SoftBody/IK-Spline Dynamic Tree Rig

For this project I wanted to explore the notion of using rigging techniques to create a dynamically driven motion.

When thinking of this idea I asked myself what would best represent this idea and that's when I thought of tree's.

For this system I first started by creating a joint system. I did this by creating a master joint system. Then separately I created individual joint chains for each branch. Next I parented these children joint chains into the master joint system.

Now that I had a proper hierarchy I need to create curves along the "curvature" of the joint systems. This Curve system would serve as the goal weight for when I apply Softbody Dynamics. Once I had my curves in place I then created IK-Splines for each individual joint system including the master joint system. After this process was done I created an automation mel button to create the joint systems and IK-Systems based off the geometry.

Below is a video of the result that I got. ( I used a Turbulence Field to create the rustling )

Here is an example of another system using a Lattice to create a similar effect.

Software and Hardware Particles in Maya 2015

This was an exciting new world for me. I have always used maya's native particle system nparticles but never had I ever used the hardware particle system inside of maya. What I learned from this was the basics of what most particle systems consist of in most other programs.

In this project My goal was to create a scene that used multiple avenues of software and hardware particles. I mostly used sprites with creation expressions as well as animated instancer geometry.

First For the smoke effects and exhaust effects I used a basic volume emitter with sprites as the render type. After cycling the images that the sprite would use it made for a very believable result.

Second for the rain effects I created another volume emitter but instead of using sprites I used a multi streak render type. The great part of this effect was having the particle interact with the car and the ground, I've even added particle collision event to have the rain droplet create a splash on impact.

Below is the finished product. ( there is sound )

Visual Effects 1 - RigidBodysimulation and Particles

This month I've been exposing myself to all kinds of new techniques for creating interesting and somewhat realistic animation via maya's dynamic simulations.

My first project was of a Rigid body exercise create active and passive rigid body's to elude to the audience that everything in the scene is actually interacting with each other. Underneath is a playblast of the animation that I came up with.