Day 19 The Dawn of Age

I build on what Mr Ron had helped me with yesterday. I tweak everything which helps to improve the system, like increasing the emission amount to a higher number, temperature, the cooling rate, viscosity for thicker fluid, and the uniform division. I also adjusted the particle surface for choppy-ness of the water and added an environment map to reflect upon. This system helps me to get the volume-filling purpose, however, it still doesn't have the feel(flood) it needed. 

test image

Day 18 The Dawn of Age

I finished redoing the voxel-fluid system but it did not work as the actual system. The initial part of the system I re-did work but as the thing runs, the particles on top (flip fluid layer) starts to sink in. What I suspect was there ain't enough smoke to carry the layer of flip fluid particles. Also, I had other questions to clarify. When Mr Ron came up to look at our progress, I seek help to solve those problems.

one puff smoke

continuous smoke

The reason why the smoke was thin/less was because there was only a puff from the emitter. With the help from Mr Ron, I found out that there was 2 path doing the same thing. 1 path over-writes another, in result, only emitting a single puff.

2 path over-writing one & another

Day 17 The Dawn of Age

Made my way to NUS for the NUS-SHAPE(Singapore Hollywood Attachment Programme) interview. It was a interview with 2 professor in IDMI. However, I did not expect that the interview was relatively easy. The few questions are mainly: why you want to be there, what I want to do after Polytechnic, what was my best work I had done so far and some other questions which I cant remember. This interview determines if I could get funded for the attachment with SideFX at L.A. With this, most of the expenses will be taken care of. NICE!!!

Day 16 The Dawn of Age

There was a briefing for tomorrow's NUS-SHAPE interview. It did not take long for the briefing to be over. I went on to re-did the voxel-flip system until i had some problem and doubting question to ask. The voxel-flip system was a hip file provided by a user (macha) in odforce, he helped me by giving me advice and helped to kick start this. This was a beautiful system which was very helpful for my part. Redoing it helps me by building a solid foundation so in the later part of the project i wouldn't need to struggle. If the foundation is ready, I will carry on to applying shader and play with the scale to mimic large wave.

Day 15 The Dawn of Age

I did not do much hands-on work but I spent time thinking and planned what will be my work-flow for next week. I would like to test out Jia Bao's water shader and maybe play with the scale of the gushing water for large ocean simulation.

Day 14 The Dawn of Age

This is the second time Mr Douglas came to meet us and review our progress on our research and development. Like before, he did a one to one review at how much we had done for the past week. He was delighted and suprise at how much we had done. Mr Douglas showed us some reference to look out for for the new terrain. He also showed us the improved "single-headed-channeling-7-head" rig. I thought to myself, someday I will reach that level in terms of knowledge and skill. After Mr Douglas left, I continued on my research, not much but minimal.

Day 13 The Dawn of Age

More replies on my thread saying that I could use a smoke sim for fast testing and later convert it to fluid.

test render

smoke simulation

 

 using the velocity to sample for the movement

increase particle birth allow fluid behaviour

Day 12 The Dawn of Age

To begin my research on how to apply both voxel fluid and flip fluid at the same time without intercepting with each other, I went into odforce for advice and help. Within an hour, I got a reply with a hip file provided. It was a simple test where the voxel fluid emitter also emits flip fluid.

voxel fluid

layer of flip fluid

both fluid

fluid network

test render

However, the speed of each frame to cook and stuff like that was quite slow and heavy. Further test was done to improve speed.

Day 11 The Dawn of Age

I did some test on voxel fluid. Render it out to view the final product.

 

Voxel fluid test

I also learn how to cache out file to enable fast and normal playback in view-port.

Caching file

Day 10 The Dawn of Age

I went to try emitting particles on the crest of waves. Did some test but got stuck straight after putting in a few nodes. I posted thread on odforce to seek advice. Wanted to make the blue stuff emit particles when touches the darkest part of the peak

Particle emitting Test

I also try to play with voxel fluid to use as filling water for the flood scene. Didn't know the difference between voxel fluid and flip fluid but now I knew. Now I need to find out how to fill up the cracks using voxel fluid while a layer of flip fluid act as gushing wave.

Day 9 The Dawn of Age

Mr Douglas came to meet us and review our progress on our research and development. He did a one to one look at how much research we had done and also showed us roughly the references he have for us, in terms of fracturing and fluids. We also knew roughly where our next step should be and the direction we should be heading.

For now, we have to reference the 7-headed dragon with the winged-woman for its scale of the size and judging by the distance between them to come out with a proxy terrain.

7 headed dragon

Winged woman

After watching Mr Douglas' reel, I saw the breakdown of the ocean. I wanted to try out the part where particles was emitted at the crest of each wave. Also, I want to try out a method which Mr Ron suggestion to Mr Douglas about. It is to use voxel fluid to fill up the volume with a layer of flip fluid on top of it to simulate gushing water.

Day 8 The Dawn of Age

I did a new batch render.

Day 7 The Dawn of Age

I went back to the forums to check for further reply but to no valid. Instead I look for other reference to see how water behaviour and continued to tweak my fluid. I played with the surface tightness and surface points. I also added an environment map to eliminate the black ambient. Tomorrow, I will research on wet map.

Reference image

Day 6 The Dawn of Age

I headed back to odforce.net & sidefx.com forums to check on my posted thread. So far there wasn't any reply recently. Wanted to make the behaviour of the water to behave like water so I played the various force nodes to trigger the style. As I browse through the list of threads, I saw something about Houdini Ocean tool-kit (HOT). I did some finding and research and also manage to download one to try. Somehow it did not work maybe due to the wrong version I get.


These are few of the steps taken to get the looks.
 

Bring in Height map 

Add a fluid emitter (flip)

Added the height map as a terrain object

Tweaked parameter to mimic gushing water

Day 5 The Dawn of Age

I went to odforce.net and sidefx.com forums to post threads to inquire about stuff I am not sure about. It is a part of research. After which we went out for the fusion and Siggraph show. The Siggraph screening was awesome as many things were creative and interesting. I find "The Lost Thing" was unique yet amazing. "Kinematograph" also captures my mind.

The Lost Thing

 

 Kinematograph

I watched Rango together with Bryan & Jia Bao and got fascinated by its effects and photo-realism rendering.

Day 4 The Dawn of Age

After listing the question from yesterday, i continued to do my own research. Ironically, the more i research, the more question i will be adding to the question list. Before the lunch break, I had most of the question solve with the help of Mr Ron.

Flood simulation (research/reference)

I tweak the surface motion of the fluid to have the choppy/fast flowing water feel, if not, the stream will feel like toothpaste got squeezed out from a tube. Motion blur was added to blur out the overall fluid.

a test without motion blur

I also try ray-trace motion blur to see the difference between them.

motion blur

ray-trace motion blur

I played with different parameter like velocity, scale and tightness of the surface to mimic a fast-flowing water.

For now, i need to research on curl noise to add "spice" into the looks of the water.

Day 3 The Dawn of Age

I went through 2 tutorial video about fluids. One of the video is the intro to fluids. From it, i get to know deeper about fluids with parameters which i didn't know about. Spacing/separation, stream emission and particle motion were some of the parameters.

Particle Apart

Particle Together

The other video talks about how fluid act with static object. Also, stuff like volume smoothing of volume motion where higher the attribute number is, the particle motion will be same in a single direction, where lower the attribute number is, the particle motion will be random. Particle separation will be better if the particle mass was ignored, etc.

flip fluid test with static object

I also went to odforce.net forum and post a thread. I got some interesting reply with helpful links to reference and video/tutorial.

Day 2 The Dawn of Age

Flip fluid on terrain object

I went through different sites like youtube.com, vimeo.com, wonderhowtodo.com to check out some test done by other people and also some tutorial to boost my knowledge. The tutorial were harder to find. Went to research on flip fluid on sidefx.com. Also went to download some files, tutorial to test and watch.

I test out flip fluid on terrain object. The flow of the liquid was quite amazing to watch. Oh, question!!! how do i apply a material/shader on the flip fluid? hmm...

Day 1 The Dawn of Age

After settling down in the isolated room, we were told to set-up our blog for daily update purposes. Went to Odforce.net and sidefx.com to check out their forums. There were alot of infomation about different stuff ranging from dynamics to rigging, lighting, rendering to fluids, etc. Went on to register both forums and join the community. I downloaded some hipnc files to play and test things out. Back from lunch break, my teammates and I watch a tutorial about the difference between SPH and flip fluid. After which, with the help of our supervisor, set-up linux by installing Ubuntu and installed and run Houdini successfully.

SPH vs Flip fluid test