Chinese Garden

Hi all, it's been a while since i posted anything of my personal stuff.
but lots of things happened recently, and i hadn't had any inspiration.

i started to explore the world of Houdini, and been following lessons, books etc...
and came up with and idea to try out to slowly apply those skills on practice.
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Initial Concept:

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  Generate a 3D environment from the reference footage. Focus on creation of realistic and
  believable renders supported by FX.

• 
  To unitize Maya for creation of general base geometry, UV and texture maps as well as prototype for the render.

• 
  Create general template geometry to help with further development in Houdini.

• 
  Once base modeling and prototyping is complete, transfer generated assets to Houdini to develop additional geometry, that can present ability of procedural modeling and texturing.

• 
  Incorporate vegetation following tutorials from SideFx website.

• 
  Research dynamic vegetation growth and generation using L-Systems(or alternatives)

• 
  Discover and learn the procedural rendering pipeline available using Mantra-Render-Engine.

• 
  Generate fluids using Houdini's flip-solver, by creating simulated rain, pound and fluid-sculpting systems.

• 
  Explore the possibilities of the particles system to generate ambiance.

• 
  Generate particles of dust/debris floating in the air, small insects(over the pond/in the alleys)

• 
  Experiment with Houdini's dynamics system and fracturing algorithms in order to simulate destruction(collapsing walls, water in pond reacting to collision).

• 
  Experiment with texture animation (aging - to use aging effect to simulate the rusting metal)

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The reference images are from my trip that we(my family) took in march, to Hamilton Gardens. (see link for details: http://hamiltongardens.co.nz/ / )

You can see the video and some images that i took there for my reference:
Youtube:
unfortunately video is not all that great. My lady suggested that we should go there again, to shoot for project, and not for fun

Ref-Sheet:

And these are few screenshots that show where i am at the moment. It has been about 2 weeks of production. (about 1.5 -3 hours a day) and i blend between using video lessons and experimenting on my own:
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This is a paint over the map that i am building up


This is what i have so far done. Most of it is just gray-boxing, but it is procedural, so tweaks are super fast and scene is light as hell, since everything is instancing...
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I was hoping to keep this tread alive, and post progress here.

cheers!

__________________
Thank you,

- stas
www.stascrash.com

Cool man, your planning seems really in depth, so I'm sure this will turn out great.

Whats your end product going to be? Are you making a gallery of stills, or perhaps a short animation?

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Hi AJ! I was planning for animation. I wanted to take the camera footage that i have here on youtube and extract camera data from it.
I may not be able to use this particular video, and would have to make another shoot.
There is no real story here, more or less VIS-WORK attempt. But a i have a few film directors, who are my friends, may be i will ask them to help with shot composition.

__________________
Thank you,

- stas
www.stascrash.com