I used A:M these last 2 weeks to procure and animate a semi-technical animation for a sales presentation on a new brand of cat litter.

The thing they wanted to see was a granule of litter extremely close-up, and how the pores in the granule absorb, trap and contain the cat urine droplets.

Features used in A:M... I used a Simbiont material called 'Chocalate Mine' and baked the results... turned a color map from the 'bake' to a high displacement map to get the 'craggy' finish. MatCaps were used on the droplets and the aqua shield that grows around the granule. A boolean-cutter was used for the reveal of the sphere. To get the small yellow spheres to look like orbulating liquid, I made an animated Fractal-Sum gradient and used it's value as a displacement amount.

I went thru about 1 dozen rounds of revision with the agency, and the final product was HD 1280 X720... some frames took about 20 minutes to render with a 25 X 25 multipass to get the displacement to not jitter. I am glad to be done with this, but think it came out nice- for what it is!

Urine the money now, Matt!

I can't show that to my cats or they will want it too!

That looks very good, the style and motion and everything about it looks great!

Looks great ! Well done! & thanks for the description of how you did everything.

I for one though, am looking forward to the next scatalogical episode, in which I assume you demonstrate how this litter deals with..um...kitty poo?

I like the word "orbulating" too.

Yeah! 'Orbulating'... or to orbulate! Here is a detail render of one of my 'orbulating' droplets of cat-pee. I think this is pretty cool... wish I had tried it when I did the bubbles at the beginning of the 'Pass the Ball 2' title: http://www.youtube.com/user/campydoodles#p/a/u/1/1koP6oTPYZQ

This is simply a 8 CP lathed sphere... with no animation to it's geometry. The 'orbulations' coming from the displacement caused by the Fractal-Sum material with it's XYZ values keyframed over time.
I think it's pretty danged cool! But, I like bus fumes...

That looks very good Matt! Did you hand-animate each of the orbulating yellow spheres?

Good question. They wanted to see multiple blobbies enter each pore before it fills-up... so I made an action where I animated several(7-9) blobbies coming together and then following a path. I then used that action several times and animated IT in the choreography coming forward and then finding a pore... but then I DID do about 1 dozen individual blobbies so it wasn't so uniform.

Great simulation!

The physics seems dubious but I'm sure the cats won't care.

Yes. it was meant to be a 'visual representation' and not an actual photographic recreation- so it is quite stylized and not an actualization.

Are you allowed to name the brand so we can watch for the commercial?

Very cool job, and the final frame makes a cool alien face.

Nice work Matt

Most impressive, Matt. That granule would make a great asteroid!

It was for a promo video... not sure how they are going to use it- but I doubt as a commercial. It's called Cat's Pride.



Yeah, I originally had it over an all black background for readability- but the agency said it looked like an asteroid in space and asked for a litter-box background.

Great stuff, Matt!

Great work!

Love the surfaces you generated within AM.

Nice animation - like the particles.