animated tree - 1st try

Started by kaedorg, August 03, 2015, 09:29:23 AM

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Kadri

#30

Displacing the hidden ground a little brings too much wobbling to the object.
Might work maybe but did not like it so much for trees.
For objects that are on water it might work better probably. Because there is a small Y displacement too.

Just changing the leaning effect in time is nice but doesn't look random like a wind effect.
Animating at the same time the Y rotation might be useful for objects that are not uniformly straight.

For trees it could be added maybe just for a little different motion.

If we could change the leaning effect with  other nodes that would be nice.
But it would still need different displacement like David is trying here probably.

kaedorg

Here is the next try. Better but as I said previously, the twist at the base of the trunk is really bad.
I reduced a lot the values in the transform input shader.
No change on the PF for this one.
I think that the twist happens because I animate the 3 values. So next one will be with 2 animated values.



David


Kadri


Just because i like GIF's :)


Dune

Both nice. It's funny to watch the individual leaves of your tree, David. They rotate and go up and down, kind of. The best of course, would be to keep the stem of the leaf in place, wiggle the leaftop/end a little AND the whole tree and branches with their leaves. But that's awfully complicated; you'd need a mask based on the individual UV'd leaf (like the opacity map) to make a gradient for each leaf's movement (base black, tip white). But then the branches, pff... 
I like your gif too, Kadri, fascinating. So that's the strength of the rotation (by normal) animated? I have asked before if it's possible to have different bases for 'sitting on' and angle/normal. So you could add a displacement, but only the normal would be used to give an object another angle on the ground it's sitting on. I recall even as issue in the alpha forum, but I guess that's far from being a possibility. Rare use also, I guess. I wanted it to get trees to fall by wind, all in more or less one direction, but without needing to restrict the rotation of the instances from 0-360 to say 0-60. I did that another way (which worked).

Kadri


Not sure what you exactly mean Ulco.
The GIF version is only animated with the "Lean effect".

I tried the "Minimum and Maximum Y rotation" too as i tried to explain in my above post.
But it rotates only in the Y axis. I think you mean this?
If a grass object -for example- does have a bended shape it could help to sell a little more variance in motion maybe.

Kadri


The leaning effect could still be used with more then one populations
in the same space (masked) with different timing and-or values to break the similarity in the motion.

Oshyan

The effect in that GIF is pretty cool!

kaedorg, I think for one thing your displacement is too *strong* (too high a value for Displacement Amplitude and/or multiplier). It also is moving in perhaps too many dimensions. I think 2 dimensions is probably fine, although of course a real tree moves in 3. But I would guess, for example, there is more side-to-side movement than up-and-down movement in real life...

- Oshyan

Matt

#38
When you use a Mesh Displacer, it's important to think about the direction of the displacement. For a wind effect, you want to displace in all 3 directions. I would use a Redirect Shader with 3 differently-seeded fractals plugged into X, Y and Z inputs. That way you will have random 3D deformation.

Displacement shaders displace along what they think is the surface normal. But for a wind effect you don't want to displace along the surface normal. Even if you did, with mesh displacement in current versions the surface normal isn't available anyway, so it just displaces along a vector pointing outwards from the object's origin, and that's why you see it bulging in and out at the base of the trunk. Either way, surface normal or vector pointing away from the origin, neither of those are going to look much like wind. Using the Redirect Shader you control the direction of the displacement.

Matt
Just because milk is white doesn't mean that clouds are made of milk.

Kadri

#39

Another small test.
This time with a transformed powerfractal that is restricted in altitude with a surface layer and an animated leaning effect.
Looks like it works (the restriction) but i have not looked closer.

If anyone wants to play more the file is below. There are many more possibilities.

Looks like you have something on your mind for the future Matt?  ::)  :)



Matt

Quote from: Kadri on August 05, 2015, 04:53:01 PM
Looks like you have something on your mind for the future Matt?  ::)  :)

Always :) This particular technique has been done by members of this forum before, so you don't have to wait for me to add something to make it happen. But truly realistic wind animation that considers the structure of the tree is another story that we will get to in future...

Matt
Just because milk is white doesn't mean that clouds are made of milk.

Kadri


Yes, i was just having fun the first time myself :)

kaedorg

For this test, i followed Hannes' idea.
2 exact copies of the tree.
First one has the mesh displacer. Opacity set to 0 for the bark.
Second one has opacity set to 0 for the leaves.

I agree with Matt. Displacement is too strong for leaves. But now I get a method and it is just a question of time (and render time  :P) to find the good values.
I'll also study Ulco and Kadri ideas.



David

Dune

@ Kadri; your setup is exactly what I meant. Interesting to see where you get this, David.

Kadri

#44
Quote from: Dune on August 06, 2015, 01:54:33 AM
@ Kadri; your setup is exactly what I meant...

:)

David that is close.Depends on the look you want.
I have more smaller moves in my mind for example.
Edit: One thing i would change is the animation seems to stop in the middle for all the leaves.