3D Visual Effects

So I'm going to start with the process for my final project. Maybe I'll post some of the other stuff too if you want to see some unfinished effects. Basically I have been in this effects class for the last couple of months working on different effects. Effects are procedurally generated animation. For example: smoke, fire, explosions, buildings collapsing, etc etc etc. Pretty much anything can be done with effects. Here's the work flow for my project:

So now on to the renders!

And the final Effect!

Fixing jittering animation

First add a timeblend1 sop next to the skirt file in sop

Add in a null node and call it SIM_TO_CHOPS

make a CHOP net and drop it now

Go into CHOP net and drop in a geometry sop that references SIM_TO_CHOPS

Switch from static method to animated method (change Common tab Units to frames)

Switch Channel start to $FSTART and end to $FEND

Tab in a filter sop (This is a pretty serious smoothing)

Play with Filter width until it works pretty well.

Add in another Null node and name it OUT

return to where the timeblend is and tab in a channel sop

for CHOP choose OUT

Demo Reel and Teaser

I've been working on my demo reel. Here is where you can see it:

Nick's Demo Reel

Also here's a teaser of my new project. Still got a lot of work to do though.

Update and problems

I'm working like crazy on the cloth renders for Papa and most of my work is done on bug fixing at this point and single shot fiddling. Usually people just show the polished perfect animated film but most of my time I stare at things like this until it finally looks ok. That's why I thought it would be funny to show you a few of the problems that I sometimes run into working on the characters skirts:

Exhibit A: I call this the Loincloth-Mindy. Mindy is the main female character of Papa and let me promise you, she's not as permiscuous as this picture makes her out to be. Turns out she was in one spot in one frame and then 10 yards away in the next frame. Well the skirt I set up is attached to her waist and tried to travel at the speed of sound while holding on for dear life to her waist. I guess the path of least resistance is straight through her. (note: the actual math would have stopped, then magically moving at 490.91 mph then instantly stopped again. My diagnosis: fatal) 

Exhibit B: I call this one Backless-Chaps-Papa. This is a tougher issue to pinpoint. I'm not sure exactly what happened, something about the way that he moved lead to this. The Skirt kinda explodes. It kinda looks like fireworks in my view (see below) but I try to smooth it out a little bit before rendering which is why the image above doesn't look anything like the one below but believe it or not they are exactly the same frame.

Here's a little render of what it Papa looks like after this issue comes up if I were to render out the entire shot. Of course, I'm not going to so you don't get a background. Mostly because rendering out the entire shot would take forever:

This is a solution that I found that makes the skirt a little less excited to be alive, and a little more like cloth should actually look like:

I leave you now with a picture of what I have named Papa-after-meeting-Liam-Neeson. Also a huge problem with the cloth appears. Don't worry, this happens off screen so it's ok that he looks like that.