Magical effects, casting
spells, natural disasters, video games, unknown phenomena; all these
contribute to my interest in particle effects as a compositer. It
allows me to add surreal elements to my comp, not necessarily being of
the real world, but a world inhabited by imagination and wonder.
I must admit though, I like to
avoid programming, but some-
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times technical wizardry is
required to
make things happen.
I started programming in HTML, so I could do
website design, almost a whole 10 years ago. Dabbling in that,
then in
photoshop, it finally led me to the compositing field.
So learning MELscript was the
next step for particle work, and here will be presented particle passes
and script work.
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Particle FX:
| Fluids Explosions 2 || Fluid Explosions || Fluid
2D Fire || Cigarette Smoke || MakeMagic Melscript |
| Water
Fountain || Instancing || Explosion Test |
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The final project for was to
pick an explosion scene from the Incredibles DVD (a Pixar reference for
a Pixar teacher!). I chose the scene where the ship collides with the
cliff wall, after Dash jumps off and it explodes, with a few fire
fingers.
I built a
quick matte painting with a few photos, and color corrected them in for
this scene, nothing too fancy, modeled and animated the ship to the
reference, and then did the fluid explosions. Because of the
close proximity of this explosion, I should have used a much higher
resolution fluid box. I used 40x40x40, my teacher recommended me
use 100x or higher, but that was after the fact and there was no way to
render this in time at 100x resolution! Matching in Maya, post
camera shake/move/comped in AFX.
So here is the
conclusion of the great Advanced FX class taught by Kamal Mistry of
Pixar!
Comments:
Fluids is
definately fun, and this is just the Maya part of it. Can't wait
for a real fluid sim program like Realflow....but then again I can't
wait for these things to render too....FOREVER.
Download Video
Animation
720x486 full video
res. QT Mpeg4 compressed, 3mb
Sound FX from The Incredibles
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Here's the midterm assignment
our teacher gave us to add dynamic fluid explosions to. The scene
was already setup, with camera cuts, minus the bridge breaking up and
explosions. The missle trails were optional, and I will add those
in later =0 The biggest concern in this project was to get
everything done in time, the motion and impact of the explosion,
and the roiling effect natural billow smoke/fire has.
In the end 6
3D fluid boxes were used, and about 20 emitters. We were to
"sell" this to the teacer as explosions with our presentation and work,
which was an excercise in pleasing our director's/clients.
Comments
OMG it
took forever to render these things, I think everyone was caught
unawares of this aspect in fluids. Few finished completely, let
alone render fully one explosion because of the lack of knowledge.
With a 246 dual Opteron CPU 2GB of RAM workstation computer, it still
took about 2 days to render this project, with as long as one hour per
frame by the time it displays the full 6 fluid boxes.
This has been presented for full impact, with music, titles,
camera shake, and all!
Download Video
Animation
720x486 full video
res. QT Sorenson 3 compressed, 9mb
Music by Hans Zimmer - "Crimson Tide Theme"
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"Fluids 2D Fire"
Fluids Introduction
Software
used: Maya 6.01
Spring 2005,
CA499 Advanced Particles
added |
monday april 11, 2005
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We step into fluids now,
starting out with a 2D voxel box. Here the class discovers the
movements, velocity, temperate, and desntiy attributes along with swirl
and the effects of turbulance has on the voxel grid.
Comments
Nevermind the low voxel resolution, but
study the movement and colors of the fire. Trying to get the sway
and motion of fire bound inside the x y and -z axis of the box was the
assignment, making it look like a "bonfire".
Download Video
Animation
720x486 full video
res. QT Sorenson 3 compressed, 12mb
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To warm up and begin the new
Advanced Particles class, we make cigarette smoke, and to find the
motion and movement of it.
Comments
Getting the swirly motion and
twin snake effects of real cigarette smoke was particularly hard to do
without fluids. This with conserve and volume Axis fields, gave a
nice effect without fluids though
Download Video
Animation
720x486 full video
res. DiVX compressed, 3mb
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"makeMagic.mel"
particles MELScript
Software used: Maya 6.01
Fall 2004, CA318 MELScripting
added | wednesday
january 26, 2005
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This
melscript I developed creates an emitter type based on shape of
primitave and moves
it to the
primative's position to quickly setup and
previsualize a scene requiring
particles.
Ideally it would
setup according to this:
polyCone =
Water
polyCylinder = Smoke
polyCube = Fire
polyPlane = Rain
polyTorus = Snow
polySmoke = Lava
but due to time
constraints and such, only the water and smoke emitters
are working now.
Download Script Here
To
use, source the .mel file in the script editor, select a cone or a
cylinder, and type in the command line "makeMagic;" without the quotes
to make the emitter type complete with opacity fade, out fields and
dynamics.
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"Water Fountain"
Particles Animation
Software used: Maya 6.01
Spring 2004, CA492 Particles 1
(click on thumbnail to see higher res)
added | wednesday january 26, 2005
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A water fountain dynamics study in Particles 1 class with
some
volume axis fields, gravity, wind, and specular/mist passes. Some
render issues as known bug. All rendered in the Hardware Render Buffer.
Comments
This one was probably my first correctly
dynamically done scene. My teacher, Erdem, soon after dubbed me
"Magic Man" in the particles class after this because of my style for
each scene like showne here lol. Before, my scenes were lifeless,
with little dynamics, but soon after I got hold of the concepts, it was
all good.
Download Video
Animation
720x486 full video
res. DiVX compressed, 4mb
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"Leaves &
Instancing
Test"
Particles Animation
Software
used: Maya 6.01
Spring 2004,
CA492 Particles 1
Fall 2004 , CA310 Texture and Lighting
(click on thumbnail to see higher res)
added |
wednesday january 26, 2005
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Primatives Instancing
Instancing Test with
primatives and points
Download Video
Animation
720x486 full video
res. DiVX compressed, 4mb
Leaves
Instancing
Instancing
with textured and lit leaves for Temple of Knowledge matte painting.
Comments
Getting that
instancer initial dialogue to setup the spin correctly on the leaves
was a trial and error pain...but that's how you learn!
The leaves
were textured from my 4 mega pixel digital camera photos of leaves I
picked in the front yard. Layed them flat on white paper, then
rotoscoped them in soft overcast sky setting then bumped/textured in
Maya. Four different kind of leaves were put through the random
instancer.
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"Explosion Test"
Particles Animation
Software
used: Maya 6.01
Spring 2004,
CA492 Particles 1
added |
wednesday january 26, 2005
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Comments
This
was an explosion test I wanted to try. I still need to work out
the incandescence, age and color ramping and software rendering.
Not until 6
months after did I put this into action, in my Doomed City matte
painting. It still isn't in it's most glorious explosion form
though, soon it will be done!
Download
Video
Animation
320x240 res.
DiVX compressed, > 1mb
To
see the explosion in action, please head to the Digital Matte Painting section.
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