Finishing the Simulation

After rendering out both scenes yesterday and putting them together in a video using Adobe Premier Pro, I began work on Task 3 of the coursework. This morning I screen captured both my simulations running in Maya and put them together into one video. I then recorded a voice over to fit the video and explain what was used and why. I am currently writing my 500 word post mortem, and hope to have this finished up and submitted soon.

I've really enjoyed working on this project, and am keen to continue it into the next few weeks to make it a more realistic simulation. Even with the issues which I ran into along the way, I think if I stopped thinking things were more difficult than they actually are I could create a really nice simulation soon. I've learned the importance of sticking to a schedule, yet also the importance of adapting this schedule to suit for when things go wrong.

Emitting from nCloth - Part 2

I've finally managed to finish section one of my scene. The ncloth object emits water particles when it lands, then when it is moved from the four corners. The shader is slightly transparent the entire way through the render. Here's the first render, which I'm pretty pleased with so far. I may add a slight ambient light to the "back" of the cloth scene, as one camera movement is fairly dark.
Now to finish the running girl, and put the two videos together to be presented properly. This should be finished by the end of the week.

UPDATE: I realise the particles are nearly impossible to see on this compressed version. New lighting render is now here.

Emitting from nCloth

I became so obsessed with this difficult way of emitting from points in the ncloth, that I completely forgot about input meshes. So after weeks of trauma and hard work, it turns out emitting from my ncloth was as simple as turning it into an emitter. Needless to say I feel a little silly at the moment. It's still not perfect - currently far too many particles are being emitted from the cloth and at every face - but it's definitely getting there now. I just wish I had found this weeks ago - but alas problems arise and the way in which we deal with them can make or break a project. I just want to perfect this now to get it looking as good as possible

Caching

Today has mostly been spent caching, however the ncloth gets trapped between an arm and torso and starts to deform. Overall though I can see the progress starting to come through. I'm happy with what works so far, and believe once this problem is solved the scene will look good, it just takes a long time to create these caches.

UPDATE: After multiple unsuccessful attempts, I finally have an animation where there is minimal catching on the cloth - which I'm extremely happy with. I've now added the nparticle pool which I am caching - and with a resolution of 100 I believe this may take quite some hours. Will update again once it (hopefully) works.

Finalising Animation

One of my scenes is almost complete, with the final animation finished and the cloth movement being cached as I type this. All that needs to be added in is the n-particle pool and the scene will be ready to render out. The animation begins with a girl running with a skirt on. She jumps into a pool, the skirt becomes wet, and she gets out and begins to run again. My only issue now is finishing off the "interaction with other objects" section of my work, as I am still having no luck emitting from the ncloth. I have found a new piece of script which I am about to try, but I'm beginning to get impatient as it's the last thing I said I was going to do in my learning contract and I believe it is possible. I will invest many hours into this over the next few days and see what I can accomplish.

Ball Simulation

To show the dynamic properties of the wet cloth well, I've decided to both continue with my current scene, and also create a new scene involving an ncloth object landing upon a semi-sphere. This is where I am going to show most of my ncloth properties and nparticle effects.

I have been researching different ways to create an emitter from vertices in an ncloth but still to no avail. My next attempt is to create nparticles in certain places which will become visible once the cloth has landed. Then the ncloth object should move these particles slightly to appear as if they have come from the cloth itself. I am so far struggling with this as it seems the ncloth reacts to the particles, rather than the other way around. I will continue to look into ways to effect the movement of the particles before deadlines.


The ball simulation currently shows a cloth landing on a semi-sphere and then being dragged upwards. This is when nparticles will be left upon the table to emulate a trail of water. The cloth is then thrown about to show the interaction with movement and other vertices in the cloth. It also shows off the transparent shader on the cloth with a bright red semi-sphere and a wooden floor.

Animation

I've begun the animation to show off the movement of the skirt. Initially the focus has been on the movement of the character, then the implementation of the change from dry to wet cloth will be implemented. Once finalised, then the nPaticles will be added into the pool. I am not trying to create a perfect animation, however I want it to show off the change in cloth dynamics I've created. I'm fairly happy with the shader I have on the skirt at the moment, however I may edit some of the code in Notepad++ if I feel it doesn't look quite right once the final lighting has been put in place.

The only difficulty I may come across is changing the shader from dry to damp as I have not yet investigated if it's possible to key this, but I will find a soloution as soon as I can.