Energy Effect animation

[Unearthlywhales]

Hi everyone,

 

This is my first post on here so I apolygize in advance if I placed it where it should be or anything.

Currently I have been given the oppertunity at school to work on a single project, alone, to specialize in a certain field. 
The end goal of my specialization is to have a visual fx shot ready for rendering basicly, with 1 frame composited. I wanted to create an energy effect which displays a short burst erupting in existance leaving a sunlike sphere in the middle which gets more powerful over time until it eventually implodes and sucks the camera and all flying matter inside.

To get to the point, the energy effect in the center has to suck up these tiles. I want to animate them in a way that they are ripped off the wall original shape and they start floating in the air. This should include any collisions(which will be a problem with a pointvop?). After that they should start rotating around the center.

I have created a basic test scene with the shape for the tiles. And tried to add veloctiy with a trail sop. After that I figured I could animate the points with a PointVop.
My experience with vops is still very limited and I am trying to learn it in a short amount of time wich can be frutrating when doing any non-basic math has been over 8 years ago.

the first image is the basic setup.
The second image is with the "AnimationVOP" not bypassed.

So the tiles seem to change rotation in a what could be cool if animated but they don't seem move or do anyting. I figured the turbulent noise, which is on it's basic settings, would drive the points.
What am I missing?

Greetings,

 

Remco

[iamyog]

As far as I understand from your screens, you are setting velocity on a static mesh. If you want points to move you need to update their position over time, not their velocity.
H allows you to specify any value you want in the velocity while the point are behaving completely differently. Not realistic but not a problem as it is just values (attributes) stored per point.

If you were using dop networks and doing any kind of simulation, the velocity would be taken into account to modify the point position but at the moment you are only working at sop level, which means you need to manually update the P attribute.
If at later stage you need to get the corresponding velocity, for motion blur purposes, you can lay down a trail sop as you did to compute the correct velocity values.

In your case, if you want your turbulence noise to drive the animation, you need something that change over time, if not, anything you plug in the noise, will output one result.

First, change the output from v to P and see the difference.
Then, some example solutions :
• you have access to "frame" from your geometryvopglobal, this can be plugged into the offset input of your turbulent noise to offset the noise over time. Pace will probably be way too high so you'll need to multiply the frame number by a low value (like 0.01) to slow it down before it enters the noise.
• you can create a parameter in the attribVOP, it'll appear on the attribVOP itself (up one level) and keyframe it over time. Use this parameter in combination with anything you want to vary the noise over time.
 

 

But in reality, if you want to do your whole effect with collisions and complex animation behaviours, you might want to try not to do that entirely manually in an attribVOP and have a look at Rigid bodies, particles and so on. It might take a bit longer to get it but you'll have easier control afterwards.

[Unearthlywhales]

As far as I understand from your screens, you are setting velocity on a static mesh. If you want points to move you need to update their position over time, not their velocity.

H allows you to specify any value you want in the velocity while the point are behaving completely differently. Not realistic but not a problem as it is just values (attributes) stored per point.

If you were using dop networks and doing any kind of simulation, the velocity would be taken into account to modify the point position but at the moment you are only working at sop level, which means you need to manually update the P attribute.

If at later stage you need to get the corresponding velocity, for motion blur purposes, you can lay down a trail sop as you did to compute the correct velocity values.

In your case, if you want your turbulence noise to drive the animation, you need something that change over time, if not, anything you plug in the noise, will output one result.

First, change the output from v to P and see the difference.

Then, some example solutions :

• you have access to "frame" from your geometryvopglobal, this can be plugged into the offset input of your turbulent noise to offset the noise over time. Pace will probably be way too high so you'll need to multiply the frame number by a low value (like 0.01) to slow it down before it enters the noise.

• you can create a parameter in the attribVOP, it'll appear on the attribVOP itself (up one level) and keyframe it over time. Use this parameter in combination with anything you want to vary the noise over time.

 

 

But in reality, if you want to do your whole effect with collisions and complex animation behaviours, you might want to try not to do that entirely manually in an attribVOP and have a look at Rigid bodies, particles and so on. It might take a bit longer to get it but you'll have easier control afterwards.

Thanks for the help iamyog I see what the issues are now. I am going to try to use rigid bodies particles etc to get the result if it makes it easier.