Category: Collaborative

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.

During the week I worked on the fish, lotus and water interaction effects as well as the ink effect. However, in the end the amount of particles was too large for the water to solve and the effect had to be weakened, but it was still evident that the objects were rendered correctly when interacting with the water and that the water gave timely feedback.

During the week I worked on the fish, lotus and water interaction effects as well as the ink effect. However, in the end the amount of particles was too large for the water to solve and the effect had to be weakened, but it was still clear that the objects were rendered correctly when interacting with the water and that the water gave timely feedback. The ink effect was created using a system of smoke and particles, which was combined with VEX by varying various parameters such as particle lifetimes and emission rates to give the effect of ink.

My production focus this week was on importing the fish animation and paper model created in Maya into Houdini to work with the previously created fluid for the fabric solution. The focus in this workflow was on the fabric solution. The paper model Vellum Cloth was created as a fabric by giving it properties, and the fish model was given a VBD node to read the volume to collide with the fabric. The collision-accepting paper is exported as Alembic and imported into the fluid project file for the secondary interaction solution.

During the week I made the bamboo that sways in the wind in the scene. This used POP wind and fabric solving in Houdini. As the model is not a monolith, it was difficult to group the points and it took a lot of patience to make sure that the right points were selected. There are no plant properties in Houdini, so the bamboo leaves need to be given fabric properties and adjusted to ensure that their state is consistent with the real world.The rest of the plants in the scene were treated in the same way after production.

Over the last two weeks I have been working on the fluids in the scene and the associated solutions. Included is the effect of the pond ink dispersion in the scene. The amount of water particles in the pond was very large and so the solving took a long time. Also after the solving was complete there was a need to constantly tweak the effect to create the best ripples and other effects to suit the needs, which required repeated solving tests.

After this week of discussion, my partner did the creation of the story outline and the drawing of the storyboard. I also sorted out the parts I needed to make based on these, which were roughly divided into wind, pond, paper, ink etc. Most of these effects needed to be referenced to real-world physical effects, so I did some research on this. After checking this out my partner and I confirmed the exact effects we needed for each shot and finalised the production plan.

I was very interested in the topic chosen by our group. After some discussion, we decided to combine 3D animation with traditional ink painting. Our short film will be produced using 3D modelling and VFX related techniques. My thesis during my undergraduate studies was related to 3D ink animation, so I believe that we can solve some problems with this experience on a technical level. My partner and I complement each other in terms of skills and personalities and I believe we will make a good team.