This is the last week I will be documenting this project even though I will be continuing to get it finished for this external project. I am now in the final stages of finishing this simulation where I will wait for the finished alembic files form the animation team of this project. They will be sending the shots tracked and animated ready to put in Houdini from Maya. When I receive these files I will reload them into the alembic node and have to work down the simulation to make sure it still fits to the new animation. This is something I have never done before so I am really grateful I have Medhi to confide in while I have to go through this process.
So now this if the final glass simulation with the bounding selection in play. As you can see the glass doesn’t all fall out of place immediately. I have put the wire frame of the metal frame simulation to show how the two simulations will work together.
Further down the simulation the glass will break away from the rest in tiny pieces. This means that the constraints are working and this has finally succeeded!
In the glass selection I decided it would be easier to just do it all in one blast node. It was a lot faster than assigning each selection to the for each loop node. Thankfully this shortcut work out.
I attempted to try and do a compile box to include it but i couldn’t figure it out. I watched tutorials to try and help reexplain how to use it but I think I will need to do it another time when I have more time.
Project Evaluation:
I found this project very hard, however, I have definitely learnt how to use Houdini much better even though it was very stressful. As a collaborative group, its hard because although I working on a project with many other people in different groups e.g. animation, lighting & compositing and matchmove… I never really worked with them because there was only me and Diana to complete all the FX.
on one hand I thing its create I got to solely work on the destruction of the car because it means I can take full credit for it in my showreel which is a really great project to have in my portfolio. On the other hand, I feel like I missed out a little on the whole ‘collaboration’ aspect of this project working in a group all the time. I really enjoyed the last collaboration project I did because we were always in close contact and could help each other whenever. This project wouldn’t have worked that way because Diana needed to focus on all the fire and gas simlations and I had to focus on the destruction part. There wasn’t really any cross over which was a shame.
Obviously in out two tutorials a week with Medhi we would listen to what me and Diana were getting up to but because this is all very new to us that we didn’t have any input on each others work. We still would listen to what was being said so that was the collaboration we were able to do.
Final play blast of simulation together:
Project Evaluation:
This project is still in progress as we have a little longer to complete this. That is great as I have been working my as off to get to where I am. I have learnt all of this more or less over the last 10 weeks. I found this project EXTREMELY hard. I didn’t enjoy it as much as I would have liked just because I the collaborative side wasn’t having meetings all the time. Diana and me worked very separate because we had so much to do between us. I feel ver overwhelmed and wish I had more people working on the car crash but now I do get full credit for this simulation which is great for my portfolio but I would have preferred learning with a partner.
I will be continuing this project over the next week or so to finish it off, this video above is just to show an example of how I have done the simulation.