Our collaboration project was very interesting, we used many different techniques throughout the film to achieve the final effect, and because of this, many problems and difficulties arose. However, these difficulties were solved by my partner and I working together.
In this collaborative project, I was mainly responsible for the visual effects, such as the pond, the interaction between objects, the creation of ink effects and the wind blowing plants. Due to my work habits, most of the effects are done using the pop and vop system of Houdini, and the physical effects in Houdini have special requirements for the model assets. Most of the time we need to use a whole model as an emitter or object solver for particles, and although I used to work in a studio, I didn’t work directly with animators, so I overlooked this and forgot to tell my partner, which led to me having to use a lot of Group nodes in Houdini to remedy this. We needed a lot of physics interaction with particles and fabrics, and even a three-way interaction between fabric, fluid and rigid body, which I had never attempted in my previous studies and workflow. After reviewing the information I finally chose to first calculate the interaction between the rigid body and the fabric, then export the solved fabric as an abc file and then calculate the interaction with the fluid. I learnt from working on this problem that in many processes you should try to keep the problem as simple as possible rather than overcomplicating it. The final issue is related to the export of objects after solving them in Houdini. For example, the bamboos and their shadows in the film were created in Houdini, but the exported abc animation file was too large due to the number of faces and calculations, which caused a problem with stuttering after importing into Maya, and we finally solved this problem by changing the packing method of the exported abc.
I think I have improved in three ways during this project. Firstly, the technical aspects of the project. Although I have worked on a number of films and TV series before, there were still a lot of shortcomings. By solving problems during this project, I was able to further consolidate my skills and learn a lot of new ways of creating different effects in Houdini. The second thing that I have improved is the management of emotions. Everyone is different and independent, and the constant work on collaborative projects can often be very stressful and lead to negative emotions, as it did for me and my team members. However, we all adjusted our emotions in a timely manner, maintained good communication and ultimately completed the entire short film. I am very grateful to my partner for his support and encouragement during the collaborative project, and hope that we can continue to work together to improve the shortcomings of this short film in our subsequent free time.