TD Assignment 6: Rigid and Soft Bodies

TD Assignment 6: Particle Effects

Cse459 Preproduction for Digital Animation

Assignment: Rigid and Soft Bodies
Due Date: Wednesday, Feb 20 11:59pm

Assignment Introduction

In this assignment we will be learning about Particle Collisions, Goals, Soft Bodies, Springs, Hard Bodies, and Constraints. This assignment contains two parts. The first part is to complete a waving flag tutorial which will introduce you to soft bodies, springs, constraints, and goals. It will also review some of the particle effects that we learned in the previous assignment. In the second part of the assignment each student will design a dynamic simulation using either Soft Bodies or Hard bodies.

Part 1: Wavy Flag

What you need:

You will be completing a tutorial which demonstrates how to create a waving flag using Soft Bodies using the concepts you have learned from class. In this tutorial, you will create a Soft body, learn to assign the particle goal weights, add springs to the soft body, and add dynamic fields to the body to create a realistic waving flag. You will also learn to create a surface emitter to create realistic looking rain. This tutorial will be available from the course web page. You will only be handing in the finished rendered product from each tutorial. Please don't wait until the last minute, as they may take a bit of time.

Tutorial

Flag Tutorial

Download

Maya file for Flag

Turn-in:

For this part of the project, you must submit 1 MOV movie files of the final rendered scene in 854x480 resolution. You'll be rendering from the render_cam camera. That means you'll have to render out all 250 frames and then edit it out into a MOV in after effects or premiere.

Part 2: Create your own Soft and Rigid Bodies effect

For this part of the assignment each person in the class will try to create a dynamic simulation using either soft or rigid bodies. You should pick something that you have seen in real life, and try to re-create this using Maya dynamics. Try to pick a scenario that seems fun and challenging. Some possible dynamic simulations you could think about re-creating are: a bowling ball and pins, rain hitting water and making splashes, a basketball being shot into a hoop, footprints in the ground, pool table break, etc. You will be responsible for designing and creating an entire scene that will make your simulation look convincing. This includes modeling any additional props, shading, and lighting the scene. Please keep it simple. The idea of this project is to concentrate on your dynamic simulation. We will be grading you on how well the scene matches real life, and not how realistic the models in your scene are. Once you have decided on what effect you are aiming to recreate, the next step is to find some reference footage of that effect, or better yet to shoot some yourself. The best reference you will have in creating a convincing effect comes from real life. You will be required to bring in the reference material you used to base you effect off of, and we will use this reference to judge the believability of the effect.

What we're looking for:

The important thing to remember when working on your effect is that we will be much more concerned with quality than complexity. Here are some tips to remember when designing your effects:

Technical Requirements:

Turn-in:

For this part of the project, you must submit your reference materials and a MOV of your final effect.

Tips

Grading Criteria