Day 49 The Dawn of Age

I fell ill on sunday. It was quite serious. Wanted to go school but have not fully recover. Somehow it gotten slightly worst. Got to laid on bed for the whole day.

Day ??? The Dawn of Age

"What if after doing the commercial version and the problem still lingers? Maybe the current file got corrupted? Why does this problem happens now?"

All this questions swim throught my mind. I couldn't just sit till monday to continue the commercial version, so i decided to re-do on my computer. While re-doing, I encounter some questions, like "why this must use this". Almost finishing with the re-do, I was hoping that it will work and that the current file was corrupted. Just as I finish with the last node, I drag the pointer of the mouse towards the play button and click it. Here goes.

NOOOOOOOOO... Its the same thing. Why Why Why? Looks like i got to resign to fate.

However, this does not stop me for doing things. I continue for test renders but was slightly more tedious then usual.

I play with impulse birth rate keep the vorticle strength the same but tweak the magnitude

Although I did some test, I am not sure if it is accurate since that problem occur.

Day 48 The Dawn of Age

While doing test renders at home last night, I encounter a problem. There was something wrong with the playback. I tried all ways to solve the problem but nothing work. This morning, the very first thing I do was to call Mr Ron for help. As this problem was kinda serious to me as it slows down the speed and the progress of my work. When Mr Ron came, he quickly point out the problem. It was about the file out node as the cache produce weird result. After hearing that, WOW, seems like life ain't easy after all. So it seems like before I can do a test render, I need to do a manual cache check to see if the sim is the correct one. I was hoping that by re-doing the same system, it can solve the problem, as I need to convert that file into a commercial version anyway. Spend the day re-doing and at the same time understand it better. It was not long before the day ends.

Day 47 The Dawn of Age

Mr Douglas dropped by for the weekly routine progess check. Everyone's work was almost there in terms of "ready-ness". He was satisfy and impressed by us. I also showed him some test I did which only a few option was tweaked out of more possibility. After the progress check, he stay behind to block out the scene for our final shot. Here are some test I did with tweaking of vorticle strength. At first I tweak the magnitude in the vorticle. After some quick renders, I realised it did not change anything until I had confirm with Mr Ron if the vorticle strength in the smokesolver will affect the sim.

Here are some test.

Different magnitude but same vorticle strength

Kinda like the one with the render of vorticle magnitude 0.8, though.

Day 46 The Dawn of Age

I spend mostly the day doing test render. With many areas to tweak for nice and efficient results, I did a handful for tommorrow's review. I wanted to do a sequence but did not have enough time. There are many areas to tweak.

E.g.
> placement, size, number of, the speed of the rotation of the vector field.
> magnitude, radius and the number of vorticle seeds in Vorticle geometry.
> bouyancey, vorticle strength of the smoke solver.
> velocity for emitting speed under initial state and physical in rbdobject.
> impulse birth rate of the source in the popnet
> the shader properties for its look.

Here are some of the test render,

Decreasing step size while keeping Point Radius Scale

Decreasing step size with Point Radius Scale at 1

 Increasing Point Radius Scale while step size remain same

Trying out various numbers

Decreasing step size

Increasing Point Radius Scale while keeping step size at 0.05 but PRS number was too low for caculation hence the time taken was weird as supposingly the time taken will decrease if PRS increases.

Increas PRS while keeping step size at 0.02, same behaviour as above results

Day 45 The Dawn of Age

Before continue working and tweaking for a better look of the gush, I had a few clarification regarding the direction I need to head and some question about the system. In the system, I had talked about new nodes like the up-res smoke object. However, there was some problem that the up-res smoke is not working as somehow it cant read/find the low-res source file. I consulted Mr Ron but couldn't solve this as well.

up-res error

In the upressmokefield, the input in the default object will affect the visual in the viewport. E.g. in dopnet, if the sim is low-res, and in the visualisation its up-res it will not work. Some quick caching and placeholders for reading file knowledge was taught.

caching/file out

After understanding and clearing of my doubt, I also did a test render gush. A test render of 80 frames and it takes 2hr 30min to render out the whole thing. Here is the link of the test render in Vimeo -> http://vimeo.com/23531802 .

Or to see the video here,

Day 44 The Dawn of Age

As Mr Ron gave me the test system late in the afternoon, I needed time to go through it. Over the weekend, I spend awhile understanding. I did a "fake scenario" test where using NULL nodes as substitute for the real nodes. Using legends to mark out the befores and afters nodes after each "shelf-tool" clicks. I drew out the network which was quite messy at the first look. Sorted it out and begin to understand. However, certain areas or particular question which I don't understand I will also write it down to ask. I also did some test rendering. I had most of my questions clarify.

actual system

understanding test

test 1 -- 3 Mins 18 Secs

test 2 -- 7 Mins 42 Secs