for those of you who think a computer is a must for special effects...

ahem, sepehr

Real Flow - leading in fluids

I must agree with Wyatt that, yes, Maya Fluid effects are Swiss army knife but the principle behind displacement is used in much more advanced fluid packages as well. I used ocean shader to show how displacement is used in action to come up with decent imagery with what we have on hand at USC. While Fluid effects can have real dynamics and interaction with other objects/characters within the scene, it is true that Maya Fluid is not the best tool available on the market. It is Next Limit Real Flow software that is the leading in this arena (Every kind of fluids but clouds) but unfortunately we don’t have access to it at USC. Here are samples done with Real Flow:

Here is the link to see the reel:
http://www.nextlimit.com/realflow/img/videos/realflow_showreel2007_externalsonido.html
It is really interesting.


It is also interesting to note that although Real Flow was originally a Visual effects tool, a program called Xflow is derived from it which is for scientific and engineering visualizing.
Here is a link to Xflow:
http://www.nextlimit.com/xflow/index.htm

Play-Doh Ad

http://bravia.sony.eu/bravia.html

Check the "Watch Our Play-Doh Ad, there's a commercial and also the making of.
It is amazing how they use replacement animation and pixelation to create a dream-like, surrealistic piece.

Scanline VFX Flowline

Who uses Maya for water?

Sepehr raises some good points about Maya's handling of it's ocean shader, but the fact is, Maya is a more of a swiss army knife instead of a surgeons scalpel. Water, weather and other natural phenomena are so complex and random that it's hard to create the effect convincingly, and many still really on practical effects to create these.

Enter Scanline VFX. A European VFX company that cut hits teeth on films like Revenge of the Teenage Zombies and Bibi Blocksberg and the Secret of the Blue Owls has become a forerunner in water VFX.

Their reel for Siggraph 2006 really drives home what they are capable of delivery entirely in CGI. The raging sea storm in 300? Scanline Flowline VFX.



Sepehr can dissect their ocean shader. This clip (and others) can also be seen on Scanline's site.

http://www.scanlinevfx.com/index.html

Spectacle

Where do you draw the line between what is scientifically accurate and what is spectacle for entertainment purposes? Ultimately it is the director's vision.
Does scientific accuracy need to exist in blockbuster films?
When it comes to documentaries and educational films, are some of the 'educational' bits being suppressed in order to maintain the engagement of the audience?

Just questions to pose.

Displacement in Ocean Shader

It’s interesting to know that Maya ocean shaders also use Displacement but it is not kind of “True Displacement” as it can be done with PRman or recently Mental Ray. So basically surface is not going through smart Tessellation or “Micro Polygons” here. It is some kind of Uniform tessellation that is applied to whole surface.

Here is an example:

Example 2:

Here we can see that there is actually no smart micropolygon creatation by noticing that a uniform tesselation is applied to the whole "ocean object":

We hope that in future versions of Fluid effects they will use micropolygons to enhance rendering time and resources needed to come up with such effects.

winners of 2007 International Science and Technology Visualization Challenge

The National Science Foundation announced the winners of 2007 International Science and Technology Visualization Challenge. The categories contain photography, illustration, informational graphics, interactive media, non-interactive media

"Some of science’s most powerful statements are not made in words. From the diagrams of DaVinci to Hooke’s microscopic bestiary, the beaks of Darwin’s finches, Rosalind Franklin’s x-rays or the latest photographic marvels retrieved from the remotest galactic outback, visualization of research has a long and literally illustrious history. To illustrate is, etymologically and actually, to enlighten," written in the web page.

This again demonstrates the importance of the combination of science and artistic visualization. It not only further the development of scientific study, but also make the difficult concept tangible to the crowd and serve for educational purposes.

Click for Link


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