Day 11

We came into office late, around 9.30am. I sat down and continued working on my shader. Just messing around here and there. Until now still trying to figure out how writing shaders actually work in houdini. I didn't have any experience in shader writing at all.

My updated rock look:





Around 11am, John came and gave a basic VOPSOP class. Just what I needed! He made his class real basic and I learnt a lot from him. The next step I hope to be able to bring it further. His class ended around 1pm.


Charles was scheduled to give his class on materials later. After lunch he started his class at around 2pm. He gave a basic breakdown of the mantra surface shader. All the tabs and what they do. He also told us how to bring in the local parameters of the shader onto the geometry level.

Below is the render on what he taught us:



After that he showed us how to build our own simple shader with noise displacement.







There seems to be some problem with my file, but I got the overall idea on how it worked though.

After that, Mr Steven came by in the evening and looked through our previs and reference pictures.

He told me that my previs was okay just that I got to do some blending and work on the transition for the shot which the camera looks down to the shot that shows the energy sphere moving. He also gave me suggestions on how to do it.

1- Add growing spheres with alpha at the edge of the ripple and when the camera looks down, have some of them cover the camera for the transition. And for the energy ball shot transition, I could have some of the spheres move down instead.

While he was telling me all that, I got some ideas of my own. Once they are conceptualize, I will post them.

I showed him my rock shader and he said it look okay. And it seems like now, my rock has to gear more towards the meteor feel. He showed me a thread on odforce regarding rocks:

http://forums.odforce.net/index.php?/topic/9532-rock-hard/page__hl__rock__fromsearch__1

He asked me to check it out.

I also asked him regarding the displacement of the pre-fractured geometry pieces from the ripple.

He told me that I could set up a rbd collision system. I could overlay the ripple simulation below of the pre-fractured pieces. I could then use the ripple as a collision object that drives the pieces apart.

When he said that, the idea sounded quite complex, but I would give it a shot next week. I will work on my previs tomorrow.

Will be going out for dinner with him and his wife later!

Will blog tomorrow!