robcat2075

Do you have to see their feet in this shot or is it just shoulders?

Show us some pics when you have time. I'd be curious to see the coin!

I'll note that on my computer, at least, if I have any sort of simulation in progress and I do a mouse-click, in or out of the window, or if there is any other program running that is updating its screen, A:M will go to "Not Responding" and appear to be frozen. It's still working and will come back when it finishes but if you want to monitor the simulation in progress you need to just let it be and not do anything else on the computer.

that's promising.

ghost plasma!

that sounds interesting. Can you explain it a bit more? I'm not sure I understand "out of sequence"

Here's a comparison of different size drops 4cm, emission rate 500, took a few minutes to simulate 2cm, emission rate 4000, took somewhat more than an hour to simulate 1cm, emission rate 32000, took seven hours to simulate Actual render times are from 10 seconds to a few minutes. 4cm2cm1cm.mov

Rule of thumb... If you reduce the particle size by half, you need to increase the emission rate by 8x to create the same volume of fluid. For example, it would take eight 1cm spheres to equal the volume of one 2cm sphere. 8x the particles means 8x the simulation time so use the largest particles you can for the fluid effect you are developing.

Here are some lesser viscosity tests. The third one is mildly promising. There is a very odd rendering artifact when they splash way past the camera frame... LesserVisc.mov

My tactic has been to test each joint as i weight/fanbone/smartskin it. I have the model open in an action window so I can test rotate the bone while I'm working on it in another window. That way I only need to have the geometry bones in the model and don't need to have the rigging constraints done yet.

Matt asked about my viscosity settings. These tests all have viscosity set to 199.9999 200 produces particle that never leave the emitter. Note to future experimenters... you can enter 199.9999 (will appear as "200") in the viscosity box and run fluids with that but if you save and reload the PRJ it will come back as a real 200. You need to manually re-enter 199.9999 I think viscosity has more to do with the particles' movement through space (it slows them down) than with their interaction with each other. That said, high Visc seems to exacerbate the tendency of the fluid to crawl up the sides of the container. That is very odd. The first two clips have identical settings except that "Cull Particles" is ON in the first and OFF in the second. the result is slightly different in the final arrangement of particles but other than that it looks to have the same behavior. There didn't seem to be a big difference in sim time either. The rest of the clips are other setting change tests, but all with high viscosity. Bowl06HighViscTests.mov

I'm baking a sim now but A:M is only taking about 64 MB. I presume most of the data goes immediately to the hard drive.

If you are wondering what a modified T-pose is... it isn't any of these images that came up in a search for "modified T Pose" Here's a better example"

I've been experimenting with variations of this. Averaging several frames together... baking at one fps and rendering at another... so far no great successes but i'm still looking at it.

If you get stuck, post it and we'll look at it.

It hadn't occurred to me. i only have a 64-bit version of the new "g" beta. Next time i run a bake I'll take a look but so far the bake files have been way less than a Gig.

The 45 degree slant pose is a nice compromise between T-pose and arms-down. It might be easier when you do CP weighting to have that as the starting point. But I've never tried it on my models yet, I've always been doing T-pose, just because.

There are several viscosities here. 200 is the maximum. That seems to make fluid that never leaves the emitter but you can do settings like 199.999 and get semi solid lumps that never flatten out on the ground. However, even with that high viscosity they never stop vibrating.

I'm wishing fluids had something like the "damping" setting cloth does so it could eventually lose energy and stop moving. I recall Fluids were written by a college student that Martin had as an intern several years ago. I wonder if he could be located....

More tests with fluid. BowlTests.mov

Along the same line, in the original "Madagascar" many of the background cityscape buildings are not CG, they are physical models painted and photographed to look like CG and used as "rotoscope" behind the character animation. They did this because they didn't have the computer power to render all that. I'm surprised by that but that's what they said in the commentary to "Madagascar II"

Same here.

From the Hollywood Reporter... I presume there's some sort of signal light they shine on the clouds to call an emergency board meeting.

If you add a "Turbulence" to a combiner it will make the boundary less straight. Can you show us a real-life reference image of what you are trying to do?

I recall reading that in the early years Pixar had a goal of no more than 5 minutes render time per frame. They've blown way past that on more recent projects but there was a time when that was their practical limit to get the movie done on time. Basically you try to swap in faster things that will do the job of elaborate things. For example, it's unlikely I will use particle fluids for the lagoon that submarine is in, I'll probably use my "cloth" water which is pretty fast to work with and will look appropriate. Somewhere in my tuts is a thread where I went through a shot that someone said was taking too long ans showed various alternate techniques to make it spit out faster.