HEY!

I've been tinkering with Newton Dynamics and MANY objects again, like my pizza-coin animation.

This one is a snow-globe, again for a TV commercial (yes, art for the sake of commerce...I know) the interesting thing this time is that I am using a FORCE to activate the newton-dynamic objects. At this point, things are mostly working but I need to 'populate' the globe with many, many, many more snowflakes. Supposedly, the snow will 'wipe' the logo to the 'half-off', and then to other things. In this animation there are 70 snowflakes, I think I need more like 200-350. The time-consuming part is that I need to place the flake in the chor one-by-one (individually) so I have a ways to go yet.

THIS was an overnight render with 5 multipass. It started out at 2:15 per D1 frame and as the camera got closer it went up to 7:30 per frame, not bad but I need to watch out, because these TV spots need to be made QUICKLY and long renders are prohibitive.

This test is the result of 2 days(part-time) of tweeking and refinements in the settings of the:

-lighting (still not happy with it.
-glass and refraction
-Force- vortex or fan, motion or static,
-camera
-snowflake

GOOD NEWS! Just heard from the producer and this spot is a 'go'... so my 2 days of tests are billable. This is a testament to Hash that I can work-up a test REALLY quick that looks good enough in a sales meeting that the client will sign off on it.

I may post the project file if there is interest.

Matt Campbell- aka John BigBoote

"I need to place the flake in the chor one-by-one (individually) so I have a ways to go yet."

doesn't the multi copy plug in work in this case?

Nice effect

I have'nt played with that yet... is that a Stefan thing?

The tricky thing is that they all need to be in the bottom of the globe, and naturally not touching one another.

For the 1st 35 snowflakes I simply made sure they were 'inside' the globe, then I ran a sim to let them all drop down to the bottom on top of each other...then I deleted all the animation keyframes except for the last frame where it was in it's final rest position, and copy-pasted that to frame 1. But even that will be a TON of work once there is some 300 flakes.

The looks good. The stefan plugin will do what you want I think.



if the refraction is eating up your render time, maybe you could render the flurry of snow separately, distort it with a bulge filter in AE and then composite that into the image of the globe

I'm considering that... in a pinch. Nothing is as 'real 3D' as 'real 3D' though... sometimes 2D shortcuts like that (bulge)have visual 'giveaways', but like I said I am considering it.

NOW- The job is evolving... they want to see the globe 'shake-up'. I tried animating the globe doing a shake-up and then re-simulating...NO GO. The problem with this is that the Newton objects are REACTIVE, and not PROACTIVE...meaning- the snowflakes fall to the bottom of the globe and rest against it and each other as far as they can...any farther and they would be OUTSIDE the plane of the globe, right? Now, when I go to animate the globe, the 1st thing I need to do is LIFT it off the ground plane- but this makes the snowflakes pass thru the globe, and as they REACT they react wrongly, since they now reside on the OUTSIDE of the globe.

My workaround to this: Since I already have the simulation working on a static globe, I will shake-up the entire set and leave the globe be. I constrained all the lights, cyc-background, and light-rig reflector model to the camera, and animate the camera to do the shake-up. We'll see. The GOOD thing about a 'shake-up' is that I can hide the transition from the logo to the 1/2 OFF easier so I wont need as many snowflakes...maybe.

I'm gone next week, but will post the results and unfolding job progress here...it's a Christmas spot so I have some time. STAY TUNED.

In this case , You can try two things
- set the Scale world to ON
if this doesn't help
- set High velocity object to On for the snowflakes

But as the first thing that would I try
for the simulation self use a much higher fps rate for the project (after You have animated the sphere shaking),
after simulating set it back to the original value . It will take much more time (recommended 600 fps or higher) , but give a better result , because the physic system has more time to solve penetrations .
And don't forget Reduce Keyframes in this case ....

If this doesn't help , I would have a look at the projectfile to check , what I can do (open a private report)

WOW. That's all good advice! All of it I never would have thought of... I'll let you know Stefan...THANKS!

Looks pretty cool so far, Matt.

Nice sharing John and Yoda, much to learn.....thanks

The snowglobe project has been on and off the back-burner... next week I wrap it up though...here is the current WIP.

There are 170 flakes in the bowl, and then I used a 'trick' in After Effects to duplicate that for many many more...

NEWTON DYNAMICS working great!

Lookin' good!!!

Yes, that is it, nice effect...

OK--- I took a break from this spot but finished it up this week. LOTS and LOTS of little Newton objects flying around...and lots of post-work in AE to composite.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING, HASHERS!

Looks real nice ,I like the shakes between the adds ,another good job well done

Pretty cool.

Nice! Way to take an idea and figure out how to get it done well ... and on time!

>I may post the project file if there is interest.

<Great interst on my behalf!

Very nice work.

I know I keep saying "and here's the final result"... but my client has kept dinkin' on this for the last 2 weeks. Yesterday, it came down that the setting was 'too sterile' and so it was decided that a few Christmas presents would solve that issue. SO--- here is the 'final result' ---knock on wood.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAfIE13w9iw Click on the 'watch in high quality' recommended.

I think your client was right. It was kind of "sterile". Animation was perfect though of course. The presents really make it more fun... uh... those are "Holiday" presents right?

-vern

Another job well done, Matt!