pclaes Posted January 31, 2009 Share Posted January 31, 2009 Hi guys, Im currently working with a few other students on a short cinematic involving two rogue characters on top of a roof looking out over a city. They face each other, take a quick leap up into the air and transform into raven in mid-air. We're with several people, I'm responsible for the transformation effect and the feathers of the raven. So far I've been doing some initial tests in Houdini figuring out the different elements I would like to use. The animated geometry of the characters is coming from Maya, from there I basically plan to use that as the source for the effects. The effects will then be composited in with the rest of the environment. The project website is this: http://www.ravencinematic.com/ Any suggestions on how to approach the transformation effects or just general comments are very welcome. Or if you have seen other inspirational videos, please share them. General effects inspiration is from the Neverwinter Nights 2 trailer were the evil guys' sword gets formed: (at 1:01) http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=uWwgejJrahQ Also the bamf nightcrawler effect that has been reconstructed here on odforce. I'm hoping to advect some particles with fluids and get a tornado-like swirl going around the torso and the limbs of the character. I'm a bit fuzzy on the exact way of achieving this. I'm thinking metaball force with some radial/torque force assigned to it. Since the characters are jumping in front of the moon I would like to have some of the moonlight coming through the smoke (godrays). I wonder if it is easier to do that in compositing or perhaps use that volume based technique that was shown in one of the recent fluid masterclasses on sidefx website. I've been experimenting with using geometry with a modified x-ray shader as well to get a bit more fine detail in there, but I'm unsure if the shadows are coming through correctly. I've basically used the lambertian light equation stored in a point attribute which I use in my vop network to multiply it with the x-ray opacity and color. When I also turn on velocity motionblur I get a bit of noise in my shadows. I can turn up the shadow softness, but that blurs out the wispy detail in the shadow. Looking forward to any suggestions. Thanks, Peter smoke_detail_04.hipnc Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pclaes Posted February 20, 2009 Author Share Posted February 20, 2009 Little update: Currently working on the Raven feathers for the piece. I'm probably going to rig and skin a polygon patch for each wing and the tail wing in Maya so the animators have a bit of control over it. Then bring the patch into houdini and extract curves from it. Use those curves as the base for the feathers with some resampling and some ramps to control the length of the feathers. Most likely the feathers will be deformed planes with textures because actual geometry will be too heavy. I've used a procedural city/garden generation tool to scatter the background buildings. I attached the otl, some images and a few example maps the tool can use. I've been working a lot on getting all the data working between XSI, Maya and Houdini. A bit of rigging and skinning in Maya, so the blendshapes for the faces of the characters and the hand controls work with the mocap data for the body. We've got about two weeks (full-time) till deadline, so it will be quite intense to get it finished as good as possible. Any comments are always appreciated. pclaes_city_otl.zip maps.zip Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
michael Posted February 20, 2009 Share Posted February 20, 2009 I did a raven a while back for a TV movie - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1019431/ one thing that made it much easier was to NOT put feathers on the body but to use textures/shading to give it a feathered look... also if you can, construct your shots so you don't have to fold the wings down onto the body... looking forward to more Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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