'll deal with the pesticides themselves if I do it in Houdini...

I'm lost

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You are faced with a real world dillema here... go with what you know, or learn what you don't....which is more important, deadline or edification...

First, I'm not sure what you mean by "dynamic" are you sending a bunch of lsystems into dops or do you mean you've structured the animation to react to a partilce system...

you say your considering maya fluids.. are you runninig a dual dual-core? otherwise that could take a very long time... unless you already have your settings down pat...

my first thought would be to get 1000 frames or so of animation you like in houdini, then take that duplicate it x amount of times and offset the animation.... it would be perfect if it was on 1000 frame loop. (you could probably get away with less, but it's your graduate piece right... last chance to go over the top)... build a vex shader and do some noise offset there too.. The idea of runing a dynamic simulation over such a vast space sounds ridiculous to me...unless your graduating in 2010, will anyone even notice that everything is reacting acurately? are you on a close up or is this a long shot or an establishing shot? is it a lock off or is the camera moving?

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You are faced with a real world dillema here... go with what you know, or learn what you don't....which is more important, deadline or edification...

First, I'm not sure what you mean by "dynamic" are you sending a bunch of lsystems into dops or do you mean you've structured the animation to react to a partilce system...

you say your considering maya fluids.. are you runninig a dual dual-core? otherwise that could take a very long time... unless you already have your settings down pat...

my first thought would be to get 1000 frames or so of animation you like in houdini, then take that duplicate it x amount of times and offset the animation.... it would be perfect if it was on 1000 frame loop. (you could probably get away with less, but it's your graduate piece right... last chance to go over the top)... build a vex shader and do some noise offset there too.. The idea of runing a dynamic simulation over such a vast space sounds ridiculous to me...unless your graduating in 2010, will anyone even notice that everything is reacting acurately? are you on a close up or is this a long shot or an establishing shot? is it a lock off or is the camera moving?

I actually bought one of the new intel quads that came out in November. The more I think about the shot though, the more I realize it's not worth doing in fluids as I think I'd need to use 3d fluids to pull it off properly...

I was going to complete the lsystem as a skeleton, then send though dops as a spring to animate it being dragged as the plane passes by... but I think I'll fake it reacting rather than actually having the different things interactive.

This is just one scene from my film, it'll probably be closer to 300 frames than 1000.

I think the camera will be moving ever so slightly, but nothing drastic...

My leica is http://www.allegromation.com/Anim/JANLeica.mov

still needs a little bit of adjustment overall, but I've got most of it in my head now.

Edited by Allegro
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the reason to have 1000 frames is to have enough to duplicate with out looking like it's all essentially the same animation. you can offset each one by by a random number, alowing you to animate 1 and copy that throughout... you could do the same things with dops, sim one and offset each one, even offset that actual chan value by a bit... alot faster then trying to deal with hundred plants...

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the reason to have 1000 frames is to have enough to duplicate with out looking like it's all essentially the same animation. you can offset each one by by a random number, alowing you to animate 1 and copy that throughout... you could do the same things with dops, sim one and offset each one, even offset that actual chan value by a bit... alot faster then trying to deal with hundred plants...

ah

that definitely makes sense I'll try to give that a shot. I was also going to use a few different random seeds on the plant so that I have a few different ones rather than the same one copied everywhere. I'll see how I can work that out with what you suggested

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  • 2 weeks later...

On superman returns , the kent farm sequence a combination of cg corn was used and cards same set up as you want. As for this a student film , I would get the main parts done and then later on you can revisit and add elements. I would not waste time on the triva add that later if you have time.

First off does the cotton plant wave around that much in a gentle breeze ? I would keep the camera low and tight , then you only need cg cotton for the close ups , which can gently sway , you could use a line SOP randomly placed from a grid, then using a sin wave , rand noise to get movement inside a copystamp SOP. Using an expression you could easily have the cotton swaying more at the top of the plant and no sway at the bottom.then all you need to do is attach your cotton l system and job done.Then use texture cards for the rest of the field.As the plane moves over you could just increase the values in the expressions at certain frame numbers.

For the plane get a free model , build your cotton L system //// I take it your buying that new cmi DVD. For the spray us a particle system.The secret is to keep it simple and manageable ....forget rigging a plant thats just to over the top as are maya fluids ...

Rob

Edited by rob
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