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mmoses00
09-19-2003, 11:30 PM
Well! A breakthrough at 12:26am last night!

A few more tweaks and this will be "production ready".
This is just a mockup to get the motion down correctly.
The scene needs water particles, lighting, etc.

Check out the real moon jelly reference footage:
http://jrscience.wcp.muohio.edu/movies/jellyfishC99.mov

Against my 2nd attempt at CG jellyfish:
http://www.fxtutorials.com/special/MoonJelly2.mov

I really appreciate the feedback on using animated splines to deform the mesh.

I actually used a simple spline deformed over 600 frames with a wave modifier on the ends and a bend modifier on the body.
This is lathed to make the jelly body.

The KEY to realism was the tentacles. These were made using Shag:Hair 1.0.16

Shag :Hair was my first choice since it is a shader (ie. no geometry) which makes it attractive for use in a separate particle system (eg. school of jellies!)

Shag:Hair allows you to easily create "hairs" (tentacles) that emanate from vertices and have their XYZ orientation/pivots located AT THOSE VERTICES! This basically means that when the jelly body deforms up down, so do the tentacles.

The other cool thing is that Shag:Hair deals with its own gravity space warp. This allowed me to keyframe negative G's when I needed the tentacles to lift overhead and also to create the illusion of floating in water.

Lastly, Shag:Hair was perfect because when the calculation for the hairs is finished, it STAYS with the model!


Thanks all!

Feedback@fxtutorials.com
mmoses00
09-19-2003, 11:53 PM
This animation is just a mockup. I am trying to correct the movements.

I need to add the "leafy", gel like underside pieces. I will probably use flex or Reactor softbody across the whole mesh -

This can be done when you consider that tentacles are not really geometry - so they will not be affected.

Also need proper lighting and water particulate matter added to boost realism.

feedback@fxtutorials.com
mmoses00
09-19-2003, 11:59 PM
The codec onmy .MOV is Sorenson3.
The file is 2.01MB - Should download quickly.
Res is 720x480 NTSC 29.97fps

I hope people can view it correctly. It is much darker on a computer display than on an NTSC monitor.

mmoses00
Joss
09-20-2003, 05:01 AM
damn, you did a good job mimicking the original movie of it!

that Shag Hair did the trick alright!

so are you going to do a whole school of them?
mmoses00
09-20-2003, 07:09 AM
Thanks.

I am using this for a compositing/animation effect.
The shot is basically a set design.

I have been experimenting with compositing DV footage with CG elements. The jellyfish will be in a school of about 12-20 along with about 100-150 fish, probably 5 types.

The shot opens with an aquarium view room and slowly dollies in and pans around to see the different sea life. - lasts around 40 seconds.

I have completed some fish schools swimming by and finished doing some test camera tracking with Matchmover 2.5. This camera tracking data is loaded into MAX 5.1 so I get a near perfect match of CG with DV footage.

This is all layered up and Color Corrected in Discreet Combustion.
A great AE/combustion plugin called Trapcode Shine can be used for awesome "fake" underwater lightbeams effect.

The results of all this I hope be of high quality, production-level visual effect. I also plan to share my scene files and tutorial on how the effects were done. !!!

Feedback@fxtutorials.com

""We are the music makers,
and we are the makers of dreams." - Willie Wonka
mmoses00
09-20-2003, 07:21 PM
Cmon... give me some more feedback.... :)

THX
bobzilla
09-20-2003, 07:56 PM
OK, so it's not just me. It IS difficult to get feed back at CGTalk.

I think you did a great job. It looks very much like the original. The movent of jellyfish and squid, even, must be very difficult to replicate. They both have that "hurry up and wait" type of movement. They kind of go off in fast bursts, then go in slo mo, then speed up again.

Maybe a little more of that rippling effect I see more in the original footage, other than that, pretty dead on!
mmoses00
09-20-2003, 08:12 PM
Yes.. I agree on more subtle flowing motion.

This anim was really for the tentacle movement test.

I plan on redoing the "pulse-cycle" and throwing the whole mesh/anim on a Sandblaster emitter - ie. school of 10-12 jellies.

Digimation Sandblaster - another one of my favs.
It's just simple... I have done some very realistic schools of fish with it.
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