This Month in Review: VFX

My classes for this month were VFX and TPS (Texture Painting and sculpting). Both classes presented their own unique challenges and I want to talk about them, along with the things I learned.

I did three projects in VFX: one on rigid bodies, one on particles, and one on soft bodies. 

For our first project, we were given a pre-modeled scene containing various objects for us to use to create our physics. It was then up to us to convert the geometry to Active and Passive rigid bodies, depending on the object, and edit the attributes to get the objects to collide and move in a physically-accurate way. 

One big problem I had was that most of the simulation lacked weight. The logical solution was to increase the mass, but that made it very difficult to continue the transfer of movement from object to object. Instead, I used volumetric gravity fields to help the objects along. The result was motion that gave the illusion of weight and proper physics.

For our second project, we were given a pre-modeled and pre-textured warehouse scene to use as a backdrop for our particles. I chose to create my own scene, as the provided scene didn't facilitate the vision I had in mind. We were required to create three different distinct particle effects. I chose smoke, sparks, and snow.

Initially, all of my problems stemmed from me switching to Maya 2016 (which completely re-arranges the dynamics menus). After finding out where everything had been moved, the only issues I encountered were from a lack of understanding on how particle rendering worked. Once I figured out particle shaders and hardware rendering, the rest of the project went off without a hitch.

For our final project, we were required to make one soft body and cache the animation. I chose to create a teardrop and animate the weights to make it move between goals that I made. This made it look like a teardrop moving down the face.

For the head, I took Soap Mactavish's head model from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and modified the topology, mesh, and texture. I then rigged it and made a few simple blend shapes for facial movement. Finally, I did some simple animation to keep the head and eyes in constant motion.

The biggest challenge I faced with this project was keeping the teardrop soft body in motion as it moved between goals. It took a lot of trial and error to figure out how to keep the animation from stopping. The solution ended up being lots of overlapping weights.

In Review: 

I've learned a lot this month and really enjoyed working with particles. I've also learned some things not related to VFX (how to create blend shapes) that will be very helpful in the future. Overall, a good month.