djorzgul Posted January 6, 2007 Share Posted January 6, 2007 Hello to all. I have to make some very important decisions regarding the technique I will use for 1 min animation I have to make in my school (it is La Poudriere, animation school in France). 25th of January is a deadline for presenting projects for approval, and till then I have to finish/polish my script (the theme, by the way, is the whole world is upside-down), show sketches for characters, props..., and explain the technique I plan to use. And this is what I was thinking about. Those two links are to illustrate my idea, they are two Aardman commercials for Robinson Milk that were my initial inspiration: 1st 3mb, quickTime 2nd 7mb quickTime I contacted Aardman and the director of those commercials Scott Playdell-Pearce to ask if they can help me a bit with my research and the answer I got was very helpful in one way, and very in other. As I thought they used combination of fluids and particles in Maya with a LOT of scripting. Basic work flow was to use rendered frames to drive fluid simulation in 2d fluid container, mix with particles, forces... and with a lot of compositing in the end. I did few tests to see how things will work for me, and first problem I had/and still have is my lack of knowledge of mel... So, since I learn for some time bit by bit to work in houdini, I thought to ask you people do you have some ideas if this kind of effect would be possible to achieve in houdini, and how.... Because if it is, and if you can help me by guiding me through the process I would prefer spending my brain powers on houdini then on maya scripting... One of the first problems I stumble upon is efficient way of loading image sequence into the fluid container. The script I found on net (written by Duncan Brinsmead) has some strange behavior of not loading all the images sometimes, and sometimes unloading them when scrubbing the time line... so... as I said I'd have to re-write parts of it, and in general to mess to much with mel... and I simply don't know how to do it... These are some tests I made yesterday... nothing special, but for me enough interesting for the beginning. I did a small animation and rendered it in black and white so I can use it as a density map. I'll stop here with hope that this will be interesting enough for you to participate. Thanks in advance Djordje p.s. I posted the same question on side fx's forum just in case (disclaimer note: I uploaded them to my googlepages just because it could be a bit more time consuming to find them on Aardman site, and since this is purely for educational purpose I hope this won't be a violation of copy rights in any way. However originals can be found here: Aardman Animations among mr. Scott Playdell-Pearce's works. All credits goes to Aardman, and two links to my googlepages must not be re-posted or used in any way than the one I described in my post. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JohnnyBlaze Posted January 6, 2007 Share Posted January 6, 2007 Hi! Some time ago on CGTalk there was a discussion about the "Robinson Boogie" commercial and one user - Jared Martin - did a quick scene in Maya where he used curves as fluid-emitters, built a simple character from that and then simply animated the curves around. Looked pretty much like the commercial and it's a very fast way&simple way to do it. You can read all about it HERE. Maybe the method can be applied in Houdini in a similar way ... or you do it in entirely in Maya Hope that helps. Greets Christopher Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djorzgul Posted January 6, 2007 Author Share Posted January 6, 2007 thanks, great link... I just did some testing with emitting from objects and it looks very usable in fact... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djorzgul Posted January 11, 2007 Author Share Posted January 11, 2007 ok. little update... I am a bit because I got just one reply and 93 viewings... I suppose my question was not well defined, or interesting... basically I wanted to discuss about possibilities to do this look in houdini because if I have to choose how I will spend my time and energy, on learning programming in maya or learning houdini, even if it is harder... I'd go down the houdini path... anyway since nobody suggested anything, and since the fluid thing is way to complicated/mel and I'd spend too much time on technicalities instead on story and performance (we have 90 days to finish the film), I will go with a different look of the film... more texture'n'lightning based... however I will use some chops effects with audio driving some maps and blend shapes... so houdini is still in the game... As soon as I begin with a production I and as soon as I make something, I will keep you updated... respect djordje Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marc Posted January 12, 2007 Share Posted January 12, 2007 Sorry you didn't get a response . It's a tricky thing, and pretty specific so it's hard to just jump in and give some quick answers. I know alot of us here are pretty slammed in production right now. It's a pretty cool effect you're going for though, I'd definitely love to see any updates you might have. Cheers Marc Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
3dbeing Posted January 24, 2007 Share Posted January 24, 2007 I really don't see how you would acomplish the same look in Houdini, unless you got houdini 9, of course you could go the particle route and do some complex bluring, but that look really screams fluid sim. Not to mention, if you only have 90 days and 1 person working...Hope you've got some serious proc power, or get it right on the first pass. If I were to attempt it using the current build of houdini, I would go the particle route and use r g or b on my images as destination map for the particles, as the img approaced 1 not only would particles move faster tword "becoming" the shape, but the shape itself would start emiting particles... Not all particles should hit the shape, about 30% should overshoot and try and return, as this happend the old img would start going to 0 color and the new img would approach 1.... once you have this working well on 2 static imgs you would then be able to easily move to more img's including animated ones....keep the particle count fairly low in the begining... i'd say 1-2 thousand will be able to let you know if it's working or not, but this will yield far more itterations than trying to do the same thing, even in a 2d container in Maya fluids, with houdini once you have the concept working concrete you can just keep layering the complexity to your hearts content... Hope this helps.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sibarrick Posted January 24, 2007 Share Posted January 24, 2007 Just as another completely different idea, have you looked at totally faking this in cops? It probably can't be pushed as far as a fluid sim, but might produce something interesting... cop_deform.hipnc Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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