VFx of my animation

Hello, I present my final entry to the animation and VFX categories, I share this video in both categories because it is the final result of the entire process where animation and VFX come together with the Texturing work to obtain this movie. My first goal was the Texturing category, but I really enjoyed these 2 animation and VFX categories, and the ultimate goal was to have something 100% finished so I could add it to my portfolio. Thanks for the comments and feedback provided, I hope to be able to participate in other contests and grow as a professional.

Hello, I leave a new update of my entry to the VFX. This time it is about the breaking of the upper wall and the emission of smoke from the pieces of the wall. To make the break in the wall I have used the Shatter that comes in Maya, I have divided it into 100 pieces and then with the Bullet engine that also comes in Maya I have simulated the break and the pieces falling to the ground. Once I have been happy with the result of the simulation with Bullet, I have exported the pieces as Alembic and have used them as smoke emitters. I have made this new smoke simulation again with Bifrost in Maya.

Hello, I leave a new update of my process with the VFX, in particular with the smoke. As I put in the previous video I have created a Bifrost compound to make all the simulation of the smoke at once, because with the system that I have designed I can choose from where the smoke is going to be issued and what are the objects linked to the character that generate this interaction to believe the smoke.

Smoke generators are with a constraint parent to original geometry, in the case of the chest and hand I have enlarged them with the idea of having a major emission surface on the ground.

Next phase, destroy the wall with the Bullet module of Maya.

Hello again, I wanted to update my entry to the VFX section, I made a new graph inside bifrost, which is used to make smoke come out of the footsteps that the character gives on the ground or when he slides over it.

Everything happens dynamically thanks to the programming carried out within bifrost, different emissive geometry and different generating geometry of that emission can be added, then there are also some volumes that are in charge of killing the smoke that is not necessary, to make the simulation be as light as possible. The emission is produced by proximity between objects.

This is my entry to the VFX category.

Well, the first thing I have done is obtain the alembic of my animated robot to be able to put it as a reference in the new scene that I am going to create for the VFX.

I have also referenced the scene that has the SET where the action takes place and the uber camera from the final animation. This SET scene is still provisional and only offers me the volumes of the objects necessary for the action to take place. I could say that it is a Proxy Set.

Since the aforementioned elements are referenced, then I can delete them without problem and keep the final scene of the VFX with all the effects with their respective cache created and be able to reference this clean VFX scene in the final scene where I am going to render using render layers.

Once the scene is assembled and all the elements inside, I have created some visualization layers to work more comfortably.

I'm going to start with the sparkles that come out of the hand and foot when he does the ground slide at the start of the animation. As I want the emission of the particles to be as realistic as possible, I have duplicated the geometries that make contact with the ground during the sliding action, which are the tips of the fingers of the right hand and the heel of the left foot. By duplicating them I can modify them and I have eliminated excess geometry to make it as optimized as possible. Then I have made its original pieces with constraint parent, in this way I keep its movement and position but it is an independent geometry.

Well, once all this is done, it's time to start with the particles and I'm going to do them with Bifrost. I leave an image with the graph that I created for this effect.

Bifrost is somewhat complex because I can't find good official documentation with videos about it. Fortunately there is always something on Youtube and in some Discord forum. For this occasion I have started from a basic particles graph, here now it is a matter of adding the emitters (foot and hand), connecting the colliders, and the influences. I have had to create a "color" parameter that will allow me to control the color and alpha of the particles, as it will later have a utility. Variations of color, speed, life and size must be created for emission sources so that they are not all the same. In the influences we have some turbulence to make the movement somewhat more chaotic, they have different frequencies and intensities to create the effect I was looking for. I've also added a gravity influence to enhance the existing default. Lastly, I wanted to make the particles fade as they die at the same time that they get smaller and change color, they are consumed. After researching and searching I have found that the "modifier influence" node can be useful, so I have created 3 one for each aspect that I wanted to control, color, size and alpha. The alpha and the color can be done thanks to the previous creation of the "color" parameter that, being a float4, admits RGBA values. The "modifier influence" of the size is of type simple float.

Having created the "color" parameter that the particles have, I can use it so that the material assigned to them can change the values of the emissive, the emissive color and its weight. As I wanted to enhance the value of the emissive weight that originally comes between the values (0-1) from the particle, I have added a multiply node to be able to increase the intensity if necessary.

The following once I am already happy with the movement of the particles and with the effect in general, I make the cache. And I try the render with Arnold and I put Motion blur to find that sparkle effect. So far I have succeeded and everything works fine, they change color slightly from birth to death, change size and fade before dying. The effect can be adjusted, but the bases are done.