John Bigboote Posted August 2, 2007 Posted August 2, 2007 OY! I recently was handed a storyboard for a local retail chain which showed a 'monolithic' gigantic thing covered by a silk-like fabric blowing in the wind. I was at a sales meeting with some of my fellow animators who use Maya. The question was put forth: "Can YOUR software do this type of effect???" The Maya team said they had an excellent cloth simulator but that none of them had ever experimented with it and then put forward a 'pie-in-the-sky' number ($40,000 which meant they didn't want to go near it) to do the job. I said I would like to do a test and after a day of dinks came up with this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTE4nCHGwNo This SOLD the job! I start actual production next week, and I plan to make the cloth grid denser and will solve the 'break-thru' issue. I was quite pleased with the way the V14 betaRC9 cloth handled! The settings are almost all default, though I did change the cloth stretch type and bend type to 'Springs' and I lowered the gravity in the chor to -25% and slowed the animation in After Effects to 200% as well as added the sky, smoke-effect and other little dinks. I've found that once the simulation has been run and results are favorable (after many sims) that you can then remove the cloth materials and deflectors from the groups, and at this point I even added 'Porceline' material to the cloth group to smooth it even more. SimCloth made me the 'HERO' of the day- because the sales staff was actually planning to do this effect practically...meaning hire a sculptor to carve the 50% out of foam, find some cool fabric and a large fan and shoot on a light-stage. They were quite happy to scrap those plans! And AFTER everyone had seen my test, the job was sold for way less than 40G...the Maya team decided to go to work on THEIR test...still waiting to see it!!! (Although I'm SURE it will be GREAT!) They've got a lot more bells-and-whistles, people sitting around, render engines and a 100+ renderfarm... but I've got one thing they don't--- THE JOB!!! Thanks HASH! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTE4nCHGwNo Quote
oakchas Posted August 2, 2007 Posted August 2, 2007 Matt... Fantastic.... I love to see A:M beat anybody, but especially those Inbred Incans that got lost on the way home. Oh and congratulations to you... Oh, and very nice effect... Oh, and Kudos to HASH and programming team... Oh, and ... well... sigh! Very nice going back and looking at the sequence again... The "break-through" is not so severe as to make one think it was anything but very sheer cloth sticking to the monolithic text. Quote
KenH Posted August 2, 2007 Posted August 2, 2007 Nice effect! Another thing you might try to polish it is to model/arrange the splines in the cloth so that line up with the edge of the model that it's covering. Don't forget to show us the finished project....if you're allowed. Quote
arkaos Posted August 2, 2007 Posted August 2, 2007 WOOOO HOOOO YEAH! Killer representation, John! Way to GO. A:M does it AGAIN! Quote
John Bigboote Posted August 2, 2007 Author Posted August 2, 2007 THANKS GUYS! Ken- I know what you mean... the 'gag' of the spot is that you can see what's under the tarp even though the announcer is treating it as a secret. Basically, it's a local furniture chain that is having a 50% off sale. The fact that you can 'see' the 50% is important to the client. Quote
NancyGormezano Posted August 2, 2007 Posted August 2, 2007 Wow - that looks really great - and it's terrific to hear that You (and A:M) got the job. Quote
Paul Forwood Posted August 2, 2007 Posted August 2, 2007 Nice work, Matt! Did you use a static or variable force to blow the cloth? Martin is going to get very angry with you for making A:M look so professional. Quote
Hash Fellow robcat2075 Posted August 2, 2007 Hash Fellow Posted August 2, 2007 Wow! that looks fab. I love your stories where you beat the Maya guys. Was this the place that wouldn't let you put netrender on their network? Quote
John Bigboote Posted August 2, 2007 Author Posted August 2, 2007 Paul- I forgot to mention the force! I used a 'fan' scaled up and set to about 600magnitude, next I'm going to alter the magnitude... RobCat- Yes, tis. They are now at a point where they are replacing their older processors and have about 30 piled-up doing nothing, so I inquired if I could 'repurpose' them and then I would buy NetRender (If Hash still sells it!) They thought about it and finally replied..."We are going to use them as an After Effects renderfarm..." DANG! I guess if they were mine I would'nt give them away either. The render on this wasn't so bad...about 8 hrs overnight- but I'm now doing a longer simulation...IT'S taking almost 6 hrs to precompute the dynamics of the heavier mesh! Quote
Mr. Jaqe Posted August 2, 2007 Posted August 2, 2007 As said before: The force is strong with this one (pun intended). AWESOME work, love the entire setting. The cloth just looks so natural and gentle. Great stuff! J Quote
KenH Posted August 2, 2007 Posted August 2, 2007 Ken- I know what you mean... the 'gag' of the spot is that you can see what's under the tarp even though the announcer is treating it as a secret. Basically, it's a local furniture chain that is having a 50% off sale. The fact that you can 'see' the 50% is important to the client. I got that. I meant there's abit of "checkering" on the cloth where the cloth splines are going (the wrong way) against the model. Quote
Dhar Posted August 3, 2007 Posted August 3, 2007 Congraulations John on a job well done. I am very happy for you that you not only got the job but gave the Maya guys a run for their money Quote
johnl3d Posted August 3, 2007 Posted August 3, 2007 Nice now everyone will be playing with cloth.. Quote
pdaley Posted August 3, 2007 Posted August 3, 2007 Matt, First rate work and congrats on getting the job! That's one for our side! Quote
John Bigboote Posted August 16, 2007 Author Posted August 16, 2007 UPDATE! I just put the Finished spot on youtube for your perusals: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNtW9yMyTvY This is a 'superless' version...meaning in the edit they covered this animation with text, logos, prices and disclaimers. Yuch. This spot went out last week...I did it 'on the side' while I was doing other animation during the day...'get it while you can' mentology. I was not entirely happy with the way it hurriedly went out and aired, so I revisited it this week and added/changed some stuff, for my demo reel. I employed Hash's 'Depth of Field' feature on this final render, and liked the fact that since I had my camera 'aimed at' a null the DOF focus was locked at that range as well, so I only needed to adjust my forward and aft focus ranges. To get the DOF feature to work, you need to use multipass...the more passes the better. THIS was a 16 pass render, rendered at 1080X729 resolution (larger than D1) because I was doing a 'fisheye' effect in After Effects and needed the Xtra real estate. At about 1 minute per pass, and 16 minutes per frame, and 2 instances of A:M rendering on my PC- it took 3 days to render the :30 spot. I only rendered 15 seconds of animation and doubled that in After Effects but still... I need a render farm! In After Effects I added the 'wind-blow by' effect...which is actually a turbulence sequence generated by A:M for some water tutorial I did a while ago. I just fuzzed it out and made it fly by the scene with lowered transparency. I also added the sky in AE, which was a stock-footage movie that I altered bigtime to look right. You can barely see it, but I also used a displacement effect in AE so that the sky is displaced (offset) by the veil's alpha channel. As I mentioned above, I used the 'optics compensation' filter to imitate a little 'barrel-roll' at the beginning of the spot, and you can actually see this effect in the '1' at the beginning of the spot...it has a slight curve to it, whereas it was a straight line coming out of A:M. I also used a 'shine' filter from trapcode.com to add the 'god-rays' light effect. V14.0 cloth feature is a real winner! Matt Campbell aka John BigBoote NEW ANIMATION: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNtW9yMyTvY ORIGINAL TEST: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTE4nCHGwNo...ted&search= Quote
zandoriastudios Posted August 16, 2007 Posted August 16, 2007 Nicely done!!! Hope you made enough to start your render farm! Quote
Hash Fellow robcat2075 Posted August 16, 2007 Hash Fellow Posted August 16, 2007 Looks great! congrats! Quote
John Bigboote Posted August 16, 2007 Author Posted August 16, 2007 Nicely done!!! Hope you made enough to start your render farm! HA! You obviously don't know me too well, Will! My company grabs any profits, dangles an incentive 'carrot' in front of me if I hit my numbers...and then come bonus time fudges the numbers! Needless to say...I am considering freelancing and going it on my own... Quote
arkaos Posted August 16, 2007 Posted August 16, 2007 WHOA...DID IT SAY 'ART VAN' FURNITURE? I USED TO WORK AT 'ART VAN' IN PONTIAC!!!! Well...Killer job. That'll give them Maya freaks something to think about . Quote
John Bigboote Posted August 16, 2007 Author Posted August 16, 2007 Arkaos- Pontiac? I was born in Pontiac and still don't live too far away from there! Are you still a Michi-Ganderer? You could join D.A:M.N. (Detroit Area Animation:Masters Network) Quote
arkaos Posted August 16, 2007 Posted August 16, 2007 Unfortunately, I moved here to IA back in '95. I was born at what was once Pontiac General and I grew up in Clarkston. I would really like to move back some day, but my brother still lives there and he says the work economy (for our line of work, not animation, unfortunately) isn't very good right now. I still consider that area my home, not Iowa. Hail! Greetings to all Michiganders from the Heartland. Quote
John Bigboote Posted August 16, 2007 Author Posted August 16, 2007 Wow! Small world! My brother lives in Clarkston (Andersonville Rd. Big Lake Rd.) and I am just south in White Lake. YES---our economy is in the crapper BIGTIME! People are leaving Michigan in Droves. Our newspapers are thick with home foreclosures... There never really WAS an animation industry in Michigan unless you go way back to Jam Handy or the Fleisher Brothers... lucky thing for me... when the economy tanks...businesses ADVERTISE more...I'm busy as HELL!!! UNfortunately, it looks like our bad economy is spreading to other states...I hope I'm wrong. If anyone out there is looking for a really nice home for 'dimes on the dollar'...Michigan has a plethora to choose from top to bottom. Quote
leander Posted September 20, 2007 Posted September 20, 2007 Great Job Jhon, and congratulations!!!! ...and slowed the animation in After Effects to 200%... [/url] I think a time remap can be a good idea for incorporate to the new NLE for AM. Yes, AE is a professional software for do this, but adding this feature in AM can gain workflow without leaving to other softwares. Is a good idea, isnt? Sorry my english. Quote
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