(3 Folder > Artist > 01 fire_smoke)
In this scene, Alex, the main character, walks in to the kitchen and she sees huge fume from the kettle. The Director, Valentino, asked me to make medium size of smoke as he will put hologram effect in the post. I did few test for the smoke with particle, fluid and finally settled down to particle sprite render type. Sprite render type connects one or more image to emitted particle and usually used for making clouds and sand storm.(See 3 Folder > Technical > 02smoke) It wasn't too hard to create the smoke but it took some time to adjust right level of opacity and colour of the smoke.
For the fire, Valentino wanted a realistic fire flame from gas stove. I broke down the fire into two element which is blobby flames from a hole around the gas emitter and flare around the emitter.
I made a Nurbs shape of a flame and duplicated one it as softbody to goal to original object. So when I connect the softbody to turbulance field, it looks like slightly shaking by wind around the flame. I duplicated one flame and put around the gas emitter.
Making flare was a bit harsh. I used fire menu of the maya dynamics, and I had to adjust colour, incandescence, transparency and glowness. It took awhile to get exact colour I wanted to make.
(See 3folders > technical > 01 fire)
Shot 2 : Steam from teacup
The steam wasn't a major part of this scene, it was secondary animation as Alex is reading a book and tea emits steam from a cup on the table.I used fluid to make subtle steam. As I worked on a separate scene which wasn't fully lighted and textured, it was hard to make satisfactory effect. So I had to keep it in mind that the bright light will fill in the room and it will desaturate the colour of steam. (See 3 folders > technical > 03 steam)
Shot 3 : Aura
In this scene, Alex sees black aura around her dog and she knew her dog was gonna die soon. Valentino asked me to make smoke trail like when the Death eaters vanish with black smoke.
(Reference from youtube)
At first I just made a smoke trail but it looks just floating above the dog and it didn't look like "an aura", but I came up with an idea of tweaking a method for the fire. I copied the dog mesh and duplicated one as softbody and made it to goal (same way I made the flame). Then I made the softbody as fluid emitter (emit from object) so that it looks like the dog itself is emitting dark aura. It worked very well and I just deleted its head and legs from the mesh otherwise the aura would totally cover up the dog.
Also, Valentino asked me to make more gap between the dog and the aura. I scaled up the mesh and put higher value for the turbulence, so the aura looks more squirmy around the body. However, Val wanted it to be slower so I had to reduce the value. (See 3 folders > Technical > 04 aura)
Shot 4 : Piano
(See 3 folders > Animation > animation & piano animation)
I've worked on this scene quiet long, since November last year.I have tried many different ways of making the colour particle. When I interviewed Alex the real girl who has synaesthesia, she said she sees spraying colours from piano keys. I decided to exaggerate it as small fireworks rather than a spray.
Before I start to make the link to the keys, I had to analyze the animation to see which keys get pressed at which frame. I made a key-particle sync sheet, and only 16 keys(A-, A-#, C-, D-, E-, F-, G-, A, A#, C, D, E, F, G, A+, A+#) were used for the animation. And (A, A#, C, D, E, F, G ) these seven keys are repeated, so I labeled a colour for each of them. As there are seven keys and Alex said she sees green when she press F, so I gave them a rainbow colours.
For example, C: red, D: orange, E: yellow, F: green, G: blue, A:navy, B:purple. But as we don't use B key in the animation, I gave purple to A#. (See 3 Folders > Artist > 03 piano)
In summary, I needed 7 colours in 2 shades, darker for the minor keys and brighter for the major keys.
I created 16 small polygon balls to use them as the colour emitter for matched keys, and tried to make different colours for each balls.
However, all 16 balls emitted same colour that I made first. I tried to link particle shading node to the different particle shape node, but it only connected to one shading node. The problem was this initialParticleSE node, this node is default particle shading node and it connects the particleShape nodes and particle color node. I tried to delete the initialParticleSE node, but as it's the default node so it was unable to delete. It seemed the particle emitters need each different shading node to have its own colour map. I also tried to create another shading node to connect to particleShape node instead of initialParticleSE, but couldn't find the way to create new shading node.
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| initialParticleSE connected to ParticleShape node, and there is an error message that initialParticleSE is non-deletable node |
I googled it, and could find a solution from CG Society that independent shading node can be created by mel script.
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| http://forums.cgsociety.org/archive/index.php/t-716734.html |
The only thing I had to do is make one shading group using the mel script above, and disconnect the particleShape from the initialParicleSE node and connect with the new shading group I just created.
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| To disconnect the node : Select the thin yellow line between the particleShape1 and the initialParticleSE, and delete it. |
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| Shading Groups I made for the each key colour emitter |
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| Particle colour shaders I made for each different key |
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| Before syncing the key animation with particle emitter |
so the shading node problem has solved and animation time for the particle emitter. It wasn't too hard. Following the sync sheet I made earlier, and set animation key for each emitter's rate value at the right frame. In the below picture, those numbers on the left side are the frame numbers and letters on the right side are the pressed keys. I crossed out when I made animation keys for the selected emitter.
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| Animation keys of emitters on the timeline |
After I made the piano key particle, Valentino asked me if I can make floating colour particles around the room. I was working on other scenes as well so I had to make it really quick. I wanted to make particles are appearing in the air and floats a bit. But it I made normal emitter, it would just sprays out like a fountain or sprinkler. So I used softbody again. I made a big plane, and made it as softbody and connected to a turbulence field so it can float and slightly move in the air. Like I did for the aura test, I made the plane as emitter (emit from object). It didn't even take long to make it and looks quiet good. (see 3 Folders > Technical > 05 piano)
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| Softbody plane as emitter |
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| When the plane was hid - it looks like particle are appearing in the air |
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| From the camera view |
Shot 5 : Painting room
(See 3 Folders > Technical > 06 Paint & Animation > Animation)
In this shot, I used normal particle for the canvas colour, and nParticle for the particle trail coming out from the canvas. Throughout the earlier test, I was gonna use only the particle for this shot. When I was playing with some maya's built-in nParticle example, I found that nParticle is more flexible and organic than traditional particle system. So I modified the example to suit this shot.
Personally, I never tried to use nParticle before this test but I feel like I'm going to use it more often as nParticle seems optimised to realistic simulation.
nParticle Test
This was the maya built-in example for nParticle. nParticle system wasn't too different to the traditional particle system so I could pick up quickly. I got an idea from this example. Basically, I made the canvas as an emitter (emit from object) and linked to volume curve field. Then this field hovers the particle from the emitter and make them follow the curve. Also I can adjust the speed, dispersion from the curve, size of the volume radius in the attribute. The convenient thing about the nParticle is, I can modify the particle size and colour as its particle age in a graph in the attribute. In the normal particle, I had to use an expression or ramp textures, which was in-directive and hard to control for me.
I made them as emitting totally different colours from the canvas. The painting mainly has red, brown-ish colour but Alex said she sees green and yellow in red colour. I pushed it really far that canvas emits yellow, green, blue, orange but also i made the main colour would be the red.
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| One of a test shot, we reduced size of the particle and vividness of the colour as we could fail the broadcast quality |
Particle
Compare to the nParticle, it wasn't to hard to make it as I made few tests before. I duplicated the canvas to use the emitter and textured with the same painting. And I made the particle to inherit the colour from the texture and also put turbulance field so the particles keep moving, like when she sees words barging (in the 2nd scene of the Synaesthesia film, with teacup shot).
Only thing bothered me was when I rendered this shot for the final output, something was keep blocking the edge of canvas but it didn't show in the work space in maya.(below picture) Later on I figured out it was the easel behind the canvas. I disconnected the easel from the particle render layer but I still don't know why the easel was blocking the canvas. It doesn't make sense because easel is behind the canvas but blocking over the canvas...(??)
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| Right edge was blocked by something (easel) |
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| After disconnected easel from the render layer |
Shot 6 : Hallway
(See 3 Folders > Technical > 07 Hallway)
Concept of this scene is quiet simple. As the last scene of the film, there are six door in a corridor and each door implies each scenes the audience have looked through. The doors I was in charged was 2,4,5 and 6. (See 3 Folders > Artist > 05 Hallway)
I dare to say, hallway scene was the easiest scene to work. I just needed to import all the elements scene file (smoke, piano key colour, painting nParticle) except the aura. I thought it would look better to make smoke trail like the reference as the smoke is just floating around in front of the door.
Also I used volume axis field for painting nParticle instead of the volume curve field I used in the painting scene. I had a test for the volume axis field working like tornado and thought it would suit for smaller space in front of the door. (See 3 Folders > Technical > 07 Hallway)
In summary
My job in our group was FX TD, Dynamics artist. As our film's objective is showing what someone has synaesthesia sees to the ordinary people, so my job was very important for the film. However, none of our group members has synaesthesia and it was hard to imagine how Alex sees the world. We used our imagination as much as we could and at some point, I thought "we could exaggerate this bit more". But at the same time, our film is documentary not a fantasy film. If we made it too unrealistic, i believe it wouldn't be agreed with the original objective.
In terms of working progress, our team was fully working on the project from the first term and that's why I could finish some of the shots really early. For example, I finished fire and smoke shot in the first term and started to do test on piano shot.
However after the 2nd term, I injured my right arm and had to stay away from work almost for a month. It definitely affected to my work rhythm.
After the Easter break, we rushed it really quickly as 4 members of our team went to the germany for FMX. Except the trip, we only had 3, 4 weeks to work. I finished the aura, piano, painting shot in about 2 weeks time. Also I had to wait til the dog character had done, piano animation had done as I couldn't work without those model and animation in each scenes. I went to Val & Arpit's place for 2 weeks almost everyday to work together and could finish the work.
Our team used "wetransfer.com" to send files to each other at first. The site allows to send up to 2GB files via email. After the 2nd term, we started to connect each others' dropbox account and send files through dropbox. When I had to send render footages of dynamics, the files were too big so we used both at the end.
The imaginary work pipeline would be in order of "concept art - storyboard -modelling/texturing - rigging - animation - lighting - dynamics - compositing". However we have so short time that we couldn't wait til each step is done, so I did tests with basic props while other guys finish their job and just imported & modified when I got the scene. It worked most of the time and we could save so much time, but sometimes the dynamics doesn't work properly when I imported it into a new scene, so I had to make it again and again.
