Tests
Posting a few test videos
I decided to post a few production tests to the blog just for fun. Here is an animated version of a first idea for the title treatment. It originally had flames behind the logo at the end, but it was too much, so here’s the version without the fire at the end. (Watch in HD if you can!)
I’ve also been working on a workflow for animating a ship on the ocean mesh. Here’s one of those tests.
I’ve also been testing out using the new Dynamic Paint tool as an animated mask for revealing something written with pen and ink. It’s not perfect but it’s not bad. The resolution of the mask is not high enough so the edges are a little rough. Good proof of concept though!
First Ocean test clip using the new Ocean Sim tools!
Here’s my first test clip of an ocean scene using the new tools we’ve developed in the Blender 2.56 Ocean Sim branch build. The clip shows the completed scene plus compositing breakdown (not complicated, but interesting). I opted to render out a foreground and midground ocean wave object separately, as it was more efficient. I could have enlarged a single ocean mesh to fill the screen, but blender really starts to bog down when you do that.
There are things that could be improved. The white foam is a plain material, it could use a little bump mapping to make it less smooth. You could also use an foam video texture to get a little more motion in the foam areas, but I’ve yet to get a good result without obvious tiling.
The next thing will be to float a ship on the water and get it moving realistically on the waves. We don’t yet have actual wave/object interaction yet, but developer Daniel Salazar is working on that. Also Blender cannot yet do dynamic particle emission, so no spray from the wave peaks for now. I should be able to fake some spray and a wake around the boat using manual particle objects, and displacement maps, we’ll see.
Anyway, enjoy! Hope to post a basic tutorial to get people up to speed on using the tools in order to get wider feedback from the community.
The builds are now open to the community, so head on over to http://www.savetheoceansim.com to get yours!
Cheers,
Todd
Blender 2.56 Ocean Simulation Branch Released to Public!
Great news, the latest builds of the Blender 2.56 Ocean Sim Branch have now been released to the public for further testing and feedback. Check the SaveTheOceanSim.com site for further details!
Highlights:
• New Ocean Modifier tool
• Updated and Improved Ocean Texture tool
• Foam Masking, Displacement, and Normal baking
Early Ocean Sim Test Animation Posted!
Matt has posted an early ocean sim animation test showing wave shapes and an early foam shader. Still in the works, but heading in the right direction. Check it out!
Donation Goal Reached!!
Thanks to all those blenderheads who donated to this project! Our donation goal was reached within 24 hours of launching the campaign! More info will follow. You can find out more information at the website:
Here’s the site, please visit and check it out!
Thanks,
Todd
Funding drive for porting Ocean Sim patch into Blender 2.5
Not sure if everyone is familiar with the Ocean Simulation module used by Matt Ebb on the Lighthouse short film. The studio he was working with paid for the development costs to create the patch, and then it was released to the public later on.
Unfortunately, the patch is not available in 2.5, and any 2.49 versions that had it do not seem to be available on Graphicall.org any longer.
I’ve spoken with Matt Ebb, and the costs of porting the Ocean Sim to Blender 2.5 would be in the range that would be affordable by a small group of sponsors. I can’t afford to sponsor this port, but perhaps we could get a little mini drive going to sponsor this!
What do you guys think? Please head over to this BA thread to vote and voice your opinion!
First fire material test….
Well, this is the first time that I’ve tried out the new fire technique using the smoke system and all I have got to say is wow!
Using the tutorial Creating realistic fire in Blender 2.5 by Miika Hämäläinen, I did this test file with a monkey head and flames burning. For such a short setup time (although it took overnight to bake the high resolution smoke cache), I am very impressed with the results. I’m pretty confident that with enough tweaking I’ll be able to use this technique for the times when I need flames in this project.
I thought the new smoke module was cool, but the fact that we can combine it with a particle system and voxel data to get a fairly easy result like this is pretty amazing! Thanks Blender Devs!
Here’s a link to the video:
Flag Concept
Was interesting to learn that a common flag style for some viking cultures was not a rectangular shape, but rather a semi-circular shape with tassles. Also the icon of the raven was widely used as well. Here’s a short animation of a flag test.
Character Design
Here’s a 2d paintover that I did while thinking about the look of the viking characters. Nothing final, but was a good chance to try the paintover technique over a 3d base human model.
Animated Water Test
This was just a quick test to test out a technique for using 2 displacement maps for animating a water surface easily. This is usually a game engine technique, but could be used in an animation if used carefully.
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