Morning everyone,

couldn't decide which forum index, in the end my thread ended up here.

WIP:
Firstly, i am working on a personal project where i need some sparks.
Following somebody's “ParticleSOP” example file, i recreated similar result with “POP_network”.

This is what i got so far,
http://vimeo.com/26836474 [vimeo.com]


Q:
Was told i could get great feedbacks here,
i love to hear what kind of approaches does production houses or any individual have for something as simple as emitting sparks.

Do you guys usually get the shape and animation right in 3D and enhance them to look awesome in post or should one make sure the raw renders are of a certain quality before moving on?

Enhancing sparks in post, my guess would be add blur and glow.
What kind of tricks are used to make sparks look so incredible?

Anything is appreciated!

eitht.

hi eitht ,

in the picture you attached i see the biggest ‘role’ is played by the depth of field .

you can see the bokeh even on the highly motion blurred particles ( their hexagonal shape ) .

i havent done something like that before but id suggest to mainly focus on depth of field and motion blur when inside houdini .

it is better to apply glow in post ..

and oc , the camera position in relation to the particles seems to be important .


p.s. just saw the video ; judging from the speed of the sparkles , are dimensions of the zone where action is happening large ? that's the impression i get . if no , id suggest to increase their speed and why not fade those a bit faster .


pardon because i went a bit of topic with comments about simulation , but hey .. you said “ Anything .. ” =P


.cheers

Yo zarti,

you have my appreciation for the “anything”, hehe.
I definitely want to have the sparks going in/out of focus, may change my mind later.

Sorry if i misled anybody, the render above was simply a test and wasn't meant for the final shot!
Definitely agree with you on the particle speed, upon closer inspection of reference video, i want some of them to split on death too.


Playing with COPs, took me like 10 minutes to do this - pretty quick considering i'm not a compositing type.
On a static frame, the “end caps” of the rounded tube are pretty obvious… Guess a lot of blur or render as lines will do huh, anyone? ><

Sparks in COPs:
http://vimeo.com/26939311 [vimeo.com]

The actual shot i'm working on requires less number of sparks.
Here's the link (Will find it familiar with you're a warcraft fan) so everyone get a clearer idea of what i'm doing,

01_sh020
http://vimeo.com/26706301 [vimeo.com]

Looking forward to more inputs!

eitht.

I agree with Zarti, and maybe also decrease and randomize the mass of the particles so that they fly higher, rather than fall so fast.

Got that, will jump right into those asap & post up anything new.
Thanks again zarti & rafaels. :wink:

eitht.

I'm back,
the particles were given high velocity using Point SOP and I have Drag POP controlled based on $AGE.
Trying to get a long initial streak then back to a small dot,
right now i'm rendering the particles as tubes - considering using actual geometries like a slightly deformed sphere/tube.

Moving these to my actual scene file, will post up more WIP later.

http://www.vimeo.com/27033400 [vimeo.com]

http://www.vimeo.com/27033485 [vimeo.com]

C&C&A are welcome, thanks!

Pardon me for changing this into a WIP thread, felt there wasn't a need to make a new one.

eitht.

cool! I think you're on a good track…

hi , it's me again

suggestions :

- what wd happen if you wd use hexagonal single polygons to ‘simulate’ the bokeh ? maybe animate its size and shape based on camera's focus .. starting from a small circle to a custom hexagonal shape , to accentuate those to your heart's content . the motion blur wd take care for the rest .

- also , regarding the length of the video ; you cd make those a bit longer because it is hard to remember ‘what happened’ .

other than these ; im interested to see how this goes , so keep posting .



.cheers

Hey guys, i came back with WIP and a problem,

WIP: http://www.vimeo.com/27503108 [vimeo.com]
I moved over to working with the sparks on my actual scene,
will be layering particles - some flying towards camera and some bouncing & splitting around the surface near the hammer head.

Will consider copying hexagon geo onto the particles or use it as bokeh as suggested!
More c&c&a are appreciated!

Problem: http://www.vimeo.com/27502777 [vimeo.com]
This is a 2nd POP_network to generate the splitting particles, the issue here is most of the particles are falling through the collision geometry with some of them colliding and sliding…

Me and my buddy tried a few of our own tricks & a couple of solutions from older threads, but they were no good…

- Increase oversampling
- Give collision tolerance (Collision POP)
- Use smaller variance values
- Switch to 3rd context geo or wire collision geo to POP_Network via SOP path
- Check collision geo's normals
- Translate source emitter up as it was previously penetrating the collision geo

Out of ideas for now… i've attached the hip file if anybody is kind to give it a shot! *BOW*

eitht.

Your particles created by the split node are not picking up the collision which is above them. Try duplicating your collision pop and putting the duplicate underneath the split pop.

****!

badhairday, you made me look silly but i'm eternally grateful!
Didn't have a chance to jump back on this problem, now i can go to the next stage.

eitht.

Sorry for the delay, here's the reason why i started this topic.

http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_forum&Itemid=172&page=viewtopic&p=108000#108000 [sidefx.com]

Thanks the help rendered!

eitht.