Hello all-

Last night they aired "Casino Royale" on cable...(the Daniel Craig Bond movie) and I was reminded how cool the titles were.

They had various conflicts and every time a character died they used the suits from a deck of cards (hearts, clubs, diamonds and spades) to show their bodies exploding. I have a plug in for After Effects which can do that with squares and polygons but nothing for customized shapes like the kind being used in the Bond Titles.

I guess you could have a normal character and then do a substitution when there is an explosion using the same character exploding but if you used sprites you would almost have to use an emitter for all parts of the body.

I remember there is an explosion plug in for Hash somewhere ( I couldn't find it) ..and I don't remember if the plug-in allows the user to customized explosion shapes that would be affected by gravity.

Anyway here are some samples from the movie to show what is being described...

Any suggestions are appreciated!

Thanks!

Tom

I recall several projects here with very similar effects. I remember Paul Forewood showed a test where a character fractured into a set of leaves or flower petals that blew away.

Short answer, yes. How? Maybe someone will share the details or maybe you'll R&D it yourself and let us know?

I believe all that was done in an compositing app such as After Effects, though I am sure it is possible with A:M.

Photoman

It's possible using Steffen Gross's plugin called E_Rebuild .. it's used with newton dynamic

Many thanks for all the tips!!

Tom

After Reviewing a bunch of options it appears the easiest way to achieve the Bond animation effect is through something like an After Effects effect.

The Steffen Gross plug-in looks very cool (thanks Steffen !! and XTaz for the tip!!) but I wanted to define the shapes of the individual pieces, as in spades and hearts etc. The thought of slapping cookie cutter maps on each patch (Is there a plug in that slaps maps on multi patches at once???) was staggering.

I discovered an effect called Shatter (comes with AE CS4 under "simulation" EFX )which allows a user to define the cookie cutter map that will shatter the rendered image. Here is a tutorial-

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/AfterEffects/9...c597-7a8da.html

I haven't mastered it yet but I think this is how they did the Bond animation.

Thanks again for all the feedback!

It is appreciated!

Tom

That's what a "patch image" is... same image shows on every patch. Haven't tried blowing them up, but I don't know why it wouldn't work.

But you're wanting to blow particles around with an image on them? That's what sprites are made for.

Just for future reference.

If your going into after effects check this tutorial out:

http://www.motionworks.com.au/2009/03/afte...he-dark-knight/

Very similar to the Bond effect.

Photoman

I didn't know that!

Thanks!

T.

I tried that link but it came up with a "site not found" error...is there another site?


Thanks!

Tom

Sorry messed the link up. I fixed it so it should work now.

I tried applying a black/white patch image (shaped like a spade) on Thom and made it a transparency map. I was suprised that the light shining through did not cast shadows using the transparency map as a guide but instead had the entire figure of Thom cast the shadow as if it were solid.Attached is image.

Do you know if this might be a bug?

Thanks!
Tom

done with AM

http://www.youtube.com/user/TinkGnome#p/u/13/pqFAIn6HQRM

I'm still getting an error that says :

"Not Found

Sorry, but you are looking for something that isn't here."

......... Now you've got me intrigued ;-)

If you can get the link to work..please re-post..

Thanks!

T.

Try it with the "rim" light's shadows set to ray-traced rather than z-buffered.

Fantastic!!!

I never would of thought of that...Thanks!!

T.

Looks great!!
T.

now instead of the pieces showing as they fall you have them become invisible and emit the shape you want as sprites too late now but may post a sample tomorrow

OK this link works for sure, go to the bootom of the page for the dark knight tut.:

http://www.motionworks.com.au/category/tutorials/

Photoman

Great tutorial! Thanks for sharing it!

Tom

http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=37244

rough trial

I have uploaded an illustration with four images showing an After Effects approach to achieving the desired effect.

Hopefully the sequence of images are clear enough to explain the dilemma. I am a little rusty with After Effects but perhaps someone else can see the way through this.

Many thanks again to all the people who took time to answer!

Tom

You want that red oval to disappear after the spades come flying off it?

Transparency = 100%

Tell me why that won't work. I'm missing something.

The way the "Shatter" effect works is, it pulls the "cut out" shapes (Spades) from the original red oval bitmap. If you set that level to transparency 100% it will make ALL the pieces disappear ...even the cut out shapes...

It is a tricky problem but it could be promising if a way can be figured out to make the "left behind" oval disappear while keeping all the cut out pieces intact.

T.

Is this the core concept as far as what appears and what disappears?

Click to view attachment

very cool...thanks!

That is the effect needed!

T.

It's a square with the edges made transparent by a transparency map so it looks like a heart, coming out of an identical square with the center made transparent by an opposite tranparency map so it looks like it has a square heart cut out of it. They are two models.

It turns out you can't render these two things when they are positioned exactly the same, so on the first frame the heart model is Active OFF and the transparency map on the hole model is set to 0% (making it do nothing) leaving the hole model appearing as if it doesn't have a hole yet.

From the second frame on, the heart model is Active ON and the, Hole model's map is set to 100% to make the hole visible.

from the 10th frame to teh 20th the hole model's map is animated down to 0%, then the model is set to Active OFF making it completely disappear.


On other oddity, the transparency parameter of the Hole model has to be set to 1%, not 0% for it to appear at all. Not sure why.

Thanks again...great idea!
T.