Volcano

[J.Santos]

Hi all!

 

Ok, so I'm done with my Volcano!

 

If you want to see the steps given until this point, please check http://forums.odforce.net/topic/19175-one-effect-per-month-previous-volcano-eruption/

 

The video:

 

 

Like I said, there's lot's of stuff that could be improved on it however I do want to move on, try some other stuff and get some distance of this project. The more distance you get the easier it is to look at things with fresher eyes, spot mistakes, think of new ways to improve and so on... and the more you learn, the more you can improve on your project! So I wouldn't be too surprised if in a certain amount of time I end up doing "Volcano 2 - The final smokedown..."

 

Cheers!

[mawi]

Hey.

Dont know if you want any feedback since its placed in Finished work.

I´ll do it any way.

 

1. Lighting and shading.

 

Dont light it from straight above. Rotate your sun to a lower angle.

Take out that green fill-light(?) and replace it with a more neutral colored environment.

It looks like everything is rendered(playblast?) in separate layers without any interaction. ex, main plume doesn¨t cast shadows on mountain etc.

 

Start from there and then work your way forward, you got a really good reference for lighting in your wip thread.

 

2. Simulation

To me the extra elements looks a bit weird.

The flying stones seams to go in and out of emission. (Have a look at the noise tab on volume source SOP).

Im not getting the smoke that is being emitted at the mountain edge. There is non of that type of action in your ref.

Also have a look at the time shift. Now the sim goes like... Fast->stop->acceleration(wind to the left.)

 

 

Hope you can find time and motivation to pick up on this project again...

Edited March 1, 2014 by mawi

[J.Santos]

Hi Martin!

 

Of course I want feedback man! Always and as hard has it needs to be!

 

I see your points and agree with them!

The only bit that I wish to clarify/explain (but you're right anyway... I'm just telling you from where it came) is the smoke at the mountain edge... in a video reference I have there's a bit of smoke/dust being kicked up by the eruption...

The wind to the left bit is a two-folded issue... it is a custom wind force acting on the smoke plume but is also me playing around with the speed of the plume... in Houdini, but now that you mentioned time shift and so on I just had an idea... why not slow it down in comp??? Again, this has to do with the video reference! In it the main smoke plume starts with a certain speed/power and then has it gets bigger, the main body feels slow but inside it the swirls and so on are fast... don't know if I make much sense?

 

In the beginning I was only going to do the main smoke plume but then decided to add in extra details to make it a bit more realistic... so I added all that stuff.

Looking back now (the distance is starting to kick in and your feedback helps), the secondary stuff shows that less work and thought was put into them... this is a 1 month project but yes, some stuff could have been improved!

 

 - Smoke at the base would probably be best achieved by using some particles being birthed from around the edge as the smoke plume rises but then dying out WAY sooner, instead of going all the way to the end...

 

I don't know when I will (if) pick this project again because at the moment I'm already trying other stuff and due to HDD space constraints I need to clean it every time I start a new project... so this means having to write out a lot of bgeos the next time I pick it up... But I'm thinking about buying another HDD so I might be able to re-do it again!

 

Thanks again for your time and feedback!