astrofish
08-28-2003, 02:06 PM
I've been thinking about how best to go about animating things growing, specifically tendrils/tentacles growing out of an object. I don't have a problem making a model for any particular instant during the growth, but trying to come up with something that looks right and can still animate the growth seems more difficult.
As an example that most people are probably familiar with, take the water-tentacle from The Abyss, when it first emerges from the moon pool (though I guess that was done with a procedural model).
You could do this with point level animation, or maybe by stretching bones. If you wanted it to grow quite long in a single animation (no cuts) then you'd need enough geometry for the 'long' version, but I'm guessing that that would cause problems in the 'ungrown' state due to having a density of geometry which is too high for that shape.
It seems that a good solution would be to morph/pla between different 'poses' of the same geometry during the growth, but also to switch between different pieces of geometry at appropriate stages. I.e. low-complexity model morphed between small-medium, then switch to a more complex geometry model which then morphs from medium to large.
Am I making any sense, and if so does this sound like a reasonable approach?
Any other ideas about how to go about creating such an animation, where you effectively want to morph from one shape to another, but where the shape changes sufficiently drastically that you want different underlying geometry along the way?
Any thoughts welcomed...
Cheers - Steve
As an example that most people are probably familiar with, take the water-tentacle from The Abyss, when it first emerges from the moon pool (though I guess that was done with a procedural model).
You could do this with point level animation, or maybe by stretching bones. If you wanted it to grow quite long in a single animation (no cuts) then you'd need enough geometry for the 'long' version, but I'm guessing that that would cause problems in the 'ungrown' state due to having a density of geometry which is too high for that shape.
It seems that a good solution would be to morph/pla between different 'poses' of the same geometry during the growth, but also to switch between different pieces of geometry at appropriate stages. I.e. low-complexity model morphed between small-medium, then switch to a more complex geometry model which then morphs from medium to large.
Am I making any sense, and if so does this sound like a reasonable approach?
Any other ideas about how to go about creating such an animation, where you effectively want to morph from one shape to another, but where the shape changes sufficiently drastically that you want different underlying geometry along the way?
Any thoughts welcomed...
Cheers - Steve