Monday, September 28, 2015

All We Are Is Dust In The Wind


Particle WIP! At the end of my story, my character turns to ash and dust in the wind, so I created this simulation as a proof of concept. Particles are birthed from the surface of my character based on an animated color noise, and the faces of my character are deleted when the red color value gets above a certain point. I added in a POP wind node with some swirl and turbulence just to add some movement. It's a decent start, I think. I need to continue exploring how the character's surface is eliminated, possibly with a clip SOP, and also need to add in some layered particles to make it look like my character is really made of ash and dust before blowing away. But definitely a good start.

Friday, September 25, 2015

Crumble WIP


Here's a WIP i've been working on of my crumble animation! As my character moves, her body falls apart on her, like a rock under stress. With this simulation, I tested out ways to trigger the shattering effect so that only the parts I want to shatter will be triggered. Though you can't see it, there is an expanding box in the scene that triggers the animation whenever a piece enters its volume. Debris particles are birthed when the shatter effect happens too. Now that I know I can trigger the animation when I want to, I can start fine-tuning it, working on smoke effects and art directing what the fractures will look like. Should be fun!

Wednesday, September 23, 2015

Particles, particles, everywhere!

I've been slowly working on my flow animation for thesis, messing around with different particle effects to get the swirling, slithering particles that flow beneath the surface of my tree. I came up with some cool stuff, and had a lot of fun doing it. Definitely learned a lot too. All of these were made in Houdini.