This week，I will study and make a model. Modeling skills are not only an extremely important link in the 3D animation and game industries，in recent years, various design fields have also increasingly required 3D modeling skills. Therefore, learning modeling is very necessary. Since I am a beginner, I don’t have much modeling foundation. So I plan to start with a simple case. The following shows how I made the shuriken.
my reference picture
First, I started with a box, increased the number of faces by bevel, and then selected the faces as shown in the figure to extrude. The following effects can be obtained by modifying the number of segments and thickness.
bevel facesextrude
Through cutting, I found that I only need to make 1/4 of the main body, and the rest can be obtained by mirror copy.
Use moving vertices to match pictures. The following objects can be obtained
Through two times bevel and extrude to get the following.
After finishing 1/4 of the main body, I can copy and transform by shift+d to get the remaining 3/4.
Combine it.
I used the method of bridging and deleting faces to make the torus.
Extrude and bevel make it more smooth and rich in thickness.
The blade part is relatively thin, so I used a polygonal plane to make it. Make a shape by adjusting the position of the point.
This week , my mission is to assist Sean in advancing the design of the man character. According to the story, man is a professional killer. The coat, robotic arm, hat, pistol and other elements remind me of McCree in overwatch, or the Mexican-style gang.
Mechanical arm referenceMechanical arm referenceMechanical arm referenceCoat and Mechanical eye referenceCoat reference
I made improvements on the basis of the materials he provided.
draft of arm
The character I finally designedillustration
Through conversation，I am glad that Sean was satisfied with the Mechanical arm, but unfortunately, he felt that the final image did not match the killer in his mind and deviated from his initial design. So this design was used as an alternative. Follow-up ideas (especially modeling) will be refined by him.
This week, my main task is to work with Yann in charge of the character design of the bounty hunter in the story (I am in charge of drawing and Yann is in charge of modeling).
Key word: Bun hairstyle, mechanical elements, hip-hop style oversize jacket, Japanese weapon（Samurai sword）, mask.
According to Yann’s description, the girl is a Chinese girl with a petite figure, flexible movements and diverse fighting skills. These are the sketches he drew in the early stage and the references he found.
draft by Yann
draft by Yann
Concept
According to the concept he described, I initially found some reference pictures.
This is my final design. I have mapped the key elements of the reference I found to express my meaning and make the modeling work of Yann go more smoothly. In terms of color, I think black and purple are more representative of cyberpunk style.
This week we will enter the practice of simulating the effects of smoke, flames and explosions.
Ⅰ. SMOKE
Enter dopnet, create smokesolver_sparse and smokeobj_sparse, create volumesource to connect with them, I got this. We know that in real life, the flow of smoke in the atmosphere is related to humidity and pressure, so I need to establish these two key nodes to move in the volume.
After adding temperature to attribnoise, I got a simple #mushroom cloud#.
Changing the buoyancy and adding gravity can also change the way the smoke moves. Next, I need to add lights to the smoke. (I haven’t installed the Arnold renderer, so I temporarily use Houdini’s built-in light instead). Create two lights in obj, and then return to the geo panel.
Next, I try the effect of smokesolver. It can be seen that gas will flow in a fixed container.
Therefore, my understanding is that the difference between smokesolver and smokesolver_sparse is that the former is to perform simulation calculations in a fixed space; the latter will not be limited to the space but will continue to spread (and correspondingly waste part of the simulation resources).
Ⅱ. FIRE
Next step,I tried to make simulation of fire.
It’s very strange that the fire I made according to mehdi’s method is completely different from the effect he produces. His fire is like a fire, but mine is still a smoke. I have no idea what happened…
After I asked for help through discord, I tried to cancel the dissipation option in the shape in pyrosolver_sprase, but it still didn’t work. So I had to temporarily suspend my simulation and ask mehdi for help.
After communicating with Mehdi, unfortunately，I found that this is a bug！
The solution is actually very simple, which is to completely delete the original volumesource, establish a new volumesource and connect to it. Finally, I followed the steps.
finally！！！
Adjusting the value of disturbance can make the flame more dispersed.
The following is the effect of adding gaswind. When there are more attributes, we can use merge to aggregate.
Since my Arnold renderer has been having problems, I use scene view instead of render view.
Next, I will learn how to make an explosion simulation.
First, create a new geometry. Establish the following connection. Adding density, temperature, flame, and divergence to souring in pyrosolver can give me an initial explosion effect.
It expends very quickly and it is going up.
Opening minimal openCL solve is beneficial to simulate the effect faster and save cpu resources.
Houdini has a built-in renderer which called Mantra. Compared with Anrold, mantra has the potential to create unlimited possibilities. The only drawback is that the rendering speed is too slow.
The following is my rendering test for different light sources
Nowadays, cyberpunk is undoubtedly one of the most popular art styles. This cooperation project not only combines mechanization and cyberpunk elements, but also takes Japanese animation elements as the main fighting reference. These are all areas of interest to me, and I can cooperate with very reliable classmates. It is undoubtedly an exciting challenge. I really expect that we can produce a series of good works.
Cyberpunk has always been a style I like very much, but I haven’t dared to try. The reason is simple, I am worried that I am not doing well enough. But this cooperation project does not need to produce a Very high degree of completion animation work. It is more important to focus on the process of exploring what I want to try and discover what I am really interested in, and, the experience of teamwork.
The following are the project materials I received in the first week of the meeting.
Concept overview: In a street, a masked girl fights a cyborg man. It’s an open collaborative project where you can add whatever you want to create. We can try all kinds of work in the project, and have a unique research content. At present, it includes the research points of stylized rendering(like overwatch) stylized visual effects, simulated 2D motion blur in 3D, and programmed modeling. The ultimate goal is to create a previs for 1-3min. It is still in the concept stage. Here are some styles so far.
Time: Near future
related words: postmodern, science fiction, cyberpunk.
On a clear night, the light of the moon when it is not blocked by clouds can cause shadows to objects.
Location: A deserted alley in a modern city with several small shops or signs.
Story: The cyborg man was destroying the robot in the alley, hitting it vigorously and smashing the wall out of the hole.Then the man threw it into the trash can. There were some robot limbs scattered around the trash can. The mechanical man took out a cigar and lit it, took a deep breath and then raised his head to puff out smoke. Looking up, she saw a masked girl holding a short knife standing on the roof. The girl squatted and rushed towards the mechanical man. The man dodged hurriedly, and the cigar was cut into two pieces. The girl fell and rolled, her back turned to the man. The man stabilized his flustered figure and spit his cigar aside. The girl slowly got up, revealing the sign behind her. After seeing this, the man showed an expression of disdain and disdain, and said a bounty hunter. The two faced each other in a stance, calm before the battle…
Background: In the future, era of high-tech and low-life, the emergence of smart machines will bring new contradictions to the society. The renewal of the government’s judicial system can hardly match the development of technology. The solidification of social class further leads to chaos, and excessive chaos brings new order. The intrigue among the upper-class society has also been brought to the table, and professional killers seem to have become an indispensable role for every upper-class power. And the bounty hunter system acquiesced by the government has given the people at the bottom a new way out, allowing society to maintain a stable but cold state to a certain extent. The masked girl is a bounty hunter, eccentric and agile. She grew up in a slum and was influenced by hip-hop culture. Dress more freely, there will be many cultural elements on her clothes, and she uses a short knife. When performing tasks, the attire is more capable, and she wears a mask to hide her face and does not speak.
Characters: A girl whose profession is a bounty hunter.
The cyborg man is a professional killer with a strong body and a cold face. He is usually responsible for handling some people or robots that they hate for the upper class people. Frequent killings made him brutal, and while this job brought him money, it also took his arm, but fortunately he could use a high-tech metal arm instead. The metal arm has stronger strength and defence.
Character and scene design: Pay attention to the shape and silhouette, the color purity is high, and the texture expresses the details. A few Asian elements.
This is the work schedule summarized in the first week（A preliminary plan）.
Visual effects (sometimes abbreviated VFX) is the process by which imagery is created or manipulated outside the context of a live action shot in filmmaking and video production. The integration of live action footage and CG elements to create realistic imagery is called VFX. VFX involves the integration of live action footage (special effects) and generated imagery (digital or optics, animals or creatures) which look realistic, but would be dangerous, expensive, impractical, time-consuming or impossible to capture on film. Visual effects using computer-generated imagery (CGI) have more recently become accessible to the independent filmmaker with the introduction of affordable and relatively easy-to-use animation and compositing software.（from Wikipedia）
Putting aside theoretical stuff, I have seen an interview with a special effects engineer who has been engaged in VFX for three years, and I will summarize and share it with you here. The job of a special effects artist, in layman’s terms, is to add some elements to the lens. About daily work is to add some basic elements (such as fire, water, smoke, etc.) to the lens after getting the lens. After completing the simulation, send it to the downstream department. The upstream part of Vfx is basically layout or animation, and the downstream part is lighting, and occasionally it is directly synthesized. The difference between Vfx and compositing: There are more footages for compositing (except Weta Studio), and VFX basically needs to be calculated by software. Skills required for Vfx: software Houdini (main industry); mathematics (linear algebra); Python or C. Working overtime in VFX (in China) is very serious, job turnover is very high, and job-hopping is also serious. Basically, it follows the project. After one project is over, you need to consider the next one. The VFX industry basically does not allow special effects artists to add their own personalized expression, because time is tight and tasks are heavy. It basically depends on customer needs.
There are four main differences between film animation and game animation: interactivity, loop action, lens and perspective, and frame rate. This is also the characteristic of game animation.
Interactivity: The game emphasizes the interaction between itself and the user. The feeling of control when you control the movement of the character, the sense of blow and the force feedback when you control the character’s fight, and the force feedback, and the wrong operation Negative state and so on. In addition, you can also perceive these states through visual, auditory, text, animation, language, handles, etc., and experience the content you control, and you can participate in this experience and play your role. All kinds of abilities, mobilize their various actions, to experience and immerse into the game world. This is not the case with film and television animation. Film and television only need to use pictures and sounds to drive your emotions, which purely test the animation ability of the animator.
Loop action： The controllable actions in the game are all loop actions. Walking loops, running loops, after walking and running, you have to link up with other loop actions, and there are corresponding loop linking actions between each loop action. A character’s punch attack has gone through stand-by, preparation, punching, and returning to the place to stand by. This set of actions is a cycle. Therefore, the game is basically a cycle of investigation, which requires high accuracy and cohesion.
Lens and perspective：There is no fixed lens created in the game. Players can adjust the viewing angle as they like. With the change of viewing angle, the player can see the posture and action effects of various parts of the game character. Therefore, when making each pose, game animators have to adjust the perspective of 360 degrees to see if the pose is not perfect. The rationality and correctness of the game action is more important than the beauty. This is the difference between game animation and film animation on the lens. The cutscenes CG in the game has a lens, but the game itself has no lens. Movie animation is different, the lens is fixed and accompanied by the movement of the camera.
Frame rate：Another big difference between games and movies is the frame rate. Everyone in film and television is familiar with 24 frames per second, while game animation is 30 frames per second. Film and television animations are produced at 24 frames per second, that is, 24 consecutive poses are made per second, plus the dynamic blur between poses, you will feel very smooth when watching an animation work. Caton. But every frame in the game is rendered separately, there is no dynamic blur, if the frame rate is lower than 30, you will feel stuck.
