Animating Fluids in Maya

Back in the Maya class that I took last semester, our final project was to explore the uses of a tool that we hadn't covered in class, or to find other ways of using a tool that we had already used. For my project, I decided to take a look at how fluids could be simulated in the application. Fluids consist of anything without a defined shape that can be acted upon by forces, so I created some brief simulations of an explosion and fire. Through the use of particle emitters, along with other variable modifiers (such as turbulence and directional constrainers), I was able to create the renders I've included along with this post. Seeing as how we've just started using Maya in this class, I figured I'd talk a little about the experience I've already had with it.

A new wave of creation

Taking a link from one of the many Youtubers that provides tutorials on animation software, I was particularly drawn to this one in particular called Hexjibber.  What I found to be unique about his tutorials is that they include techniques and working in more than one Adobe software program.  The playlist that I found was a series that creates some looping animations of special effects that are akin to those from anime.  There are some like waves washing, dust flying, dirt streaks, and even fire.  What makes these so valuable is that he goes through After Effects first to create a template to follow, and then draws over them in Flash.  The specific one I was working in was the tutorial that creates dust and smoke flying, which I wanted to use for creating a race car scene and have them drive past real quickly (still brainstorming how that will fit into my projects...).  The video starts out with applying a series of wave warp effects to some shape layers in After Effects, exporting them as a PNG sequence, importing it into Flash and then drawing over each reference layer to create your own effect.

It really was and is a great way to get more practice in both the technical and artistic side of animation, and it could be a great way for an animation team to create action sequences and special effects.  Members with the more technical knowledge would create the reference layers, and the lead animators would draw over them in Flash.  I love how this series of tutorials encompasses both pieces of software, making it for quite an interesting exercise.  I would have been able to do the drawing part if it weren't for the fact that me and my drawing tablet have a love-hate relationship.

Matte Paintings, Photo-Realistic FX

We talked about how we are soon going to start to learn about using photos of birds, and animate and composite them in our scene to make them look life its actual video of birds actually moving rather than still images. And also add smoke or any kind of atmosphere to the composition to help blend all of the layers together so that it adds a little extra something to sell the effect.

This made me think of this particular tutorial about Matte paintings. Matte paintings are images that are used to add an element to a scene that otherwise doesn't exist. These are commonly used to extend a set or add things into the background of a scene to help make the world of the story more dynamic.

In this tutorial from Corridor Digital, Niko shows us how to make a mountain appear that doesnt actually exist, using simple photos, some 3D tracking, and adding some atmosphere to help make the mountain look like it actually was there in real life.

This also basically explains how compositing is very important in the animation/visual effects/CG process, as it uses multiple elements/layers and blends them together to make one impressive final result.

And The Survey Says... After Effects!!!

So in my random search amongst YouTube, I happened to stumble upon a really cool YouTube Channel of a foreign studio who has made videos of different movie clips. So the one that I watched the most recently was a Fast and Furious RC Car chase.

The use of After Effects in this video was quite clear and quite obvious. But the cool thing is, it's subtle enough to not know that it was an RC car race, besides knowing or clearly seeing that they were RC cars.

The use of smoke for the burning rubber in the very beginning was really cool, but I have to say that the two coolest FX that were in the video were being able to see the heat coming from the tailpipes when the cars were lined up at the line waiting for the green light. And also the fire at the very end of the clip.

The entire video featured After Effects to help enhance that feeling of being able to trick the mind into thinking you were watching a real car chase. I know that I have learned enough to be able to do some of these effects, but I hope to strengthen my knowledge of After Effects to be able to know much much more.

This is a very short animation I found on YouTube, I believe it's a student animation from some competition. Anyway, I picked it because it does a very good job of telling a story. I won't spoil it for you, but the ending is great, and very unexpected. In just over a minute this animation conveys a sense of tension, whimsy, anxiety, and a plethora of other emotions. I think story really is the most important part of any animation, game, video, website, or whatever you're making. Conveying a feeling or a theme is, in theory, why you're creating whatever it is you're working on. I think the creator/creators of this video did a really good job of conveying a mood, theme, and feeling in this piece. I also think they did a really nice job of leaving some questions in this story. You don't know what this monster is, you don't know why it's chasing this guy or why they're on this train, and I think that's deliberate. There's enough holes in this story for people to make assumptions and fill in the blanks, and that's pretty cool too.

The Leap

This incredible little device is a Leap. It’s a very exciting new piece of technology that allows you to interface with your computer in real 3D space. One of the reasons I’m so eager to start getting into this class is because I want to come up with ways to use this new technology. When we watched some of the examples of interactive media in class I immediately thought of how I could use the Leap. I would really like to create some sort of interactive art, animation, or maybe even a very simple game using it. I think this could be the future of human-computer interactions and I’d love to explore different ways of utilizing it for motion graphics.

Music Visualizer

Hey all. For my name animation, I'm working with audio quite a bit. One of the elements of my piece is EQ bars that are set to the bass, mid and treble frequencies in the track I'm working with. So, I thought I'd explore some other examples of music visualizers that used expressions similarly to the methods we learned in class. This one is really intricate and visually breathtaking, while at the same time you can still understand HOW it was made. The artist is Matthias Müller. He used 3ds max, After Effects, Krakatoa and fumefx.

Smoke and 3-D ball effects for opening project

I was searching around video copilot and looking for some good tutorials to let me perhaps “enhance” the visual aesthetics of my project. I first found this tutorial for smoke. I thought it would be relevant for class since we were discussing how we could make small amounts of smoke with the particles that we played around in class earlier. This tutorial though a little more complex shows in my opinion a more realistic way to show smoke. So I thought if anyone wanted to use this it would be very helpful.
I couldn’t find a way to get the embedded link for the video for some reason

http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorial/smoke_trails/

Lastly when searching some more, I found this tutorial which I am debating using for my final scene of my project in which the name of the movie shows up. I really like the effect, but feel that it may be too “technical” or “ scientific” for my movie, so I thought I would also offer it to the class to use.

http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorial/3d_ball_dispersion/

Smoke (Illuminating Particles)

After Wednesday's lesson in class on how to create smoke in After Effects with particles, I decided to research a little more and found a whole tutorial on Video Copilot that shows you how to create an entire smoke screen. It provides you with the project files and gives you a 20 minutes walk-through of how to create it.

The smoke he creates with particles looks really realistic, and can be used for anything that could involve steam, smoke, fog, or clouds. Considering at least one of these elements is in almost every scene I think it's a very useful tutorial, especially since the end product looks so good.

For my project in particular, I want steam to be moving when I show the streets of London. This tutorial is perfect for that and allows me to create the dirty image of industrial London. I don't know if anyone else is doing something similar for their project but I thought it looked really nice, so it's worth checking out.