Another Landscape

[mtpeak2]

Here's another start of a landscape project I decided to work on.

[NancyGormezano]

lovely & bucolic , nice peaceful feel

[mtpeak2]

Thanks Nancy.

[martin]

Oh, oh, ooooh... Make the grass blow in an animation using forces and your Dynamic Constraint SmartSkin rig.

[Rodney]

You've already got the grass effect looking great.

Very nice.

[3DArtZ]

Looks great.

could you make the soil material next to the water look wet/damp,

gradually turning dry as you get closer to the grass???

 

cool.

[mtpeak2]

Thanks guys.

 

Martin rendering a test now, shaded no reflections though, I wanted it to render sometime today.

 

That's a good idea Mike. I'll get right on it as soon as the render is done.

[itsjustme]

I can't pull a word out of my pocket like "bucolic", so I'll just have to settle for "that kicks ass"! Very cool so far, Mark!

[mtpeak2]

Thanks David.

 

Well, the render didn't come out as clear as I wanted, but here it is.

RB.mov

[NancyGormezano]

Thanks David.

 

Well, the render didn't come out as clear as I wanted, but here it is.

 

yup that thar is very scintillating.

 

EDIT: I would think you would need different imagery for background plants, ie different representations for the further away - notice how the foreground grass blows nicely until it gets contrasted against the brown sand - the thinner the grass resolves to, the more problemos. the more contrast the more apparent twinkling.

 

Some of the twinkling would be attenuated by more passes - but not all twinkling will go away probably.

 

Double EDIT: I also just noticed its just a shaded render.

 

Camera angle could also help horizon twinkles (where most imagery would be resolving to 1 pixel)

[mtpeak2]

Nancy, this was a 1 pass render, with very low quality compression, shaded render. The scintillating will be no where near this bad in a final render, but there will be some with no way around it.

[martin]

The grass motion is very nice.

 

The twinkling is a phenomenon of CG. Film is so much blurrier than this. That grass in the background, it doesn't need to be changed - it needs to be blurred (DOF) and darkened (brown Haze?).

 

Excellent experiment! Hopefully, SO will have plenty of blowing grass.

[mtpeak2]

Thanks Martin.

 

This was just the smartbones with the expressions, no dynamics or force involved and no animating.

[NancyGormezano]

it needs to be blurred (DOF) and darkened (brown Haze?).

 

Perhaps a blue/grey haze or a haze color that fits the time of day, weather conditions and sky color

 

AND YEAH - I forgot to say the motion dynamic does look very nice, very blowing in the wind nice

[robcat2075]

Damn, that's a lot of grass. That looks good though.

 

It's hard to tell from the mov, but it looks like that large area of grass is moving in unison. If you could find a way to stagger the effect that might more cloesly approximate the real life effect of the eddies in the air as the move across the body of the field, making a wave-like appearance.

[NancyGormezano]

Nancy, this was a 1 pass render, with very low quality compression, shaded render.

 

Lots of compression should actually help in some cases - I've seen it act like sort of a pseudo anti-aliasing, blurring. And yeah I did notice it was 1 pass, shaded.

 

I worked on real-time CIG systems for military flight simulators for over 12 years. The fidelity requirements for simulator imagery is different, but the one thing that is still the same is human factors.

 

The human eye is particularly sensitive to any stray twinkle glitch (technical term). The attention of the pilots, like animation viewers, will be immediately distracted and disturbed by the phenomenon. Hopefully our audience is less critical (kids).

 

Lawd knows, I try to get away with as much as I can. What twinkle? I didn't see anything twinkle? (my standard response during acceptance testing)

[mtpeak2]

Nancy, I have an image for the grass, but it's just a white blade with an alpha channel, I don't even need to use it. I'll see if that helps by removing it.

 

Thanks Robert. Each side of the river has one bone for the smartskin, that's why it moves in unison. I could add multiple smartbones for each side and set the expressions to vary/delay a bit to make it more wave like. Or just one expression bone and 3 smartbones with an orient like constraint with lag, that will probably work best. It will be alot of work setting up the smartskin though, since it doesn't work like weighting, but I'll see what i can do.

 

I'll probably add a density map for the hair, so it gradually get less dense as it is further away from the riverbank. This might help with the scintillating as well.

[mtpeak2]

Here's another render showing what the smartbones are doing and how the grass is responding to it.

 

Sorry for the size of the file, I'm trying to get them as low as I can without losing too much quality.

RB2.mov

[NancyGormezano]

maybe also try some motion blur?

[mtpeak2]

That's what I was thinking Nancy.

[HomeSlice]

That looks really really nice Mark. In addition to the grass, the landscape itself makes me want to look at it. Great job all around.

[mtpeak2]

Here's a render with the 3 smartbones and 1 expression bone. The smartbones are constrained to the expression bone with a lag setting. lowered realtime density and thickened the hair for this render.

 

How's that Robert, is that what you were looking for?

RB3.mov

[NancyGormezano]

that's very lovely - I can't speak for Robert - but I'm guessing he was looking for more of a wave action.

 

I did this a very long time ago using an animated movie that drives the direction of the grass:

 

http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?act=a...ost&id=5540

 

However your method is much simpler and elegant, and works for me

[Eric Camden]

More computing power, more computing power, more computing power, more com...........

 

Nice job, makes me want to get out my jacket

 

-E

[robcat2075]

yes, both of those are closer. The idea is to not have a whole bunch of stuff moving exactly together which looks mechanical.

 

If this was a shot that would linger on the screen for some time, you'd have to break the grass into even more controllable subsections to reduce what the eye might discover was moving too much together.

 

But for a shot of only a few seconds wou wouldn't have to do as much of that.

[mtpeak2]

Yes, more smartbones could be added to break it up even more.

 

This can be taken even further. The constraints can be setup in a percentage poses. These poses could be driven by the expression bone with smartskin to vary the enforcement of the constraints or the lag, to give even more variation to the hair.

[mtpeak2]

Actually, the expression could be added right to the enforcement or lag property of the constraint, even the offsets could have the expression.

[kwhitaker]

Here's another start of a landscape project I decided to work on.

love the grass, I can see the sand dunes just beyond .

[mtpeak2]

Thank's Katt.

[animas3D]

Hi, what's a smart bone?

[mtpeak2]

It's a regular bone that I use to smartskin hair to, I just call it a smartbone.