Chase Like A Boss

YEAH! It's finally online! :) This was the most awesome and interesting project i've worked on lately. Adi Chifor, a friend and colleague at FLAVOR3D (the new film and print devision of RTT), came up with the idea and concept for this awsome short movie. We did the CG work mostly after work hours but later also got some support (resources and render power as well as budget for sound, music and final grading) from the company we work for.
I got to do FX on this one (in cooperation with the guys from post). It's been a lot of work but also heaps of fun and i learned a lot working with TP and FumeFX! Cheers to everyone involved! Looking forward to the next project! ;)

Adi Chifor: "The material was shot in the course of 2 days from the back of my car with a Canon 5D. The idea came about while watching a comparison between the old 1970 Boss 302 and the new 2013 model. Unfortunately they discontinued the Boss model for 2014 which is too bad as it was a nice looking car.

After finishing it, we were very fortunate to have these guys do the music and soundFx : soundadventures.tv/ Very cool company to work with.

The grading was done by Peter at scanwerk.de/ , another amazing post production house in Munich."

Paint Fracture Maps

I posted a new (partly manual) workflow for fracturing volume meshes using Voronoi Texture Fracture. It describes how to deal with messy normals before inward extrusion and provides a method for painting your own fracture maps directly onto the mesh using Maya's 3D Paint Tool. Check out the thread in the SOuP Forum for details ...

Mesh fractured using Maya's 3D Paint Tool and Voronoi Texture Fracture

If the is enough demand (and if i find the time) i'll implement this workflow into the tool. 

Ionic SPH/DEM solver enters open beta!

Tony Amblés released an open beta version of his GPU accelerated SPH/DEM solver for Maya. It will be free until the end of the year, so be sure to download and test it while you have the chance! There is also a forum that can be used for bug reports, feature suggestions and the like.

(DEM solver simulation)

(SPH solver simulation)

According to Tony Amblés, both simulations were created using a Nvidia GTX 670. I think the results and performance look pretty promising and it would just be awesome to have a GPU accelerated fluid solver integrated into Maya.

Just downloaded the beta and will hopefully have some time to test it on the weekend. Cheers Mr. Amblés! Great work - keep it up! :)

Demolition Master by Eloi Andaluz

Awesome blackbox collection for TP called Demolition Master by Eloi Andaluz:

These blackboxes let you achieve demolition effects quickly and easily with little to no TP knowledge. But the even bigger value is: they are perfect study material if you want to get more into TP! I definitely recommend to buy the full version. It's just 25€ and you'll get a lot of TP know-how (dynamic sets and example scenes) for just a few bucks - plus: you'll get free updates by email!

I had actually planned to build something like that myself, but since I'm not that experienced with TP yet, it would've probably taken me a while. Now, thanks to Eloi, I can explore these dynamic sets and learn a lot quicker.

Another great treasure chest full of TP knowledge is Hristo Velev's Thinking Particles live blackbox collection on Dropbox as well the TP tutorials on his blog.

Thank you guys for making this stuff available for free (or cheap) and giving me (and others) the opportunity to learn by example!

Tool for Automated Dust Trails

I've got permission from RTT to present some of the tools i wrote for them over the last years. I'm not allowed to supply any script files for download but i can show their UI and functionality.

This one is called "Automated Dust Trails". Its a nParticle based dust trail tool that was optimized to work with RTT's car rig. I wrote the tool in 2009 when we prepared for the Lotus Elan spot, but it was used in many other productions since then.

The system uses dynamic hair follicles to read the speed of each wheel. The speed influences emission rates and density of particles. All relevant parameters (color, size, lifespan, density/opacity, emitter attributes, shading, etc.) are adjustable through a convenient UI, so even other operators with little to no experience in dynamics can generate dust trails easily.

Language: MEL 

Size: ~6500 lines (incl. UI)

Main features:

• automatic detection of RTT car-rigs
• automatic dust trail creation for any number of cars
• wheel velocity drives nParticle density & emission rate
• closestPointOnMesh / closestPointOnSurface nodes and in some cases colorAtPoint expressions are used for terrain specific dust trail options (e.g. to get the trail color from the terrain texture)
• use of a volumeNoise on the blobMesh channel of the particleCloudShader is based on a technique described in detail on djx blog, but goes further by controlling more shader attributes on a per-particle basis
• load and save presets option in menu
• all relevant attributes adjustable through a custom UI
• only few expressions, most of it is node-based to optimize performance

 (click to enlarge)

Video Demonstration for Voronoi Texture Fracture

I added a short video demonstration for my Voronoi Texture Fracture tool. The workflow for fracuring by image source is pretty much the same. You just need to specify an image in the UI instead of creating a voronoi shader.
If you go for smaller pieces, make sure you also increase the "Fracture Map Resolution for Voronoi Textures" in the tool's settings menu (default is 512x512).

Original post HERE.

Download the script HERE.

Voronoi Texture Fracture

UPDATE:
Tool has been updated multiple times since this post. Fixed bugs, added features. More stuff to come ...

I'm currently taking the Advanced Maya Dynamics - Breaking Ground class at CGWorkshops taught by David Alexander. The stuff we went through in the first week inspired me to write this little tool. 

Voronoi Texture Fracture GUI

It can fracture flat objects based on an image or by using voronoiTexture3D. The voronoi texture can be created and adjusted through the GUI as well as the options for the texture to geometry conversion.

Fractured and extruded pieces generated from a poly plane (click to enlarge)

Features:
- create and assign a (SOuP) voronoi shader (+sets hw shading options)

- auto convert shader to image 

- fracture geometry using (this) image
- separate texture2geometry output by object ids (SOuP)
- remove redundant edges (any but border edges)
- extrude all fractured parts
- create shaders per piece
- center pivots of fractured pieces

You will need to have the SOuP plug-in by Peter Shipkov installed and loaded for this script to work.

Download the script HERE.

Exploded View Rig for Audi Showroom Movie

Another youtube find: A project for Audi I worked on last year at RTT. I developed the explosion rig (fully node-based), wrote a tool to create and animate the rig, animated most of the explosion shots as well as camera and car in some other shots.

I hope I can post a demonstration video of the rig and tool some time soon. Will have to clarify the legal situation (copyright-wise, concerning the model and tool) with RTT first though ...

Dust Trails for Lotus Elan Movie

I found this on youtube today. It's a project for Lotus I worked on at RTT in 2010. I was responsible for most of the effects (mainly dust trails) as well as animating some shots (car and camera). I developed a nParticle based tool using MEL, which I used to create all the dust trails. Only for the dust in the pack shot I used Maya Fluids.

More info on the dust trail tool will follow in a later post. I'm working on video tutorials for all the tools I wrote for RTT during the last years and will post them here with the permission of RTT - hopefully ;) ...