Foliage and dynamics

[JohnArtbox]

Tests on using hair with dynamics and forces. The grass looks good but the leaves on the tree seem to be moving a lot more than they should. They have the same dynamics settings as the grass.

 

grassB000.mov

One aspect I'm not sure about is the number of leaves which don't seem to be reacting to the forces at all. There is only one hair system on the ground and another on the tree, so I would have thought the forces would have produced equal motion across the board. Initially I also had dynamic constraints on the tree trunk but I pulled them out so that I could isolate the motion of the leaves.

[John Bigboote]

SWEET! You can adjust the 'drag' on the leaves to get more or less wind effect. Maybe add more mass too!

[Kamikaze]

Regardless of some issues, it sure looks good John,

[bighop]

A tutorial on the 2005 training has you create trees. One thing they did was use two wind forces on the tree. One was constant wind, the other was a gust.

 

Otherwise, looks good!

[jirard]

Looks great

How long did it take to create this whole scene?

[JohnArtbox]

Thanks for the comments all. I shortened the length of the hair on the tree leaves by a third to match the grass and it seems to reduce the leaf jitter(which makes sense), anybody know why not all the leaves are affected?

Matt: Read your comment about hair and collision detection in Mike's hair notes thread, I'd be curious to see the results. I tried basic collision detection (default settings) on the tree leaves, but I need to experiment a lot more before I get anything worthwhile.

Mike: It's almost there, but like most things the final 10% is going to take a long time.

Bighop: I used one force with turbulence and then animated the force as well.

Jirard: I think the basic scene took about 30 minutes. Experimenting with dynamics has probably absorbed three hours of tv time (enter dynamics settings, shaded render, reread the manual, let it sink in while watching Burn Notice, change a setting, start again).

[JohnArtbox]

This is a more traditional approach to foliage. Straight Cookie cut maps on basic geometry with render time of less than a minute

[Rodney]

Nice John.

 

The judicious usage of both approaches would really make a scene look great.

With all your various projects and tests I assume you have amassed a pretty large collection of foliage by now.

[KenH]

Both look great. The last one is really clear and has lots more variety than I've seen with cookies before. Any chance of getting a wireframe/shaded screenshot of that? I'm assuming each "branch" is a duplicated cookie. Are they all hand arranged?

[phatso]

The motion of the tree reminds me of a dancer I once saw who was wearing tassels on her...umm...

 

But anyway, the grass is about perfect. Wouldn't know it from the real thing.