Flame Burst During Dodge – Voronoi Fracture Experiment
In this clip, I explored how to make the character burst into flames mid-dodge using an Alembic mesh generated in Cinema 4D with a Voronoi Fracture.
- Method:
- Created a fractured mesh to simulate the character’s body breaking apart into fiery shards.
- Attempted to have the flames move back toward the character, creating a dynamic flare effect.
- Technical Challenges:
- The fire shards moved too far away, losing connection with the character.
- Used Cinema 4D’s Push Apart feature combined with a plane effector and falloff just below ground level to prevent fire sinking underground.
- Despite this, the flames’ movement appeared uncontrolled and unnatural, lacking the smooth float-up-and-settle behavior I wanted.
- The flames moved in every direction without cohesive flow.
- Final Solution:
- Abandoned the complex fractured simulation for a simpler, more controlled effect.
- Made the character’s entire body glow red, using a Voronoi texture to gradually transition between normal and fiery states.
- This approach achieved a clean, stylized visual that matched the painterly aesthetic and narrative needs.
Trail Effect Experiment Using Cuboids and Volume Meshing
In this clip, I experimented with creating dynamic trail effects that interact with the painterly filter by leveraging volumetric meshing and procedural cloning.
- Initial Setup:
- In Cinema 4D, I attached a mesh to the character’s foot to serve as the trail emitter.
- Used a Tracer object to follow select points on this mesh, simplifying the trail to about four or five paths for performance and clarity.
- Spline and Sweep:
- The traced points were used to generate circular splines, which were then swept with Sweep NURBS to create volumetric ribbons.
- Volume Meshing:
- These swept splines were input into a Volume Builder and Volume Mesher, converting the ribbons into volumetric shapes.
- This gave the trails a solid, chunkier presence rather than just flat strips.
- Cloner Application:
- Using a Cloner object in Volume Object mode, I cloned multiple flattened cuboids onto the volumetric trail shape.
- The cuboids’ simplified geometry helps trigger the painterly paint filter effectively by providing polygon density and shape variation.
- Export and Result:
- The volumetric trails were baked into an Alembic cache and imported into Blender for final compositing and rendering.
- This workflow resulted in a visually interesting, painterly trail effect that follows the character’s motion dynamically.
Animation and Dynamic Clothing Experimentation
In this clip, I experimented with synchronizing the character’s movement to the rhythm of the music while exploring dynamic cloth simulation and animation flow.
- Character Design Iteration:
- An earlier version of the character featured handcuffs on his wrists.
- Due to technical issues and visual concerns, I ultimately removed the cuffs from the design.
- Technical Challenges:
- The sequence was baked as an Alembic, which introduced limitations that affected further edits and retargeting.
- Had it been an FBX file, these issues would likely have been avoided.
- Animation Flow:
- Initially, the sequence was fully animated but the pacing was too fast and visually confusing.
- To address this, I slowed the footage down significantly (by half or three-quarters), but this caused audio quality degradation and synchronization problems.
- Final Editing Decisions:
- Due to these constraints, I removed approximately 70-80% of the sequence to streamline the animation and maintain coherence.
- The remaining movement focuses on key moments that align better with the music and narrative pacing.
- Reflection:
- This process underscored the importance of choosing appropriate file formats early in the pipeline and pacing animation to balance quality and timing.