Cloud tools detailed on the SideFX Website

We had the chance to share our cloud pipeline with SideFX so that they could build a customer testimonial for their website. Thanks again to Jeff Wagner, Jeff Lait and the SideFX support team for helping us get our heads around volumes!

http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2034&Itemid=68

SideFX User Group Meeting

I will be presenting samples and techniques we used to create the 3d Clouds for Rio at the SideFX User Group Meeting as well as scouting for FX talent for Blue Sky. Stop by and make sure to see the SIGGRAPH talk On Wednesday morning at 10:45 in Ballroom A/B.

Register for the user group meeting here:
http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1987

Rio Clouds at Siggraph 2011

Two of my colleagues and I will be giving a talk on how we made the clouds and skies for Rio.

More info here.

Go See RIO!

Rio opens this weekend! Go see it and keep your eyes peeled for the 3d Clouds!

Noise Experiments

200x200x200 volume, Houdini

300x300x300 volume, Houdini

Rio and Ice Age 4 trailers

Ice Age: Continental Drift

 

Rio

 

HOU - Simple electric arc effect made with volumes.

This is a simple electric arc effect that I made this morning using tools available in H10a. The goal was to have an arc of electricity jumping across two leads. I started with two spheres and used a combination of centroid and distance functions with a line node to create a line that spanned the centroids of the two spheres and would change shape to stay connected if the spheres moved. 

Next, I converted the spheres and the line to separate volumes. To get the detail i wanted, I had to increase the resolution quite a bit. I prefer adjusting volume resolution by the "By Size" option but alas this is not available in the apprentice version. 

Next, I dropped a volume vop below the arc volume. Inside I used anti-aliased flow noise to distort the density inside the volume. I exposed its parameters and animated the Y offset by a function of time. 

Finally, Used a volume mix node to add the animated arc volume to the sphere volumes and then merged that result with the original spheres. The result is a basic arc effect that spans two leads, is animated and stays connected as the leads move.


I will later try to expand on this by arcing between poles and adding upward motion to the arcs.