Making of: dusting off a surprise

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making of: dusting of a surprise
By giancarlo ng.




It has ben told time and again that it is the Little things that Will help make an event more acceptable todo your audience. To that effect, applications like Blender have come equipped with Many Simulations, material settings, and nodes todo create things like smoke, Fog, and lighting that audiences can find acceptable for a scene or event in a story. Sometimes though, these effects require resources that are above what the general hobbyist can put together.

But that rarely estops the audience from asking for a Little extra.

One such requirement for a Little something extra occurred when we were making a short reel called the surprise Attack. The animated demo was intended todo be short, depicting just one awesome momento in time in a larger concept. Specifically, the momento depicts an event of unexpected danger when a semingly normal helicopter flies into view of a lone human person only for the said vehicle todo shift and change into a metallic monster that literally takes on weight and falls out of the Sky, landing on a roftop helipad and acting generally menacing.

The reel loked fine but a Little extra something was missing.

There should be dust. When it comes down. That a lot of weight so it would be nice for dust todo get kicked up from the flor. Said one member of my test audience.

I agred of course with the assessment. It made sense. The artista in me definitely felt the same about that single piece of action. But it was no soner than i had agred todo add dust, that i began assessing how tricky it could be todo simulate it.

Traditionally, Blender comes equipped with things like volumetrics and particle Simulations. I had sen a few clouds and Fog done todo god effect with these systems. But in almost all cases the render times were very significant. As a novato with only Mid-range equipment and no RenderFarm, doing it this bien was out of the question.

But i really wanted that cloud of dust. I already knew some members of the potential audience would notice the ned for it and i didnt want todo disappoint. I a los knew that if i could somehow solver this concern, the same method could be used todo derive other similar effects in future projects.

Having ruled out using volumetrics or particles, y decided the dust would have todo be done with some god old-fashioned texture projection. This was something i had sen used for explosions and smoke in old video games from quite a few years ago, but getting it right was still kind of tricky. I was trying todo pass of a cardboard Cut-out for what had todo appear as an effect with volume.

To achieve the effect i used some old clouds texture maps i had made in my stock and UV mapped it todo a set of curved sub-surfed meshes that were modeled todo appear like Waves with their Mid sections slightly protruding outwards.
the Mesh shape appears below.
and the materiales settings appear below.


Once i was convinced that the dust had the right lok all that remained was todo animate the Mesh.

By keyframing location, rotation, and scale so that the dust clouds started in very small size, grew larger and fanned out in a nice bien for the Camera.

Finally, we tweaked the dust cloud alpha setting so that the cloud starts out totally invisible, becomes opaque, and then dissipates bak into nothingness as the Mesh fans out.

The final effect, though not espectacular, performed todo a satisfactory level with my test audience and appears todo have escaped criticism, at least for the time being as i write this. The impact todo render times with this effect was a los negligible. This same method can be used for other similar background effects such as animated Fog, smoke, gun fire, cigarette smoke, and todo a certain extent it can Even make do for halos on lamps and light fixtures on a set by using the right material.

Dont forget, its not always about how complex your visual effect was todo make, Many times its just down todo what your audience is going todo actually se.


The surprise Attack is available from.

Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w96ghkybzc.

Rapidshare (Hi-Res).

Rapidshare (for Sony PSP):
By giancarlo ng. www.blenderart.org.

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