Finis' Experiments and Scribbles

[Finis]

@ Draise: The Virus. Not bad. Another guy suggested "the land where play buttons come from".

Here is a test regarding my Art Shape picture. See Finished Artwork section. The top part shows noise or grains near the lights. The lower part shows that with less noise. Which looks better?

[bitkar]

maybe would be nice to use the grain/noise version and add some film look...?

[Finis]

I tried your suggestion Bitkar. Thanks. It looked good but not a look I like for this picture.

After trying a 2.5 hour render with a noise filter and another 2.5 hour render to near 100% convergence I like the original best. The speckles give the impression of particles in the air or water. Then I remembered Splinters used a "dreamy" Photoshop filter on some of his pictures that looked like this. So this probably should have been done with a much quicker render without the volumetrics and then Paint Shopped. Part of the filtered one is above and the converged one looked about the same.

[Finis]

Blender hair.

Blender's dynamic hair system is interesting. There are significant problems though. First, it is a particle system and a flaw of the current particle system is the absence of rigid/soft body physics. It has its own physics for falling and reacts to force fields but doesn't collide with other objects ... like the character with hair. There are claims on the web that it did use collision but that was broken at some release of Blender.

How to have hair collide with a character's head (not just go through it), clothes, and other objects? Force fields. Particles do react to force fields. The clue to this is on the hair self interaction panel -- it sets up force fields. Tutorials and experiments show that objects that should have hair "lay" on them need a thin very powerful force field. It's shape should be set to "surface" so it is shaped like the object. Problem: If rigid/soft body physics is also being used the force field could interfere. Also, every object that will interact with the hair must have such a force field.

Hair can be styled, combed, but once that begins the dynamics will no longer work. How to have styled hair that drapes or collides with other objects uses rigid/soft physics without force fields?

Best solution: Developers change hair system to use rigid/soft body physics or cloth simulator.

Possible solution: Complex. Surely very slow with innumerable polygons. I have not tried this. Have the hair particle system generate the hair. Let it fall into place using force fields for collision with character and clothes. Use force field settings that leave a significant gap between object and hair. Be sure to use self interaction to avoid hairs intersecting. Style the hair. Covert it to a mesh. Apply soft body physics or cloth. Remove hair related force fields. This would be for realistic animations. For cartoons I'd use modeled sheets or shapes plus textures (like Daz) and soft body, cloth, or rigging.

Blender Trees

I played with the Sapling tree generator. It can rig the trees for animation. That's something expensive Plant Factory does. It can simulate wind effects. You can use your own geometry for the leaves. I think it could be used to generate many interesting shapes that aren't plants. Abstract sculptures for example. I'd prefer to have rigged trees react to a force field for wind. That way everything in the scene reacts to the same wind. I think that is possible.

Now to stop playing with the fancy toys and learn basic modeling. Not much time since the work season has started.

[Finis]

Blender.

How to use animation nodes to animate an object, like the vibrating box (link), but have the node animated object also react to its environment via physics. Problem, the vibrating box moves the balls but the balls do not move the box and the box does not "skitter" along the floor but acts as if there is no floor. Unaffected by gravity too. The node animation is the only thing that moves the box.

Imagine an animation where the box wiggles via animation nodes. As a result it moves around on the floor. Then a flood of balls hits the box. The box is still wiggling so it moves balls, moves itself as it the wiggling pushes on surrounding balls, and is carried along in the current of the ball river. Remember this is about animation nodes and rigid body physics working together. So using the fluid sim is not what is needed here.

Another example. The box wiggles and "skitters" on the floor as a result. A fast moving ball hits the box and bounces off. The collision turns the box over, which causes some bouncing, and makes it slide across the floor while the wiggling adds a randomness to the slide and bouncing.

Any suggestions?

[Draise]

Maybe instead of using the nodes, make it a rigid simulated item with Noise animation applied to some of it's attributes?

[Finis]

Blender

@Draise: Thanks but the goal is to merge animation nodes and rigid body physics. Good suggestion though if I just wanted to do the examples given. My vibrating box animation does this in one direction only. It effects the physics objects but they don't effect it. I want to learn if it is possible to have a node animated object effect and be effected by objects with rigid body physics.

Superman can push you but you can't push him. He has one way physics. His actions effect you but your actions don't effect him. I don't want a node animated object to be Superman. Currently my vibrating box is Superman.

[Finis]

Blender video editor

Film editing going well but I'm spending too much non-free time on it. Lack of discipline. Self discipline is a big part of success in almost everything.

The editor has the Blender style user interface of course. Since I'm learning Blender that's ok. Although I only need simple abilities I'm finding that this editor is not so good. It seems to be unfinished or poorly planned and poorly implemented. Some functions have no undo or opposite functions. Simple things like speeding up or slowing down a strip are difficult and don't work well. Even using a still image in a movie is a mess.

So I recommend using some other video editor even if you know Blender and won't have trouble with the interface. It is just not good even at basic things.

I'll try Hit Film next time I edit something. An official writing in Hit Film's forum confirmed that the social media sharing part of getting the free version can be skipped. If so then why do you get a serial number for tweeting etc.? Surely that serial number is for something. I don't mind publicizing it, after trying it, in exchange for the free version. That is a low price indeed and respects the company's reason for having the free version. But even if I was on twitter or fakebook why would I publicize it before trying it?

[Finis]

Here's my major motion picture of the hang gliding event. https://vid.me/Splododyne

[Finis]

I want to make a dvd from the hang gliding video to play on modern HD televisions.

Recommend some freeware dvd authoring software. Best if it can also perform any conversion necessary.