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Author Topic: Scene with animated trees WIP  (Read 11498 times)

dwsel

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Scene with animated trees WIP
« on: June 01, 2012, 12:11:24 pm »

I started a little animated scene. I plan to make matte painted background (island) with some animated trees composited in the scene. So far I have raw background rendered in Bryce and environment map for the tree (used as temporary backdrop in the video, but not casting light on the palm yet) and a chopped into pieces model of the tree (got from here: http://www.gfx-3d-model.com/2008/12/palm-tree-model/ ) animated by me with expressions.

WiP animation of tree here :D:


Waiting for your critiques and comments ;)

EDIT:
v2 with more natural movement:
« Last Edit: June 01, 2012, 02:33:19 pm by dwsel »
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cooldude234

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Re: Scene with animated trees WIP
« Reply #1 on: June 01, 2012, 04:46:26 pm »

The tree looks nicely rendered but movement of the trunk is too free (it looks like jello being shaken), and the leaves don't move at all, which if anything were to move they'd be the first thing.
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Raxx

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Re: Scene with animated trees WIP
« Reply #2 on: June 02, 2012, 04:19:46 pm »

Looks very nice dwsel. I'm not 100% familiar with palm trees w/ wind, so I can't say a whole lot, but your v2 looks very natural. Just one comment that may or may not be true: the trunk has a lot of movement for such a solid object versus the palm leaves. Perhaps for that much movement of the trunk, the leaves should look like there's 4x the wind going through them, in one direction.
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dwsel

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Re: Scene with animated trees WIP
« Reply #3 on: June 02, 2012, 07:11:08 pm »

@cello95:
I've got 'Leaf26' image in diffuse and bump (-100) channel, and 'Leaf26_o' in specular and transparency. Images were in the archive with the model. I just converted them to *.bmp.

@cooldude234, @Raxx:
Thanks for your comment folks! I see what you mean. I have another version in works - the one with more steady trunk and bendy leaves. Currently they're only rotating around their pivot point near the top of the tree with high frequency (thus shivering). I've already made high noise morph for each frond (that is used with quite high frequency) and I plan to make another morph for each that will be following major low frequency movement of the trunk. Also I need to find good references of similar species.

I really wish EVERYTHING was ASL-scripted. At the start I attempted to rig the palm only to find out that bones can't be animated with expressions yet.
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cooldude234

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Re: Scene with animated trees WIP
« Reply #4 on: June 20, 2012, 07:20:26 am »

Your version 2 looks a lot better, cant wait to see more!

And yea, if everything was in asl script, it can help with the organization of things (IE you can animate way more trees automatically instead of having to waste time doing it manually)
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davdud101

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Re: Scene with animated trees WIP
« Reply #5 on: June 20, 2012, 03:09:31 pm »

That's really cool! I though both weren't bad, although, ys, v2 was even better. I've never been big on ASL (for lakc of a desire to learn scripting), but seeing that this kind of automation can be done excites me to wanting to start learning! Nice job, dwsel!
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ianross

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Re: Scene with animated trees WIP
« Reply #6 on: June 20, 2012, 06:18:28 pm »

This is great!!, you can also use Terragen to create backgrounds.

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VBSmiles

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Re: Scene with animated trees WIP
« Reply #7 on: June 23, 2012, 05:38:34 pm »

well this blows my eggplant to hell  :-\

Unless there is high winds though that thing is blowing around too much or leaves arent blowing enough.
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dwsel

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Re: Scene with animated trees WIP
« Reply #8 on: July 21, 2012, 10:42:05 am »

Thanks folks for comments! :)

Another update - now with bending leaves:



Maybe some more tweaks and I move to next stage ;)
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ENSONIQ5

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Re: Scene with animated trees WIP
« Reply #9 on: July 21, 2012, 07:07:24 pm »

That's looking really good!  The range of motion and oscillation rate of the trunk looks perfect to me, suggesting the sort of heavy, slightly-flexible rigidity that I expect a palm tree's trunk to have.  The gentle motion of the fronds suggests a good sea breeze, something less than a strong wind but more than a zephyr.

I have spoken before about everyone having a pretty good in-built 'bullsh** detector' that goes off when something just looks wrong. This animation did not set mine off at all, in my opinion you have achieved a convincing simulation of a real, organic object moving in a real, organic way, and that's a pretty amazing achievement.  Excellent work!
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dwsel

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Re: Scene with animated trees WIP
« Reply #10 on: July 22, 2012, 06:37:44 pm »

@ENSONIQ5:
Thanks! I'm quite happy with current frequencies. I still see some faults: the worst one is that fronds are crossing in some places, or (for me) visually changing length, but I hope it won't be that noticeable when view from distance/in the scene/with having multiple instances viewed from different angles. Matte painting and lighting are the next elements ;)


@cello95:
I don't want to redistribute modified palm model which is not mine, but I hope my answer will satisfy your curiosity.

Idea:

http://http.developer.nvidia.com/GPUGems3/gpugems3_ch16.html
http://http.developer.nvidia.com/GPUGems3/gpugems3_ch06.html


Hierarchy:

+- root
| +- trunk1
| | +- trunk2
| | | +- trunk3
| | | | +- trunk4
| | | | | +- frond01
| | | | | +- frond02
| | | | | +- frond03
.
.
.
| | | | | +- frond20

Trunk1-4 are sliced parts of the trunk with pivot points at (0,0,0), if available I'd rather use bones here. There are two requirements:
1. bones parameters visible for scripting
2. bones linkable into hierarchy in the scene mode
Trunk parts have xz rotation driven by equation, fronds have xyz rotation + noise morph + xyz bend morph all driven by equation.

Equation:

F(T) = A1 * sin ( P1 * T - O1) + A2 * sin ( P2 * T - O2) + ...

T - time
A - amplitude
P - prime number frequency modifier
O - offset ( if you want looping animation put (T - O) into parentheses )

General rule in this example:

Each following level in the hierarchy has higher frequency, bigger offset. Leaves are bending so they need morphs. I deformed each of them separately with custom script in x, y and z, but possibly single morph would be enough.

Sample:

controller { "orientation"
  script {
   "float $x;"
   "float $y;"
   "float $z;"
   ""
   "$x = (1.25 * sin(3 * (time+0.8))) + (0.75 * cos(5 * (time+0.9)));"
   "$z = (1.25 * cos(3 * (time+1.0))) + (0.75 * sin(5 * (time+1.1)));"
   "$y = 0.5 * cos(15 * (time+0.0));"
   ""
   "$orientation = RPYtoQuaternion($x, 0.0, $z);"
  }
  track {
   qkey { 0 (0 0 0 1) "S" }
  }
}
controller { "morph.morph01"
  script {
   "$morph.morph01 = 0.4 * cos(5 * (time+0.8));"
  }
}
controller { "morph.morphy"
  script {
   "$morph.morphy = 0.15 * cos(1 * (time+0.8));"
  }
}
controller { "morph.morphx"
  script {
   "$morph.morphx = (0.15 * sin(3 * (time+0.75))) + (0.1 * cos(5 * (time+0.85)));"
  }
}
controller { "morph.morphz"
  script {
   "$morph.morphz = (0.15 * cos(3 * (time+0.95))) + (0.1 * sin(5 * (time+0.05)));"
  }
}
« Last Edit: July 22, 2012, 06:42:19 pm by dwsel »
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davdud101

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Re: Scene with animated trees WIP
« Reply #11 on: September 30, 2012, 05:42:38 pm »

WAIT! dwsel, before you assume this is complete, and Ensoniq, before you assume this project is bullsh** free;
I know Anim8or isn't capable of any physics on it's own, but dwsel, I'd urge you to even go as far as the consider that the motion of the tree itself would additivley cause the leaves to move. Like, even further down the hierarchy, I guess, aside from them moving just as a result of wind.

I mean, realistically, it looks great the way it is. But from a super-analysis like mine, those leaves would have transferred just a weeeeeee bit of additional kinetic energy from the neck of the tree's motion.

And yes, I know it's insanely analytical, but ya know. "Only the best, and forget the rest."
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