itriix Posted April 22, 2009 Share Posted April 22, 2009 (edited) Hi everyone, I've decided to do an uber post... I would like to introduce you to my current project by showing you some concept design, live action footage, and then my current tests... A disclaimer though... These have been highly compressed to fit on here. These are far from perfect, however, they are just my experiments, trying to understand how to play around in houdini. After that i'd like any feedback, good and bad. I would like to discuss workflow suggestions such as... am i doing things correctly in reguards to my workflow... *i'll post some hips*, are there more efficient methods i should be doing or thinking about? I'm having many layers of effects for this one energy trail, and that begins to confuse me a bit on WHAT the best method for setting up my scene in reguards to this is... also, it starts to get tricky when i think of how to break up my effects and their components into correct layers for compositing later... and also i'd like to talk about my lighting and shading of my effects... good approaches plus warnings also for trying to accomplish my particular look. I understand renderman, and i used to be a wild mental ray guy in maya - but then of course, when i played with houdini, that was pretty much my last look at maya I feel somewhat comfortable with houdini now, except for cops, chops and vex... but i need to get better with them for "efficiency, control, and shaders" SO, my project is the "Nike Soul"... a girl is enjoying the day, she looks at her watch, stands up... and then, takes off running. I want her to then essentially dissintegrate into a "crazy" pile of effects... *refer to my concept art*... NOW, after trying over and over again to accomplish some of these effects in houdini, getting it to match my actual concept art has proven INSANELY difficult for me at my current level of houdini skills. so i settled on getting something that resembles this. I'd would love suggestions on HOW I could accomplish this exact look.... Alright, so i'll start by uploading my test shots just so you know where i stand. and then we'll start from there. I really hope everyone will join in and turn this into a great learning experience for not only me but everyone else beginning in houdini. Cheers! Jonathan jonathan's current proj Edited April 23, 2009 by itriix Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
itriix Posted April 22, 2009 Author Share Posted April 22, 2009 my movie is 11 megs... seems like it works when it uploads but when i submit my post, it doesn't show up. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stevenong Posted April 22, 2009 Share Posted April 22, 2009 I don't know if your thread should be in Effects forum, I think it belongs in the Work In Progress forum. If the movie still doesn't show up, please PM me & I can send you login info to my ftp server if you want. Cheers! steven Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
itriix Posted April 22, 2009 Author Share Posted April 22, 2009 (edited) Alright I just PM'd you. Thanks for the help! And I can for sure move this to the WIP section. To be honest, it slipped my mind that there was a WIP section here! It's just habit that i'm always reading the effects section. Plus, this project is pretty much just "one super" effect.. Thanks again, J Edited April 22, 2009 by itriix Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Posted April 23, 2009 Share Posted April 23, 2009 Hi and welcome to odforce. I like all the visual experimentation you've gotten up to over there. I'm going to take another look at this tonight or tomorrow and ask a few more questions:) Take care, Jason Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
itriix Posted April 23, 2009 Author Share Posted April 23, 2009 (edited) Thanks! Actually, I just thought of something else that might be good to show. This is my "animatic"... storyboard format. however, my idea has taken a turn towards the "current" stylized energy vortex... instead of... i'll let you watch the animatic first... reasons I chose to go the "current" way, is because of time. There were other elements involved with the "old approach" that I just didn't want to deal with right now. Some other time maybe.. I had some great ideas for that direction also! But for the sake of this topic, i'd like to focus more on the direction i've chosen to go in now. But I definitely will gladly hear anything you have to say! Click here!!!! Edited April 23, 2009 by itriix Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
itriix Posted April 23, 2009 Author Share Posted April 23, 2009 (edited) Some issues i've been tackling: 1. Trying to get a couple good masses of "particles" to twirl around one another like in my concept art. I've tried, creating a particle curve path that is born from the center point of the girl running... using an add sop after the pop net to make the curve. then i attach a point sop, give it some forces and then plug all of this into my second input of my MAIN popnet, where the particles are being birthed from the running girl. After that I tried using the attractor with that particle generated curve as it's main source. everything I tried, wasn't working well. That's what sent me to looking for other approaches. Well I saw the ORBIT POP, so i tried to play with that. BUT then I just got super perfect circle. I added noise, and began to get something a little more interesting. But still, not what i was going for. I could get essentially 2 or 3 NICELY intertwining sections of particles. 2. A little lost in VEX land... It definitely was quickly obvious that I need to use a lot of VEX, if i want to get this kind of look... the amount of control seemed quite worth it. but i'm super new to all the vex goodness! and so, i've slowly started tredging through it and i see it's POWER! however, i'm still super duper low level experience in it! So I guess this isn't much of an issue for someone that can directly help me instead of just me getting more experience at vex 3. Shaders... In particular, I wanted to have this electrical, self illuminating, "in a vaccuum" essentially... FLUID, looking, ENERGY looking, PARTICLE looking mass... and very organic, and electrical at the same time. so basically there were many looks and feels that are all interetwined in one. so right away i worried about RENDERING! I thought that this could be very bad, if i turn on raytracing, and refractions, reflections... bla bla bla bla.... and then click RENDER! haha... i knew there just is no way i'm going to get something super efficient unless I really thought about how to accomplish it. So of course, I began thinking about reflection maps. and turning off raytracking, or setting a very low number of rays. and then, all of the rendering stuff behind houdini! ... that kind of took me for a loop for a bit. so now, i'm pretty open... WHATEVER suggestions anyone has i'd love it so much... because there are just so many things to think about. 4. PASSES... I noticed not only i am going to need control in the comp, since there are so many layers... well i've watched some videos on how to break out passes.... but then i ran into some issues trying to break out VELOCITY information, and get that into a comp, and actually be able to use it. i've read many of the posts but I just can't seem to get anything to really work. not sure what i'm doing wrong. SO that's just velocity, but an even larger question I had was... WHAT passes exactly woudl be good for me to have? I mean... I get lost thinking about all of the possible passes, when there are so many layers on top of the one effect. it's not just breaking it up into, spec, diffuse... etc. but more like, all of those passes for each effect... but then i get lost on the HOLD OUT... getting the correct MATTES for the layers. so, yeah, that's kind of one big issue i'm thinking about, so i diverted my attention back to other stuff for now! 5. OVERALL the experience has gotten me to start thinking about organization... and how i should set up my actual scenes. as of now, i had many hip files, one for each kind of test. now, i'm starting to work all in the same hip... which means i'll just have to copy and paste a bunch of nodes back and forth to my newer hips at the end. HOWEVER, sometimes, i noticed that i just create ONE GEO node, and then jump in and do everything possible inside there... i mean is that not good? haha... i know it's easy to say, whatever works.... well sure, it might "kind of work" but i'm more curious if there are BETTER ways I should be organizing my files. especially in the example of THIS project. Right now it's pretty much just a mess of multiple things... So i'm looking for a suggestion on: So I guess NODE structure is what i'd like to know about in reguards to this particular project..... 6... LIGHTING/SHADING/RENDERING... so, this project has gone the route of a self illuminating BEAST... well, i kind of ran into problems trying to get this thing to SELF illuminate. In maya I would just use incandescene. But everything i've looked for in here, has pointed towards not really any kind of incandescence in houdini. i think i'm definately missing something. i've read some of the posts, here and there, but nothing SIMPLE popped out... i will definately go back and re read some of them. it seemed mainly i'd have to get back into some more VEX goodness! haha... BUT, i'm just thinking. if i have a layer of energy, and "surrounding" that layer of energy, i have a "liquid" surface, and surrounding that" i have a "whispy, particle dust" layer... I need the "energy" inner core layer to SELF illuminate this thing. So then you'd see the liquid as glowing from the inside out... plus the streaks of "electricity" i want to have "illuminate" as well! And, i'd also like the "LIQUID" looking water, to not only look like fluid, but to somewhat "glow, or radiate some light", this could just be the light transmiting from the "inside" energy, and plus the outside energy trails, but yeah i get very lost trying to think about how to do the shaders to get this to ILLUMINATE... without lights in the scene essentially. Am I going by this the wrong way? what do you think? So that's it for now, my fingers need to get back to Houdini. Thanks, Jonathan Edited April 23, 2009 by itriix Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Posted April 23, 2009 Share Posted April 23, 2009 .. reasons I chose to go the "current" way, is because of time. Heh heh, this reminds me of that old-but-classic Alias animation called "The End" (by Chris Landreth). The characters ask why they don't have any ears, and the answer is "stylistic streamlining", in other words: they ran out out of time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
itriix Posted April 23, 2009 Author Share Posted April 23, 2009 (edited) Heh heh, this reminds me of that old-but-classic Alias animation called "The End" (by Chris Landreth). The characters ask why they don't have any ears, and the answer is "stylistic streamlining", in other words: they ran out out of time. haha. exactly! "good ol' stylistic streamlining"... cool anim btw Jonathan Edited April 23, 2009 by itriix Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
itriix Posted April 25, 2009 Author Share Posted April 25, 2009 i'm glad to say i just finally had one of those moments where the "VEX" world finally clicked! i'm very happy! just thought i'd share! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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