effects animation

I did this one when I was in ScreenScene in Dublin. TP and FFX based. Enjoy!

Sorry for keeping you guys waiting for so long, but here it is!

From eat3d: ‘In this DVD Hristo Velev takes up from Part 1 in this series, to go deeper into the intermediate concepts of Thinking Particles. Everything from Raycasting, Referencing, Motion Inheritance, Generation, Driving Scene Objects, Shape Collision, Fragmentation, Caching, Joints, PhysX Dynamics, Deformation, Displacement, Map-Based Interaction, Particle Interaction, Custom Data Streams, FumeFX Interaction, and more are fully explored in this DVD.

This DVD is perfect for those who want to learn more about Thinking Particles and why many studios are using it in production today.’

You can get it from Eat3D, from $49.95

A rendering of the project at the end:

Any questions you have – ready to answer here, in the CGTalk thread or anywhere else I appear 🙂

Thanks guys, and special thanks to Geri for keeping up with me all the evenings and weekends 🙂

As you could know, I’m teaching a course in FXPhD this semester – ‘Visual effects techniques with Max’. It’s goal is to get into the most awesome topic, and show how destruction effects are done in production – i.e. the fun stuff! 🙂 You can check it out over at FXPhD, and there’s the plan:

Modeling for dynamics
We’ll go through the needs and peculiarities of modeling for effects – which the FX artist needs to either do or supervise, to get the necessary assets.

Previz and layout
The power and importance of composing effects scenes in the previs and layout stage is one of the big lessons in FX. We’ll get into how rough sketches, simple animation and particle effects are used to plan a shot, laying its foundations and setting it on the right course.

Fragmentation
We’ll go over the techniques used to fragment and prepare the assets for dynamics. The treatment of different types of materials like wood, concrete, glass, etc. Fitting the level of detail into the plan of the shot.

Rigid body dynamics and procedural fragmentation
Goes into setting up a solid and extensible structure for rigid body dynamics (RBD) in Thinking Particles. Then we take a look at procedural activation and fragmentation, how and when to use them.

Structures
Going further into what can be done with rigid bodies, we’ll look at different ways to create and destroy interconnected structures of rigid bodies.

Additional animation
Adding art-directed secondary animation to enrich the RBD simulations, and adding effects that are otherwise less practical to achieve.

Secondaries
Adding layers of secondary dynamics like chunks, debris, splinters, shrapnel and funny accidentals.

Interactions
Making the existing RBD simulation interact with the environment, producing some more elements like sparks, dust, mounds of earth and secondary destruction.

Fluids
Fire and smoke are essential in almost every shot. We’ll look at working both ways – from the solids to the fluids, and from the fluid to the solids, setting up and controlling FumeFX simulations.

Management
Looks at the key points of managing the FX process, start to finish. A way to set up a good base for any FX element in the start, and assembling all the pieces of the puzzle together for rendering.

Will be some exciting times, I can promise 🙂 See you there!

Only now I manage to get down to writing this, but still – another awesome EUE! Thanks to Joep, Stefan and Michiel first, for organizing such a hearty event, and to everybody else who made it totally kickass! A lot of great presentations. Bobo showed off some new Krakatoa and Frost tricks and features, and the interesting story of how they grew up in all the productions they did through the years. Gonzalo Rueda gave us a crazy ride on how Ilion did their Planet 51, so many crazy stories there 🙂 Yoni Cohen showed some great tools that Snowball VFX publishes to the community, and their work on the voluminous Vipo animated series and the interesting Hakibutizm commercial they did. Bobo’s presentations were kickass of course – general Frost intro for the uninitiated, some interesting stuff coming with Krakatoa 2 and other new stuff from Thinkbox, and a cool history trip on how their tools developed during productions – fascinating! Johan Boekhoven’s view into a cool commercial they did with a big appliance-built robot was interesting for me, being in another part of the biz. There was so much more, it’s almost overwhelming. Made lots of friends, had great times. Subscribed to that place for life!

Check out what my talks are gonna be about in EUE 2011!

See ya guys there!