a tornado that develops into a building

[iC4]

I don't think that you will find a tutorial for the whole scene ;)

first I would make the basic tornado, without any objects in it

http://www.mtmckinley.net/tut15.html

and for making the building.....don't know a fast way to do this...maybe with some mel coding

the only idea I have is first build your house, then draw for every object a motion path and animate the object on the path

[KidderD]

I am certainly no expert... but it seems to me that one way of doing this is, rather that having the tornado build the building.. you could have the tornado destroy the building and then create your animation in reverse.. does this make sense?

[alexx]

how bout reversing the animation in post?

make your building and let it be ripped apart by a volume field.. top to bottom..

and in post just reverse it.. the it will have what you want..

hehe.. dont even think about doing it the other way around.. that sound like a headache :D

[show]

your best and most efficient method would be to destruct the building as previously said.

You could probably work out some sort of trickery to make these pieces dissapear in the twister and form neat palletes of stacked materials.

[d_jnaneswar]

Thanks people, for all your replies.

I have tried animating with motion paths with simple spheres, but it became too tedius as i have so many buildings to do it.

the demolition with the volume field sounds good, but i dint think of it as i never even tried it before. Thanks for that. I will do it this way.

I have figured out how to do a good looking tornado, so no probs with that. But the problem is with creating so many buildings. Some one told me that i can build buildings thru mel. And i want to learn how to do that.

I will clear up my purpose. I have a scene in which some sparks stir up magical twisters that build up all the buidings and wonders of the present world. I have to show a lot of buildings, (some thing like the time square) the taj mahal, the piramids, the statue of liberty and the french tower.
i dont know mel and so i cant script yet.
All help is boon.
Thanks once again.

[d_jnaneswar]

One more thing guys.
For the taj mahal and the statue of liberty, I thought of modeling them with nurbs and subdivs and then putting boxes all over the surface so that they look like pieces of the construction materials when they fly around and then as the twister disappears showing the finished building, i thought of showing the nurbs model(which i will add in the post).

Is there any script that i can use to create small boxes of slightly varying sizes all over a nurbs or sub-d surface?
and also, for adding different materials to different boxes based on their name?
That is, all the boxes whose names end in 9s ( like box-29, box-39) should get material from a particular shader and so on.

If you can provide me a simple script, it will be a great learning experience for me reading thru it.

Thanks in advance.

[Jozvex]

Err,

I hate to be negative, but the point of a demo reel is to show off the skills and knowledge you have, so that employers will hire you knowing the types of things you can accomplish.

If you make a demo reel using tutorials, scripts from other people and by getting lots of help, all that demonstrates is that you're skilled in following tutorials.

If you then get hired and have to create an equally difficult effect, what if there are no tuts on it?

You should make a demo reel demonstating YOUR abilities. Otherwise you could end up letting others and yourself down.

Sorry, I just had to say it.

[killer]

I wonder if locators would work, try placing them on each part of the house, then towards the end of the time slider, try aim/point contraint the location on where the parts would bulid up.

I dont know if that would work, but that what I was thinking lol.

[Provide]

Ask ILM .... :p

[killer]

Originally posted by Jozvex
Err,

I hate to be negative, but the point of a demo reel is to show off the skills and knowledge you have, so that employers will hire you knowing the types of things you can accomplish.

If you make a demo reel using tutorials, scripts from other people and by getting lots of help, all that demonstrates is that you're skilled in following tutorials.

If you then get hired and have to create an equally difficult effect, what if there are no tuts on it?

You should make a demo reel demonstating YOUR abilities. Otherwise you could end up letting others and yourself down.

Sorry, I just had to say it.

all he is asking is for a little help is that so hard. There is nothing wrong with reading tutorials, and so ****ing what if its from other people, it makes it easier to understand.

And another thing, why dont you make yourself useful and help the poor guy out, instead of sounding negative, this is a board of ideas and helping other people, learn that well.

[ACFred]

I think I have a couple of ideas for you, but I have some questions first that will help to better target the suggestions:

1) How close does the camera get to the "un-destruction" of the buildings?

2) Is there a storyboard and animatic? Could we see an example of the storyboard to get a better idea of what you're trying to accomplish? If you don't have a storyboard....what the hell is wrong with you man?!?! :P

3) Does the "un-destruction" occur all at once and quickly for each building or is it a slow buildup as the tornado closes in on the rebuild area?

That's it. My suggestions will follow once I hear back.....

[Jozvex]

Well actually I help people all the time, and I was trying to help here as well.

I just meant that tutorials are good for learning new techniques and for practice, but you shouldn't use them for your demo reel because then it's not your skill that created the work.

A newbie (not that I'm saying that he's one) could easily follow a step by step tutorial on creating a tsunami that wipes out the planet, but then if he gets accepted into a studio, they're gonna excpect him to be able create effects like that all the time, but he won't be able to. He'll be miss-representing himself.

No wonder you named yourself Killer, how fitting.

Anyway,

d_jnaneswar, I believe you can use the Script Paint feature to paint objects (like the various sized boxes you want) onto the surface of another object.

There is also a 'random material' script on Highend3D.com that applies selected materials randomly to objects (I'll find out the name of it).

And perhaps you could build your buildings, then make them into softbodies using the 'Make Copy Soft' method so that each 'flying' piece's goal is the same piece once it's come to rest. So the pieces fly around, then you animate the goal weights so that at the right time, the pieces will move to their correct building position (because of the goals).

It's just a thought anyway, sorry if my previous post upset you.

[Dimitrius]

Originally posted by Jozvex
Err,

I hate to be negative, but the point of a demo reel is to show off the skills and knowledge you have, so that employers will hire you knowing the types of things you can accomplish.

If you make a demo reel using tutorials, scripts from other people and by getting lots of help, all that demonstrates is that you're skilled in following tutorials.

If you then get hired and have to create an equally difficult effect, what if there are no tuts on it?

You should make a demo reel demonstating YOUR abilities. Otherwise you could end up letting others and yourself down.

Sorry, I just had to say it.

Don't be a clown. How else is a newb supposed to learn the program? By your logic he shouldn't even be using the manuals for Maya.

Besides, reading a tutorial and executing your vision are two entirely different things.

Don't make this a hostile place to post inquiries.

[d_jnaneswar]

Jozvex : I can understand what you mean. I am an intermediate in Maya, though I get around Max well. I did not do anything as a sort of demoreel or even tutorials in maya till now. I did my way around it and just got familiar with what it is. The whole point of this demoreel is to make it a learning experience and thats why I made it that difficult and that "feature rich" just to understand how to do things that are not straight forward in maya(by the way, i gave myself 1 year for this project). When i get tips from here, i am not applying them as they are, but i am practising them on different situations that i can think of. So, I think theres no problem to doing it as long as i dont use the exact same effect that tuts give me. I hope you get my purpose.
and by the way, the script paint does the trick, but i still have to test it more. and the softbody thing, i will check it out oafter learning script paint.



ACFred : Its not very close. just want to show a whole bunch of buildings rise up, its from a distance, but the camera has a 25 degree rotate around the buildings. U get what i mean? if you dont get it, i will put my storyboard up. (and by the way, since i dont have a scanner, making an anmatic means financial suicide! they charge so much here in Hyd(india)).

Thanks killer, people like you are necessary for the 3d world.

Dimitrius, you hit the nail on the head " Besides, reading a tutorial and executing your vision are two entirely different things."

God grace this forum, its of so much help!

[Nemises]

I hate to bring Max into this, but there may be a similar function in Maya..

In Max, you can select the object you want to destruct and make it a particle emiter, and then make the particles "fractures" of the object (ie, it'll break apart in a random fashion into a mesh of set thickness), then you can use your normal space deformers (wind/turbulence/vortex whatever) to swirl the particles around. (after making the end object invisible of course :) )

This would be best achieved, as everyone above has mentioned by destroying the house, and then reversing the animation in post.

YAY for particles and Dynamics!

[erakesh]

Hi d_jnaneswar

Where are you from? You are from India and maybe from Hyd or Chennai or somewhere. Ok I'm telling u this becoz most of the ppl down there are pretty good at using Max, like u :) They use Sandblaster plugin to get the stuff done in Max. For Maya it is ofcourse a different situation.

Like all roads lead to Rome, similarly there are many ways to achieve the results anticipated.:p Try to focus on the glass windowed or similar skyscapper for now. Later when you get comfortable with that, you can go ahead with the Tajmahal and Statue of Liberty or whatever :)

1. As our wonderful ppl here have told to go by the storyboard or camera angle. It would be great if you can decide that and them model a few (low-detailed based on visibility) pieces of construction material to create the building. Once you lay out all pieces to form the exterior. You can do the same for the interior. (Remember we will render the inner and outer seperately and composite later and blend colors) Then you can use the textures(switch method - Check the Maya help for the switch materials) to assign textures to the blocks. Now the big thing, Hide all layers (use layers to hide and unhide, interiors and exteriors), you can select all those blocks and convert them to rigid bodies and then animate it the same way you created the twister with particles, using fields.

Do some brainstorming on using Instanced Geometry to get similar results. :)

Start building a small and low detailed skyscrapper to test all this and then you could go ahead with the bigger version, if U are satisfied. Particles and MEL can achieve many results. But you have to composite later.

try this and let us know.

[d_jnaneswar]

rakesh, you from hyd?!? wow, how wonderful. :bounce: Im from hyd myself. Doing a job somewhere here? I would surely like to meet you. :beer: mail me at d_jnaneswar@bikerider.com.

Now to the subject,

What you told sounds good. I am experimenting with rigidbodies and fields for now. In this, I dont need to show any interior. Basically a shot from a "person standing" perspective standing a 100 metres from the building and one more helicopterview shot showing a lot of buildings coming up. and finally diff shots of different building tops getting together to finish the buildings against the sky and the sun. Got what i want to say?

And I am anyway planning to do the buildings one at a time and then do color correction and composite against the background.

getting thru it slowly with my pentium 2 333mhz and 256 mb ram. :eek:

[AtrusDni]

I dont know why people are getting pissy at Jozvex, but he is absolutely correct. Your demo reel should be about showing off what you are capable of creating.

Dimitrius - "Don't be a clown. How else is a newb supposed to learn the program? By your logic he shouldn't even be using the manuals for Maya."

Actually, thats not what he is saying at all . . . you couldn't be further from the truth. Jozvex is actually giving great advice, I dont know how many times we have sat down at my company and laughed our heads off when people submit nothing but tutorial demo reels. You can tell when people know what they are doing and when they do not. A demo reel should consist of your absolute best work, because that is what you are going to be judged from.

I dont want to sound negative to d_jnaneswar, but this is a farily complex shot to create, make sure you know how to do it well before putting it on your reel.

[Morlockis]

it sounds like if the word demo reel hadn't been used we'd be all good.

great suggestions everyone.

[orvski]

You can use MEL

Start with a simple building, maybe a house. Build it in pieces that you want to fly around like a tornado. Now with mel:
-Create an array that will store all the pieces original location.
-Take all that pieces and animate it over time like a tornado (math hint: sin, cos for getting the rotation effect) and when you want them to form into the building you want, use the original location that you saved earlier to calculate a trajectory from its current state (in the messed up randommed tornado look) into the finished state (the original location). That trajectory should be one that keeps the pieces rotating upto its final place..Unless you want them to just move into place in a straight line, which would look boring.

Sounds simple doesnt it? Its all about the math..

[XanderFX]

http://www.gnomononline.com/written.php?tutorial_id=41

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