The Dust

Started by DocCharly65, September 01, 2015, 01:11:56 PM

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DocCharly65

I was not sure to start this crazy project-detail - but I could not sleep until I tried...

Here you see my Desert with the Viper, the old truck, the small town, the R2D2
AND:

125 animated clouds

each one is "triggered" when the viper flies over it and just increses and downsizes the density. Additionally all of them use 4D Noise (but only one density fractal).

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And the result looks quite ok though I want to move the "Trigger point" app. 5 frames later and reduce the maximum density of the clouds a bit. Very easy principle but hard work!

This is just a short Fraps-capture of a  XN-View dia-show (with 20ms frame delay)
The real animation starts after some seconds -- hope you can see it

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The basic idea i had when I was watching some movies. If something moves over dusty ground it just whirles up the dust but no dust is really following the vehicle. So: no moving clouds...

Theoretically I could refine that strategy by adding more instances of clouds and let them just minimally follow the Viper after being "triggered" but I think thhe look should be good enough... remember - at first I didn't want any dust  ;)






Oshyan

125 animated clouds!!! You're a mad man. No, better yet, a mad *genius*. :D And the results look pretty darn good. At the speed of the final animation I think it will be quite convincing, and a nice added touch.

I love seeing all this creative and challenging stuff you're trying. Keep it up!

- Oshyan

DocCharly65

Thanks Oshyan  :)

That is still the easy part...

But later after cutting...
To get the original voices of David Hewlett, Katee Sackhoff,  Richard Dean Anderson and Edward James Olmos...perhaps some others... and their German voices...

THAT will be a challenge  8)

...ok ... dreams ... but what are we without dreams...?  ;)

Hannes

That looks really cool! Good luck for the voices!!!

Matt

This is pretty cool. I think you could save a ton of work by using the final density modulator on the cloud, then translating some kind of shape to drive the density. Then you only have to animate one thing, the translation of the shape.

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

Dune

Very cool, but I was thinking just the same as Matt, before I read his comment. If you move a circular mask as final density, and just warp the man cloud upward in a small scale... saves a lot of nodes.

DocCharly65

Thanks all,

Matt and Ulco, you're absolutely right. I'm already studiing the shape shader. First time I use it...
Now I start to understand how to use it and what it's good for.

Untill better knowledge and my personal enhancement I am usually the one who uses the tablet-PC to cut the onions on it...  ;D

First experiments look good... thanks for the suggestion  :)

DocCharly65

Time to look at first results  ;)

improved details: Clouds of dust are whirled behind the viper and there's a pilot with moving head inside.

The R2D2 is still the old scene. I will render it in the new desert later.

And this time we start with an African sunset in the savannah. The sunset only looks really interesting in HD. Then you can see my "Compromise-plants-animation". I checked what I could do with kaedorg's experiments animating grass and trees. I choose only to animate rotating and leaning.
The animation of the leaves via displacement was so time-consuming and unsuccessfully, that I limited it to the rotating. I think that it looks acceptable anyway.
Another funny job was animating little cubes as small cloud (very small - it's 8 pieces  ;) ) of gnats.

I hope you enjoy:


Hannes

No access to the video. It says it's private... :(

EDIT: Now it works!!


Hannes


kaedorg

Great one. Dust is very realistic

David


Dune

I love it. The bugs are very subtle, but a great extra, so is the slight movement of the pilot, like he's watching who's watching. But I don't notice any animated plants, so I wouldn't bother with those. Did you do the cloud differently this time?

Hannes

I have seen the moving plants, but not the bugs... ???

The dust is perfect! The only thing I'm missing is motion blur.

Dune

You have to watch in on youtube HD, it's right at the beginning.