Back home

Been back in Singapore for about a week now and am getting back to things. Was good to meet family and friends again. Here's the 'completed' gum shot...

There are still some things to iron out but I will have to concentrate on other things for now.

Finally done with the first part of the gum shot after a lot of problems with the particle fluids. Am putting up the video I have so far and combined with the previous shot.

Here's a test render of the walk on gum shot. Still a lot of things to iron out. Hopefully I will have something better after the weekend. I will be upgrading to Snow Leopard, heard Houdini blazes by in SL so let's see...cos right now waiting for Houdini to cook the particle fluid surfacer can be very trying on my patience.

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Looks like everyone in Toronto is getting ready for the weeekend...cars lining up University Ave as far as I can see, all heading for the expressway in the south.

Chewing gum test

Using the fluid surfacer instead of polywire sop yielded better results of the chewing gum test.....

Niagara Falls and the Canadian airshow

Had the chance to visit the Niagara Falls. It was really nice and the warm weather helped in producing some decent shots.

American Falls and Horseshoe further away.

Also had a great time at the Canadian Airshow on Monday (7th) with the jets up close and personal....

US Navy's Blue Angels

The F22

The Blue Angels doing their stuff..

Stepping on gum testing...

Have started some testing on my third shot on stepping on chewing gum. I am using Houdini's wire DOPs, wire solver and RBD pin constraints. The elasticity of a gum 'strand' is designed such that they are not uniform along the strand. This is so that the strand elongates more in the centre and less at the ends. Using the distance between the points, I then am able to control the width of the strand - bigger distance or higher stretch, so thinner; and smaller distance between points will mean less stretching and so wider gum width. This elasticity of the each wire (called klinear) is multiplied with a float ramp to achieve that non-uniformed elasticity and stretching.

The distance between points is then calculated with the help of a vop sop. The width of the strand is then calculated by taking the inverse of the distance between points. This width is fed to the radius parameter of the polywire SOP to finally create each strand.

Right now the strands seem to exact same look, so will need some research and testing on how to randomise the widths of different strands.

First single wire test.....

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Multiple wire test, ok but gum strands look alike...need random sizes...more testing later....

A view from my desk in the Toronto office...

overlooking University Ave (North Westerly view).

I can see rain clouds coming in now. Looks like it's

going to be a wet weekend and cooler. But forecasts

say that it'll be drier next week.

Short shot done in Houdini

Been some time since I last posted. Been busy with my project and settling down in Toronto. New place, new office, new people. During the past weeks in LA, I've been working on a shot depicting my walk to work. It is fully done in Houdini. It was a way to learn how to use the various components in Houdini...modelling, rigging, animation, some particle effects, some more SOPs, shaders...etc. Always felt that the best way to learn is to go hands on. Here's the movie clip...it's one shot in a series. The animation is quite bad but I must move on to something else...the next shot simulating chewing gum..

Brickwall Generator

Created a brickwall generator utilising the useful copy SOP. The generator takes in two values for the width and height of the wall. 3 variations of bricks are 'randomly' chosen to form a row and then variations of the rows of bricks are copied to form the height of the wall.

I decided to use my own surface and displacement shaders instead of the off-the-shelf bricks shader in Houdini, in order to have more control. The look is grayscale as that is the style I want for my shots.

Awesome visit to House of Moves (part of VICON)

Kewwwlll...awesome...swell...totally...

That's what our visit to House of Moves was. Enjoyed it so much and so did the students and rest of SideFX. We were treated to a full demo of a take with 2 actors, sound, video crew and the whole VICON mocap whizzbang. And to top it all, we were given lunch and took a t-shirt home to put icing on our experience cake. Real nice people.

The work that these guys do is awesome and some of their film credits include Titanic, Spiderman 1 n 2, MIB2; and for games, Quake 3, some Star Wars games, Dead to Rights, NBA series (Shaq's shoes with markers were encased in a glass shelf). More recently, they worked on Star Wars : The Old Republic, Uncharted 2 and Resident Evil 5. I found the work on the Old Republic trailer was the best of the three they screened for us.

One of the coolest things we experienced was the virtual camera that was handled like a prop on stage, but its mocap data was used to drive a 3d camera in MotionBuilder. The camera handler then get a live feedback on his monitor as he moves the camera in mocap space. (Photo's showing one of the students trying out the virtual camera). Would be a cool project to do in school since we have a VICON studio ourselves.

Looking forward to the next visit....Rhythm n Hues.

Tribute to Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett

Double tragedy reported yesterday...sad day for fans all over the world. News channels in LA from yesterday evening and this morning are completely inundated with reports about the late stars.

I first heard of it while on the bus. The bus driver just yelled out, "Michael Jackson's dead. Oh, My God!", after she heard it on her radio. Everyone I passed by who was on the phone was talking about it.

But Farrah Fawcett's passing away is over-shadowed by Michael Jackson's. I guess hers was in a way expected, his wasn't; the cause of his death is at the moment controversial, hers wasn't; his life was controversial and hers far from it.

Farrah Fawcett (1947-2009)

Michael Jackson (1958-2009)

BootCamp Week

Going through Houdini bootcamp this week (2nd round seems better). I guess it was difficult concentrating during the Singapore bootcamp as I was in and out of class due to work.

Some results from the bootcamp training..

- Waves with VOPSOP...

- And some of my own experiments with the Break SOP...

The students have landed...

Met them at the airport...

Arrived at the apartment and met the landlord...

Then they were whisked off to the SideEffects office and on to Universal Studios for a VFX talk. Super loooooooooooooooooong day for them!

night@NIGHT at the Museum 2

The talk was nice and short but the movie was a little shaky, liked the first one better.

Francisco Rodriguez, FX Supervisor at Rhythm and Hues delivered the talk on one of the VFX-filled shots they did for Night at the Museum 2. Had 6-8 layers of FX for the shot where the Egyptian Bird Warriors appear out of the door - the one at the top right corner of pic below...

Attended a rehearsal for a 'webex' lesson to be conducted in Toronto - was on Houdini's cloth system. Cool features and quite 'fast'. Although called cloth it can be used for non-garment/cloth simulations, basically anything that can use deformable RBDs e.g. dentable metal.

Features include pin constraints to lock down parts of cloth, plastic deformation so that 'cloth' keeps its deformation (think crushed cans) and SOP solver integration with DOPs.

Some results from the tests I did...

No plastic deformations...

With plastic deformations...

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Students will be arriving soon so will be meeting them, taxi them to their apartment and after a short rest, we'll be heading down to the SideFX office. We are having a 'Night at the museum 2' screening and VFX talk at Universal Studios; co-sponsored by Siggraph LA chapter and SideFX.

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Had blueberry pancakes for breakfast...nice.

Finally here in Santa Monica. after a super long flight of 16 hrs. 

Weather's good though a bit foggy for sunny California.

Rested for one day due to backache. Skipped lunch to rest but had to get out for dinner.

Walked down one street to have a look at the beach...

Food - I lasted one full day without rice. Not that I was yearning for it but Panda Express (Chinese takeaway) was nearby so why not have some rice. Was preparing for the worse but turns out the food's quite nice. Kept some for breakfast as it was too much for one meal.

Will go into office tomorrow morning to meet the SideFX people. Better get some zzz's.

Result of Avalanche Previz Tutorial

Here's the result from following an avalanche previz tutorial by Peter Robbinson.

Of course, usually everything works when following a tutorial...

I shall try enhancing it with some trailing dust/snow plumes as the boulders crash down the slope.

Still in Singapore, waiting n learning

Still in Singapore on Monday 11 May due to H1N1 scare in US. Waiting for 2 more weeks to see how the situation develops.
Meanwhile, my first successful attempt on dynamics, though still with some problems...

Summary: 3 RBD corner bricks were created. Rest of the brick wall was modelled and made into a static RBD. Ground plane needed to 'catch' the falling bricks. A sphere was animated to hit the 3 corner RBD bricks. This sphere was hidden and a second sphere was animated to look like it hits the bricks and goes on. Needed this second sphere because if the first was animated to hit and follow through the bricks would crash out too far. Wanted it to fall near the wall. Dust effect was created with a smoke container and a box geometry made into a smoke source. Temperature ramp was made negative so tends to fall downward. Finally, one of the bricks emits some particles for debris.

Singapore (25 days to launch date)

Preparing for LA/Toronto attachment
Flight plan ready
No accommodation booking yet
Have some idea what to pack
Meanwhile doing Houdini tutorials....