Short film: Technical

[Nichod]

This thread is the technical development thread. In other words the how the hell are we going to do this thread.

-The parachute. This could be done via morphs, softbody, animate by hand with rig, etc. Come up with a solution and share.

-The character is going to have some hair even its just toon. How can we do this?

-The characters skin will need to move and shift as he falls, how can we do this?

-Bug splatter? Done with particles? Realflow? Blender?

-environment? how will we create the feel of the character falling?

-ground. how will we create the height effect and animate it?

Take up a challenge and lets see what we can do!!! Know models are available yet. We are just experimenting and loking for techniques.

[stooch]

shouldnt stuff be done in messiah as much as possible?

the parachute could be done with messiahs soft bodies, the only moving parts are the fringes, otherwise its mostly rigid due to air pressure. This could even be done with rapidly changing morphs to make the fringes flap - with a motion blur pass.

the feel of character falling is mostly audio, i think a bit of a procedural camera shake might help and some rapidly moving clouds/dust could be added in post. the bugs and debree would also add to the feel of speed.

the key is having a convincing atmospheric perspective, the ground would have hazing at lower altitude and would be partially obscured, the actual ground couldbe done entirely with a still plate with a few geometric shapes for any large structures.

overall the environment should be done via mapping, the ground could be a textured plane with a bit of subtle elevation changes.

close to ground shots would have to be done with geometry and back plates.

i wish i could help more on the project but im booked solid right now …

clouds can be done in post, since i dont think messiah has much of a volumetric shader, although the new shader by taron might be of some use, maybe taron can further develop it into a more useful cloud shader as a result of this project.

[Nichod]

shouldnt stuff be done in messiah as much as possible?

the parachute could be done with messiahs soft bodies, the only moving parts are the fringes, otherwise its mostly rigid due to air pressure. This could even be done with rapidly changing morphs to make the fringes flap - with a motion blur pass.

the feel of character falling is mostly audio, i think a bit of a procedural camera shake might help and some rapidly moving clouds/dust could be added in post. the bugs and debree would also add to the feel of speed.

the key is having a convincing atmospheric perspective, the ground would have hazing at lower altitude and would be partially obscured, the actual ground couldbe done entirely with a still plate with a few geometric shapes for any large structures.

overall the environment should be done via mapping, the ground could be a textured plane with a bit of subtle elevation changes.

close to ground shots would have to be done with geometry and back plates.

Great discussion. Lets implement these ideas and see how well they work in a test situation. We need to determine if Messiah can properly handle these effects, and if it can’t, what do we need to get it too. Part of this project is to determine what is NEEDED to improve Messiah.

In regards to the parachute, we need a way to have it unfurl from the pack. I debate on whether soft body can handle that level.

[stooch]

the parachutes can unfurl extremely fast, so i wouldnt worry about trying to simulate it, a simple rig with morphing should do the trick, i feel that a shot of the character being yanked up by the parachute straps would eliminate the need to even show the parachute unfurling. but keep in mind this stuff happens very fast and motion blur can hide alot of imperfections.

the only missing piece here is a good way to do volumetric clouds, this would need some help from mr taron unless you want to fake it with parallaxing layers in post.

[Nichod]

the only missing piece here is a good way to do volumetric clouds, this would need some help from mr taron unless you want to fake it with parallaxing layers in post.

I think particles could pull this off fairly well and would even give interaction with the character. I’ve asked rush about it and we’ve played with particles together. I think its a feasible option.

the parachutes can unfurl extremely fast, so i wouldnt worry about trying to simulate it, a simple rig with morphing should do the trick, i feel that a shot of the character being yanked up by the parachute straps would eliminate the need to even show the parachute unfurling. but keep in mind this stuff happens very fast and motion blur can hide alot of imperfections.

True the sound of it unfurling and a shot of the character being yanked up would give the impression of what is happening. Then a shot of the actual parachute fully out.

[Nichod]

Here is a render of the smoke scene Taron released with the addition of the new particles. Its fast to render too. Sorry about the render size. I’m waiting on my copy of messiah.

[JoeCosman]

the parachutes can unfurl extremely fast, so i wouldnt worry about trying to simulate it, a simple rig with morphing should do the trick, i feel that a shot of the character being yanked up by the parachute straps would eliminate the need to even show the parachute unfurling. but keep in mind this stuff happens very fast and motion blur can hide alot of imperfections.

the only missing piece here is a good way to do volumetric clouds, this would need some help from mr taron unless you want to fake it with parallaxing layers in post.

Parachutes can be done with soft bodies, with successive morphs between them. i.e. the fully open chute can be done SBD with hold active, which is morphed from the ribbon-shape of a hand animated Unfurling. Each target can get it’s own skeleton if you choose, with the goal mesh morphing between them.

as for volume clouds, have you considered a hand-animated parallaxing material? i.e. use a metaEffector or grayscale image to shift a texture left or right using the material translate inputs. and if someone want’s to experiment with the partcles here, there’s an option that attaches particles to every vertice on a mesh.

Just some think-tank offerings here.
-JoeC

[stooch]

nice idea on parallax, although i was thinking of a more vertical approach

the volumetrics per vertex is also intriguing, that means you can just paint a volume of vertices? cool…

what would be really cool is if yuo can control the opacity/size of the volumetrics with a weight effector.

[Suricate]

This thread is the technical development thread. In other words the how the hell are we going to do this thread.

-The parachute. This could be done via morphs, softbody, animate by hand with rig, etc. Come up with a solution and share.

I think it mainly depends on the storyboard what solution should be chosen. If the parachute is just unfurling quickly, one can get away with just a few morphs and some motion blur, as stooch suggested. But if there is further action involved (e.g. the parachutist hanging himself on a tree with the parachute), it might be useful to have a full rig with bones. If I find the time, I will have a look at that.

[rush123]

nice idea on parallax, although i was thinking of a more vertical approach

the volumetrics per vertex is also intriguing, that means you can just paint a volume of vertices? cool…

what would be really cool is if yuo can control the opacity/size of the volumetrics with a weight effector.

You can control volumetrics opacity with meta effector, not sure about size, that needs to be tested.

R

edit:
Nichod ask for a quick example of ‘controlling the volumetric opacity’, hope this is kind of stuff being talked about:

Particles are emitted from and locked to a sphere, simple gradient added

Inverted meta weight added to scene

[KAMAKAZZI]

-The parachute. This could be done via morphs, softbody, animate by hand with rig, etc. Come up with a solution and share.

I agree with Messiah Guru:Joe Cosman on this one. Parachute is a simple matter specially through what he suggested. Can also add a spherize effect for when the parachute first bulges out (at least for when the parachute actually works). Now collision detection would need to be considered for when he lands with the chute or when the parachute clings on anything. Also cloth simulations can also be altered through RealFlow, Syflex, and Qualoth, just some food for thought.

-The character is going to have some hair even its just toon. How can we do this?

XSI has a cool way to just paint 3D hair/splines and its clusters and its easy to animate. Sasquatch for Lightwave as well has its benifits. You can have it to where the hair is generic like Jimmy Neutron since you are wanting the short simple anyways. We can have it that simple and just have the hair be in parts for animating. Your call.

-The characters skin will need to move and shift as he falls, how can we do this?

Adding softbody dynamics to the characters body with Puppet Master and other custom setupscript controllers can allow you to have weightshift manipulations. Also other weightshifting techniques can be applied or adding sliders for multiple animation sequences (like the wind in his hair and cloths be in your control through sliders). Adding softbody dynamics, Puppet Master, field weighting with metaeffectors and sliders to control forces works well for me. You can get a fat man jiggle for you in no time, watch out Britney Spears!

-Bug splatter? Done with particles? Realflow? Blender?

This is easy, RealFlow can do nifty thick or thin green goo and the particles are easy to transfer, at least in a lightwave scene to my knowledge. Here we can also use RealFlow to have buoyant force on an object for floating if this skydiver character were to fall into sea or something (safe landing in water but then falls off this huge water fall is also a good idea–kinda like the Wild E coyote, super genius). So with RealFlow, it will be easier and it will be like blood in the water if thats how you like it.

-environment? how will we create the feel of the character falling?

Vue 5 or if we bleed into this project when Vue 6 comes out, we can test Vue’s updated new metacloud feature! Suppose to make real looking clouds for your atmosphere. Then we can get that elaborate scene and groups of buildings or foliage when the character plunges through the sky, having all those clouds to pass through. Then after this project is done, we can show the clip in E-on software site as well as PMG site for we used a pipeline of softwares to accomplish certain scenes in this short! Of course there are many ways to do smoke/clouds through other packages as well and that can allow us to put this short onto that website. But anyhow, to create the feel of the character falling can be a combination of your scene setup through Vue, animate the character in Messiah for the falling and adding inertia and lag, then composite the 2 and pick your camera shots!

-ground. how will we create the height effect and animate it?
This can be done with cinematography techniques to sequence the height effect. For instance, have the shot focus on the characters problem, him falling and him looking at the ground from his bird eye view. Close up shots of his face yelling with spit just flying everywhere, yelling his tonsils out. His nostrils flair with boogers running up his face to forehead. Then in each cloud the character passes, you can have something different happen to the character (like a bird clinging on to him with no feathers–bare ass naked to where when he passes another cloud, you get this jealous male bird beating the hell out of this skydivers face because he thought you were hitting on his female companionship). Then splat or a landing success is all up to you but I am sure Vue and the XStream plugin can make this ground and height effect in a scene a breeze.

I wanna play!!! Let me get in on this–I just emailed you so hurry up and respond, hehehehe.

Cypher

By the way, thanks for emailing the links to guide me to this post when the other link didnt work for me.
Hear from you soon.

[Nichod]

-The parachute. This could be done via morphs, softbody, animate by hand with rig, etc. Come up with a solution and share.

I agree with Messiah Guru:Joe Cosman on this one. Parachute is a simple matter specially through what he suggested. Can also add a spherize effect for when the parachute first bulges out (at least for when the parachute actually works). Now collision detection would need to be considered for when he lands with the chute or when the parachute clings on anything. Also cloth simulations can also be altered through RealFlow, Syflex, and Qualoth, just some food for thought.

Hopefully we can use built in Messiah features for all of this.

-The character is going to have some hair even its just toon. How can we do this?

XSI has a cool way to just paint 3D hair/splines and its clusters and its easy to animate. Sasquatch for Lightwave as well has its benifits. You can have it to where the hair is generic like Jimmy Neutron since you are wanting the short simple anyways. We can have it that simple and just have the hair be in parts for animating. Your call.

Not going to use XSI since there is no smooth link between the two. Simple is good.

-The characters skin will need to move and shift as he falls, how can we do this?

Adding softbody dynamics to the characters body with Puppet Master and other custom setupscript controllers can allow you to have weightshift manipulations. Also other weightshifting techniques can be applied or adding sliders for multiple animation sequences (like the wind in his hair and cloths be in your control through sliders). Adding softbody dynamics, Puppet Master, field weighting with metaeffectors and sliders to control forces works well for me. You can get a fat man jiggle for you in no time, watch out Britney Spears!

All sounds good. Show me some examples.

-Bug splatter? Done with particles? Realflow? Blender?

This is easy, RealFlow can do nifty thick or thin green goo and the particles are easy to transfer, at least in a lightwave scene to my knowledge. Here we can also use RealFlow to have buoyant force on an object for floating if this skydiver character were to fall into sea or something (safe landing in water but then falls off this huge water fall is also a good idea–kinda like the Wild E coyote, super genius). So with RealFlow, it will be easier and it will be like blood in the water if thats how you like it.

I’d like to try an initial experiment with particles. If that doesn’t work. We can use realflow. I hope Taron might step in and let use know what is possible with particles for this.

-environment? how will we create the feel of the character falling?

Vue 5 or if we bleed into this project when Vue 6 comes out, we can test Vue’s updated new metacloud feature! Suppose to make real looking clouds for your atmosphere. Then we can get that elaborate scene and groups of buildings or foliage when the character plunges through the sky, having all those clouds to pass through. Then after this project is done, we can show the clip in E-on software site as well as PMG site for we used a pipeline of softwares to accomplish certain scenes in this short! Of course there are many ways to do smoke/clouds through other packages as well and that can allow us to put this short onto that website. But anyhow, to create the feel of the character falling can be a combination of your scene setup through Vue, animate the character in Messiah for the falling and adding inertia and lag, then composite the 2 and pick your camera shots!

I think cloud effects should be done internally in Messiah. But to create the matte’s for the background, Vue would work great I think.

-ground. how will we create the height effect and animate it?
This can be done with cinematography techniques to sequence the height effect. For instance, have the shot focus on the characters problem, him falling and him looking at the ground from his bird eye view. Close up shots of his face yelling with spit just flying everywhere, yelling his tonsils out. His nostrils flair with boogers running up his face to forehead. Then in each cloud the character passes, you can have something different happen to the character (like a bird clinging on to him with no feathers–bare ass naked to where when he passes another cloud, you get this jealous male bird beating the hell out of this skydivers face because he thought you were hitting on his female companionship). Then splat or a landing success is all up to you but I am sure Vue and the XStream plugin can make this ground and height effect in a scene a breeze.

See above comment.

I wanna play!!! Let me get in on this–I just emailed you so hurry up and respond, hehehehe.

Cypher

By the way, thanks for emailing the links to guide me to this post when the other link didnt work for me.
Hear from you soon.

I thought I sent you the group email. Did you not receive it?

[KAMAKAZZI]

I thought I sent you the group email. Did you not receive it?

No I didnt receive the group email. Could you send it again so I can introduce myself to the gang. I wasnt specified yet what to do as far as what to animate or rig so I got my fingers crossed.

So mostly everything done in Messiah? Sounds good to me.

Now how many characters are involved again?

Since I saw that most people want to animate or rig or both, dont you think we should add in supporting characters to build up the main character? For instance, like that idea with the 2 birds interaction with the skydiver when he passes some clouds that was previously suggested.

Just wondering because there seems to be more people wanting to animate than what needs to be animated. Unless you want to break them in parts where someone does face rigging and various morphs for the faces while others do body setups maybe?

Appreciate it Nichod and Im in for what ever is needed to be done.

Cypher (Juan)

[rush123]

Here are some ‘work in progress’ volume clouds using the method described by Joe above. Particles are attaches to every vertice on a mesh, and textured accordingly. Needs more work.

R

[Nichod]

Comes out pretty good. What are we looking at for the render time? Pretty fast?

[DaveW]

  Not going to use XSI since there is no smooth link between the two. Simple is good.

PointOven isn’t smooth enough? Or do you mean compositing XSI hair onto a messiah render? I think if “real” hair is going to be used instead of mapped polygons then messiah’s renderer isn’t really an option. I admit I’m no compositing guru, but compositing hair from LW or XSI with messiah renders seems like more hassle than its worth.

Is hair even going to be necessary though? Don’t skydivers usually wear helmets?

[Nichod]

PointOven isn’t smooth enough? Or do you mean compositing XSI hair onto a messiah render? I think if “real” hair is going to be used instead of mapped polygons then messiah’s renderer isn’t really an option. I admit I’m no compositing guru, but compositing hair from LW or XSI with messiah renders seems like more hassle than its worth.

Is hair even going to be necessary though? Don’t skydivers usually wear helmets?

The point is to keep it in Messiah as much as possible and to limit external software to things that are necessary. Modeling isn’t possible in Messiah so we use outside sources. Hair we COULD feasible fake if we wanted too. But I don’t think we will need much hair. Perhaps some coming out of the helmet and that will be more of a toonish style.

[Suricate]

Hi all,

I put together a rig for the unfurling parachute, it is based on muscle bones and expressions. In the attached ZIP file you can find an .mpj file as well as a QT video. Obviously it still needs refinement, but I think it is a start.

[wata]

I hope connection crash from Messiah to LW9 would be fixed soon!
Connencting subpatched object causes a crash always.

Now I have to do following steps to connect subpatched object.
1.Unsubpath the object.
2.Load into Messiah and connect to LW9.
3.Save the scene in LW9.
4.Subpath the ojbect again.
5.Reload the saved scene.

I’m crying…

[Nichod]

Wata this is not related to this thread at all.