Alterscape
10-11-2003, 02:46 AM
I need to generate an extreme closeup of a cel-shaded character's eyes welling up with tears, which then streak down her face, and a second shot in which a few teardrops fall from offscreen and make a tiny puddle on a tabletop. I've completed all the meshes for these scenes, including the rigged character, but I'm at a loss as to how to create the tears. I've played around with metaparticles, and they display a lot of the behavior I want, with two critical problems:
-I'm not sure how to simulate/emulate the effects of the tears running down the side of the character's face. I considered using a Path Follow force to make the particles follow the curve of her face, but this still wouldn't account for surface tension (particularly the way water drops tend to kind of 'hang' from surfaces until they gather enough mass to drip, and then drip all at once). I know I'll eventually need animated textures on the face to deal with the 'shininess' of damp skin, but that shouldn't be so hard to manage.
-metaparticles don't spread out when they land on a horizontal deflector/surface, the way water would in the real world. I've played with lots of bounce/chaos settings for my deflector with unsatisfactory results. Ideally, the force of new particles dropping from above ought to make the other particles spread out a bit, creating a pool, but it doesn't happen in MAX. If I slope the deflector slightly, they do sort of run downhill, but the actual deflector is a tabletop, so I can't very easily do this in the finished scene.
I'd appreciate guidance from anyone who's created a similar effect (eg: I'm pretty sure experience/info making water droplets on a windshield, etc, would be useful).
-I'm not sure how to simulate/emulate the effects of the tears running down the side of the character's face. I considered using a Path Follow force to make the particles follow the curve of her face, but this still wouldn't account for surface tension (particularly the way water drops tend to kind of 'hang' from surfaces until they gather enough mass to drip, and then drip all at once). I know I'll eventually need animated textures on the face to deal with the 'shininess' of damp skin, but that shouldn't be so hard to manage.
-metaparticles don't spread out when they land on a horizontal deflector/surface, the way water would in the real world. I've played with lots of bounce/chaos settings for my deflector with unsatisfactory results. Ideally, the force of new particles dropping from above ought to make the other particles spread out a bit, creating a pool, but it doesn't happen in MAX. If I slope the deflector slightly, they do sort of run downhill, but the actual deflector is a tabletop, so I can't very easily do this in the finished scene.
I'd appreciate guidance from anyone who's created a similar effect (eg: I'm pretty sure experience/info making water droplets on a windshield, etc, would be useful).