Letterpress Skin

[d_k]

Hello Community,  ( I hope that's the right thread for this type of questions.)

 

in the course of my second year studies at the Animationsinstitut in Germany I'm going to shoot a short film showing the metamorphose of a man, whose skin turns into printing press letters.

 

Concept and references:

 

My skill set mainly covers Compositing and the basics of Visual Effects. So I thought to use a project with real deadlines to boost my 3D skills. For some time now I gradually familiarize myself with Houdini. Feels like doing some kind of 3D Compositing. Like it so far.  Now I definitively could need some help for the technical realization of the concept. Tutorials on the web are great, but don't cover this particular Effect. As can be seen from the images I want to randomly scatter letters across a surface. So far I experimented with displacement maps but I'm not sure if that's the right approach. 

 

I was told SOPs are the way to go.

Is it possible to randomly instancing geometry so they move close together without overlapping? 

And if that was the case, would there be a procedural approach to generate the different letters/symbols?  

 

Regarding animation:

I just want the transition to be animated. So we move from skin (live action) to roughly brushed plumb to the letters. Imagine the brushed plumb gets grooved and reveals the letters underneath.

 

 

Any ideas and comments are very appreciated. (By the way, I put in my head to finish this project somehow by the end of July.)

 

Thank you very much for your attention and interest.

 

Regards,

dk

Edited May 26, 2015 by denis.krez

[Georgie]

I'd make my displacement map in Photoshop/ Zbrush / whatever then in Houdini, I'd define a point attribute to use as a bias in my displacement shader.

 

You can animate that point attribute, define it based on a bounding box / velocity and so on ; even multiply it against a noise that changes over time.

 

I think making the displacement maps would be the tough part; what you need to do in Houdini is quite straightforward.

 

I've attached a very simple scene just to explain myself better. Obviously you can also blend between different surface models to get the metallic vs skin material as shown in the pictures.

 

Really cool project Can't wait to see some WIPs !

disp.hipnc

[pclaes]

In terms of getting the detail that you want, there is a shader technique called 'splatting' or 'splatter' - if I remember correctly. That is a bit more advanced, but not impossibly difficult if you have never done any shader work.

I think it is described in the advanced renderman book too.

Basically it takes a noise, reduces some of the precision of the noise - so it starts to look like an aliased mosaic grid and each value of the grid is assigned a different tiny texture.

Found a link here:
http://www.digitalartform.com/archives/2004/12/randomly_shuffl.html

 

Then combine it with some sweet layering:
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/AndreyMishkinis/20130716/196339/Advanced_Terrain_Texture_Splatting.php

 

[papicrunch]

Hi,

You can also scatter some points on surface, and in rendertime generate uv around them with the help of pcOpen and some math. I not front of my computer but i will try find my file.

Havd fun,

Thomas

[papicrunch]

here the file, I never finish the asset but you have the concept.

 

have fun

 

texturePC.rar

[dpap]

Thanks Tomas for your file. i don't know why but it  doesn't work for me 

 

And your digital asset appears empty , is this normal? I am using H14 btw

[papicrunch]

sorry you need this otl too ...

 

have fun

pa_texPc.otl

[d_k]

Hello everybody!

 

Thank you very much for your help. I wouldn't have come so far without your hints.

Just want to present you the current state of the project. I'm making very small steps. But at least they are steps forward I think.

 

 

 

 

The next step will be to work myself into ZBrush to create a proper displacement map for the top level.

 

 

I am learning a lot on that adventure. 

 

regards,

Denis

 

 

 

P.S: By the way should I move the conversation in the WIP Forum from now on or keep on posting here?

 

 

 

 

[michael]

looking good Denis

 

you can keep posting here or make a new thread on the WIP forum - just be sure to post a link in this thread pointing to the new thread...