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animated character outlines


dan_j

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Hi guys, i'm a longtime xsi and 3dsmax user who's starting to find houdini's procedural work flow quite amazing. I'm about to start a project where i need animated ribbon style lines to flow and form the outline of a few animated figures at certain points, think the audi lines advert but with people! My question is is this something that can be done easily in houdini, if so which approach would be best as i know theres probably loads of ways i could do this. I'm not so worried about the flowing lines themselves (3d buzz technical effects is winging its way to me as i type this!) it's more the lines which will form the flowing outlines of animated geometry that i'm scratching my head over?? We're motion capturing the animation of the figures in a few weeks time, so i'm just weighing up which would be best to work in at present; xsi which i'm more familiar with or houdini, which i think will be quicker once i have done all my inital setup.

Many thanks

Dan

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Yes, Trail SOP is good.

I think it can be easily done in almost any package. I think the trick is work out the timing, number of curves, camera moves, etc... before the 3d. If that's not possible another measure of speed can be gained by rendering out all the characters first and then rotoscope the outlines (maybe with the same camera, maybe with a new camera).

Is this a student thing? a commercial? personal project?

Edited by kleer001
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Hi guys cheers for your input. This is commercial project for a high profile sports client of ours. The main feature of the concept is the organic feel and flow of the project, one contiuous series of lines flow to create one action which then go off to form another action at another point in the screen and so on and so on. However i setup the project also needs to be easily ajustable so that i can create other variations for additional shorter sequences??

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However i setup the project also needs to be easily ajustable so that i can create other variations for additional shorter sequences??

This is the beauty of Houdini. By procedurally building a network for your animation, you could in fact branch off different variations using randomness features. Also, you can go back and change which ever part your client wants to refine.

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This is the beauty of Houdini. By procedurally building a network for your animation, you could in fact branch off different variations using randomness features. Also, you can go back and change which ever part your client wants to refine.

This is whats really appealing to me, i think that houdini's procedural workflow will really benefit me on this type of project. I'm going to go for it, I'll post update as i go!!

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