Wasn’t happy with the rough cut above, so I spent some more time polishing. Fixed up most of the audio and added some sound effects so it’s clearer what’s going on. Think this is a good improvement on the initial…
FXWars! DISINTEGRATION!: tibes, Aussie Vamps, Buffy / Angel
tibes
#5
First shot - simple 2D track with some particles. The idea for the following shot is the vamp explodes/dusts from the heart outwards. This first one is like the “lighting of the fuse”.
http://www.richardnichols.net/vamp/stakev1.mov
And early digital double test - very quick reuse of model and textures from photos of the actor. Will only appear in “normal” form for a few frames, so won’t spend too much time here.
tibes
#8
Thanks for the ecouragement guys 
I just got back to working on this today - have the digital double rigged and a skeleton inside him. Here’s a test which exposes the cloth, skin and bone layers in a pose.
Been thinking about the exact effect itself and how to create it. At this point I’m going to do the animation and then render out a bunch of different layers (clean, burnt, on fire, skeleton, dissolved, shadow etc) and then try and put the effect together in Fusion. I did a couple of tests in lightwave with animating different texture parameters, but it complicated really quickly, so hopefully the fusion route will give a bit more control.
tibes
#9
Working on the second part of the disintegration - the skeleton collapsing and turning to dust. Happy with the object FX, still working on the particles. Hard to get something which clears quickly but still looks convincing.
tibes
#12
Cheers!
I’ve finished/polished up the animation, and have a very early composite of the dissolve effect. Still a way to go yet…
tibes
#13
Have worked on this effect pretty solidly this week. It’s starting to come together, but it’s been a slog to get this far. Most of this effect is created in Fusion using a whole bunch of layers I’ve rendered out of Lightwave. I created some custom software to create a “burn matte” for the burning away of the clothes and flesh. I’m fairly happy with the result.
Have to work on the particle effects now, and there’s some issues with the final part of the effect where the skeleton collapses. I had to change the angle of the hat to match the animation part, which made the ClothFX simulation look like crap, so for now I’m using HardFX (I haven’t re-rendered out the shadow pass yet either). I’ll keep trying with the Cloth sim to get something that looks nice, but everytime I use ClothFX it makes me want to gouge out my eyeballs with a teaspoon.
The comp in Fusion is getting pretty crazy and takes 1.5 hrs alone to render out the 210 frames. I’m in love with Fusion’s “CustomTool” node though - it rocks the Kasbar.
Jozvex
#15
I’m here! Sorta!
I think it’s good for the most part. I have two complaints though (fix them or die! 
), it seems a bit too slow and ‘sequential’. A bit like you’re ‘showing us’ the effects and the layers rather than we’re witnessing the actual death of a vampire. It’s as if we’re on Buffy the CSI Agent and she’s saying “first the outer skin burns off, after that, we see the muscle burn away” etc. I think it would look more violent and death-like if all of that were overlapped with some amount of offset rather that state 1 then 2 then 3. The bones’ simulation looks a bit slow too, like the gravity isn’t strong enough (forgive me if this is meant to be a slo-mo death).
The other minor thing is that it looks like your animated burning texture is the same sequence both times? I’d change the second one to start burning in a different pattern, to be more random and lifelike.
MSun
#16
hey, i’m here too, i’ve been keeping an eye on your stuff, evil laugh, i second the suggestions by Jozvex. and btw, your hat is burning too, 
good work, now i’m gonna get in a corner and work on my stuff
tibes
#17
Thanks guys, that’s exactly the sort of feedback I needed.
I think maybe the big problem is with the way the clothes burn off all of a sudden at the start. It’s one of those things, everytime I see it I think “it’s not working”, but then another voice says “hey but his burnt flesh looks cool!”. I knew I’d have to fix it… just needed to someone to tell me.
The burn matte for the clothes is the same but offset in 3D space. I’ll probably change so the clothes burn off with the flesh, but offset slightly ahead in time (3-4 frames) (so the burn reveal each layer as the one above burns up), so it’ll be all “one” effect.
Jozvex - good pick up about the gravity at the end - it’s half earth gravity. I kinda like the slo-mo feel, but I’ll keep playing with it. I’d like to “overlap” the final part with the “burn” part, but I can’t think of a particularly good way of doing it right now, as it switches from a rigged char to a hard dynamics on a pre-posed skeleton. :shrug:
Jozvex
#19
Better! I like the changes!
The last thing (I think… hehe) that bothers me is that there’s a ‘click’ when the skeleton simulation takes over. The bones are together and then they just abruptly start falling apart. I’m not sure exactly how to smooth that out, maybe hand animate a couple of the ribs coming loose or falling off during the transition between the end of the body performance and the start of the gravity sim?
:shrug:
tibes
#20
Yep, I totally agree. I did some playing with the dynamics solution last night, and made some improvements - it looks more buffy-like now, as the skeleton doesn’t collapse all at once, instead it’s triggered by a number of keyed events. I was originally thinking about splitting the skeleton into several parts and putting them on separate layers and offseting them in the composite blended with the animation layer, but that seemed pretty time consuming, so I had a think about other ways to do it. I’ve got an idea, I’ll have a play and see if it works out
tibes
#21
Finally finished and uploaded! Think I managed to fix the issues with the transition between the parts fairly successfully. I don’t think the overall approach I used for this shot is particularly production ready as it was time consuming to set up and fiddly to pull together, but I guess it’s an interesting experiment. I know I learned a lot!
Finished shot - [QT H.264 640x360 16:9 (1MB)](http://www.richardnichols.net/vamp/tibes_FXWARS%28640x360%29-fxonly.mov)
Finished sequence - [QT H.264 640x360 16:9 (30MB)](http://www.richardnichols.net/vamp/tibes_FXWARS%28640x360%29.mov)
I’ll post a lower quality streaming version shortly - I’m having a few problems with the CGPortfolio uploader.