This project is inspired by the following screenshot
aiming to have a couple of horses running with fire/magic look trailing behind
let's start with some anime from my animator friend back at ALA:
v01_01 anime only
this anime looks not bad (credit to Zihan)! and still thanks to the followCam trick taught by Ellie, works well here:)
next, let's add some pyro attribute on it and FLAME ON!
v01_02 first pass of pyro spread
alright! though it looks quite fast, let's stick to it atm, the faster the iteration, the faster the work is pushed forward:)
well.. had a bit of time troubleshooting the velocity calculation due to keep changing ptnum
but now it worked, just simple solution, attribute transfer from the original mesh (worked!)
v01_03 v calculation
now, push to pop sim, then drive the pyro as what you are familiar with the most ;)
v01_04 smoke drive shape
well... looks a bit off I have to say, something is off..
though the horse shape is maintained, the smoke trailing looks weird, so is the smoke on the feet, shouldn't shoot forward
let's try...
slow down the pyro spread, still the same approach, give it a go!
slow down the pyro spread, still the same approach, give it a go!
v01_05 slower pyro spread
well.. the spread looks ok now, let's try skip the popsim and directly go into pyro and see what happens (still smoke approach), and revert the vel direction, give it a go:)
found something always miss... please, remember to bring anime substeps back lol
v01_06 no pop sim
well revert the vel direction seems so far so good, but skipping popsim doesn't look quite work
now, try the following approaches:
bring popsim back but only emit from back of the neck
v01_07 fire back
ahh! this one looks a lot better, nice "blocking" haha though the true meaning is used on modelling thing:)
let's bring back the pyro spread, use the spread to drive the popsim and everything down the line keeps the same, nice one!
v01_09 pyro spread and high res fire
thanks to Martin for providing tips on making the sim faster:) match size to origin, stash xform, then transformByAttribute at the very end!
well, this fire spread looks still too fast, reduce by 70% in the later iteration, now the thing to do is let the horse shape grow
well, this fire spread looks still too fast, reduce by 70% in the later iteration, now the thing to do is let the horse shape grow
still, use the pyro spread but on the whole body, very small flame life span, make sure there is pyro collider:
v02_01 body flame grow
well well well, look at this! Not bad!
next: bring disturbance back, break the mushroom a bit, run a flipbook with pyro on the back, make sure their timing looks similar to each other, and they blend together well
v02_02 two flames together
alrighty! it's overall getting there! juts need a couple tweaks to make the back flame to blend well
let's try..
kill the popsim, bring up the point vel node, directly flame on the back! and of course, slow down the pyro spread please
then from there, we adjust flame lifespan etc
v02_03 two flames fine tuned
look at this one! well done, 98% quality on one horse, let's now try to render one horse and see what happens
let's render this horse only, just with the normal flame color
for other horses, retime the whole anime and filecache, bake different colour
for the smoke in front of the cam, well though you know for pyro that is very close to cam you need a crazy amount of voxels, sure, just give it a go first, there is only one way to find out right :) keep on!
as for the camera circling, still with this follow cam, let it follow in a circular way (try)
quite a lot of discussion happened behind the scenes, there is a need to let the flame more tending to the back
since the horse anime is simulated at the origin, just figured something out to controlled the speed linearly across the horse
let's try this way and see if it better matches the required output (will update all the gifs later)
v02_04 test on new approach