JINGXING LIU
Project: SCAD X MILL
This is a project made under the cooperation of SCAD and Mill, choose a food brand and make a commercial based on it by teams. Our team is led by Storm Slawson-Villasmil (FX), the vsfx artist, followed by members Julian Schenker (Modeling Texturing), Samuel Golden (Composing Photographer) and me (FX Animation)
Week 10
Our compositer finish polishing the work. Here is break down of the FX
Week 8&9
The pyro is approve so that the only work I need to do is to render with higher resolusion. Also fix the pickle slicing animation for it start slicing before the animation happens.
Week 7
Still sick this week. However, I am getting better. Start getting steam in the microwave simuated.
Week 6
This week I didn't have much update because of illness. I revised the pickle animation and used Zbrush to change the shape of the popcorn so that it could have more variabilities.
Also Sam help compose my steam with the live shot footage and provide a beautiful contact sheet
compose by Sam​
Week 5
We updated the footage. Therefore I updated the new Steam based on new footage.
Also, we want to add some pyro to the microwave. I start to figure out how to import animation with a camera into the Houdini. We tried the FBX file. However, it messed up. All the geos have strange scales and movements. Then we find that the alembic file works, much better.
I export Microwave, Corn, Pickle and Camera into individual alembic files and import them into different Geos. I have not yet finished any simulation.
​I also figured out the pickle-slicing animation
We choosed the version on right. I sent this to Julian. Julian revised it based on the previous and after footages.
Week 4
October 2 Wed
We recieved feedback from the Mill. Also, I got feedback from professors and teammates. The suggestion include:
1 Enhanced the interation between steam and hand
2 Decrease the thickness of the steam
3.Maybe it could dissipate a bit sooner and have less temperature so it rises a bit slower
4.You can have the steam already there at the start of the shot and taper off a little towards the end.
I then updated based on the feed back and got the following result
Week 3
September 26 Thu
Render the result out and Sam composed the Render with the live shot footage.
This render shows a few problems
1. The steam is too rough with not very much details.
2. The hand of the character is not interact with the steam, makes it not very convincing
September 29 Sun
To solve the above problems, I first decreased the Division size under the Smoke object, which provided more details. Also, I decreased the Particle separation under the Pyro source to make the steam emitter denser.
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I download a rigged hand model from
https://free3d.com/3d-model/rigged-hands-28855.html
animated the hand in Maya according to the live shot footage.
This animation is exported as an FBX, inserted into Houdini and set as a static object collider. Different speeds of the hand moving toward popcorn will lead to different interactions with the pyro steam. I end up with the following two results.
I render the second result, Sam helps compose it into the live shot, lead the following result
Week 2
September 18 Wed
At Tuesday's meeting, we got some feedback on our project. Our composing and texture members are going to explore colour lighting and texture this week. I work for visual effects, I need to figure out how to make beautiful pyro steam when the popcorn is in the bowl. I found and shot references on Tuesday.
September 20 Fri
Start testing on the Pyro system to try to give a feeling of food steam. According to the reference, the steam has a pretty clear edge while emitting. Therefore, I gave a high viscosity of 0.63 and a high sharpening of 1.0 to keep the steam in shape. The steam doesn't go straight up and down therefore I give turbulence of 0.4 to bring in the randomness. However I still have the problem that steam is too packed together, I need it to look like many different parts.
September 21 Sat
Found a tutorial online that solved my problem. This tutorial adds animated attribute noise based on the density and temperature of the steam. By altering the attribute of the noise, It changed a stable steam emitter into a moving breaking steam emitter.
This is the changing of the emitter.
September 22 Sun
The day that the live shot is done. Also, I decreased the division size to 0.1 which increased the detail of the steam.
Week 1
This week we quickly decided to do Skinny Popcorn and start with the idea of cob pops in the microwave, therefore we comes up with our first storyboard.
This is result after changeing of the emitter.
A nice preview showing camera movement in 3D is made after that
made by Julian
Based on the advice of having more emotion connected and narrative, the storyboard is updated to
