Now that we've build at the underlying structure, we move into actually designing the nuances of the piece: ### Case Study 1 - Gene <iframe title="Pond Flower Animatic" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/6lCB4uS_KF4" height="113" width="200" allowfullscreen="" allow="fullscreen" style="aspect-ratio: 1.769 / 1; width: 100%; height: 100%;" frameBorder=0></iframe> ##### Refer back to the brief 1. What feeling are we trying to evoke? - With Gene the notes we got were, “living ball of energy” and “trail of fairy dust". - It’s my job to then take those notes and convert them into systems. ##### The Right Tools 1. Artist turn over → 3 months, for 3 years! 2. Most artists they were working with didn’t have deep Houdini knowledge, and these problems were so complex it would be hard to solve them with another tool. ##### The Problem 1. Gene needed to be a character that had a rig that was easy for the animators to animate. 2. He needed to be made of particles that felt random and alive 3. But: 1. They had to loop every so many seconds 2. Read well from one angle 3. Particles must deform with the character rig throughout their whole life ##### How We Solved It 1. Built the rig in Blender for the art director using simple geo 1. Basically a bouncing ball rig with squash and stretch control 2. Nucleus inside to represent the eye 3. Hands and arms for occasional effects ![[Gene_Rig_vid_gif.gif]] 2. Brought FBX in from rig and used the base geo as the spawner for a particle system 1. Used POPs in Houdini to set the vector fields to control particle movement 2. Creating various effects to make it feel as if Gene was constantly in motion, a few internal to make it look like the particles were spawning from Gene 3. Edge particles to make the silhouette more fuzzy and energetic 4. Simulated on a stationary Gene, then mapped to the FBX to morph with it 5. Vex code to extract and set the orientation 3. Fairy dust system that trailed behind Gene to feel as if it’s in the wind 4. Mapped necessary attributes to be saved out in the alembic for UE 5. Custom Niagara system ![[Gene_Particles_gif.gif]] ### Case Study 2 - Gemstone Creation ![[Gemstone_Final_gif.gif]] ##### Brief 1. Needs to feel like a natural gemstone 2. Have large enough faces to put UI elements on 3. Quick iterations 4. Can’t require a lot of clean-up work, should be game ready 5. Low poly with texture maps 6. UI Placement ##### System <iframe title="Pond Flower Animatic" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/omS7DJLbQXM" height="113" width="200" allowfullscreen="" allow="fullscreen" style="aspect-ratio: 1.769 / 1; width: 100%; height: 100%;" frameBorder=0></iframe> 1. Base Geo using a cylinder first to allow artist to define number of large faces 2. Create dynamic cutters to create the natural geo on the top and bottom with seeds for variation 3. Use VOPs in Houdini to create surface detail 4. Remesh down to lower poly geo 5. Procedural UVs 6. Bake high poly detail onto low poly geo 7. Allow artists to select faces to snap UI elements to 8. Export Game Ready Assets with Appropriate Naming Conventions and File Structures 9. Use TOPs to automatically bake out variations for tests 10. Reduced all options down to a single panel of controls for artists 11. Output Game Ready Asset #### Aside - Destruction Tests ![[Shatter_Test_gif.gif]] Early in the design process for the project we prototyped a system to have any mesh explode into fractured pieces and then reform into any other mesh. Though we didn’t use it it was a fun test: 1. Explode both meshes into a similar number of pieces 2. Cull any extra pieces from mesh two (to be brought back later) 3. Control explosion effect by multiplying it by volume of pieces 4. Map mesh two pieces to follow the same position and orientation of mesh one pieces 5. Swap textures over time with a slider ### Case Study 3 - Pond Flower ![[PondFlower_Full_gif.gif]] 1. Built from the ground up to be easy to animate using only a few simple controls 2. Artists control primary animation, with secondary animation being handled procedurally using VOPs 3. Each system build in their own subnet, then brought together 4. Textures made procedurally in VOPs then baked to low poly 5. Instance points separated out, baked out as a Niagara particle system 6. Attributes for names, rotations, scales and movement saved into point cloud to be referenced in UE 7. Custom shaders for emissive effects ![[Flower_Test_base_geo_gif.gif]] ![[Flower_Test_pts_gif.gif]] ![[Flower_Test_gif.gif]] [[Prototyping|Prev - Prototypes]] [[Process]]