Quick Summary:
Terminus is a wonderful monster sci fi short film, which I am creating the 3D credits for. It’s my first gig and larger project in Houdini, which is both exciting and terrifying. I’ve already spent the past 5 months working on and off of this project, but in the next month I’m going full time to wrap this thing up.
Done so far:
- Captured and processed photogrammetry models of monsters/character
- Built test particle effect in Houdini
3. Created rough layout
The main aspects I’m currently working on are:
- Create specialized disintegration effect for the willow mask opening shot
- Create the boar model from the photogrammetry head and a body model I find online
- Apply and finalize the effect to all models
Today’s Work
Today I continued with the Florian Bard tutorial on creating a disintegration effect. It’s taking much longer than I had hoped, and half of my time is spent troubleshooting and researching concepts I don’t understand.
I accomplished:
- more detailed cluster breakoff of the effect
- higher quality noise details and timing variation for the cluster / general noise
Technical issues:
- the growth solver has just stopped working completely
Conceptual issues:
- how does the growth solver work? when to use previous frame in the solver, pcopen function in awrangle, etc
- how to achieve a true flaking effect where there is a surface layer behind the geometry… my creative dream is to have the wrinkles and lines of the mask texture break off and leave physical gouges on the mask in the same pattern… how cool would that be?
I won’t lie just 20 minutes ago I reached an absolute point of frustration with not understanding the growth solver and had to step away from the computer for a bit. This feeling of hopelessness is likely why I’m writing this little blog now. I’ve had many points of frustration and been able to push through them with this project before, but now I want to have a better direction.
Future me remember the 15 minute timer method. If you are feeling out of energy, just set a 15 minute timer to finish the work. Do what you can do in that time.
Also new rule, if I’m falling asleep at the computer: go take a damn nap. I’m not helping anyone by literally sleeping on the job.
Okay that’s all for now. Talk to you soon. Or maybe not depending on if I keep this up haha.