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Leaf Character, looking for ideas.


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We are creating a character, which is covered in leafs.

Already i have approached that with several methods. 

Traditional modelling and skinning, gives us the control over the body, the shape and basic deformation.

It is a good base for the character and we can apply animation in the way we need it.

One important thing is basically missing, and that is the reactive motion of the leafs.

 

In a basic test character, we designed the meshes using cloth physics applied to to specific parts of the mesh.

It was kind of pleasing to watch, as the observer is expecting a reactive behavior of the structure, re. the leafs and twigs.

It worked well, but it was just a single character and we came quickly to some limitations in terms of performance, but especially the workflow is not satisfying and very hard to control.

 frame_0001.jpg.a1834a5ab458031b211bed801585532d.jpg

Further on now in our project, we want to detail the character more, to get away from the 'sheety' look more towards a 'feather' like volumetric feeling.

We build the character in real and we found out, that the motion we observed is more a leafe based motion, especially as we used oak leaves.

So I feel, that the physiq approach, using only the built in clothe system will not meet the needs.

I am considering for a while now, how to create this micro element reactive behavior. atm I have not found any examples which show my a way to proceed.

One I idea of us is, to create a vertex shader, which can transform the leaves (which we 'hacked' already in), but we are still missing the method to 'animate' the leafs in a reactive way, according the animations of the character and e.g. forces like gravity, wind. (basically physics).

I am looking for a fast and mainly relyble and versatile  method.

In the second step, we will also need to apply a character made from 'straw'. For this, the method I want to use as well.

 

DSC_3332.thumb.jpg.df7a928aec34f7c1d4658b2669daa5d0.jpgDSC_7435_small.thumb.jpg.a886056b3db81e8948fd9cd4600cb32e.jpg

(sry to mark the images out)

As this is a very crucial part for the realism of the characters, I am seriously looking for hints and help, to create such a behavior.

As mentioned, there is no equivalent out there I could take as a reference point, but that encourages us to be the first to develop such a method.

If someone wants to contribute towards that topic, I am more than happy.  

We know, that UNIGINE ppl are great in such technical solutions!

 

Thanks. Werner

 

 

 

 

Edited by werner.poetzelberger
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image.thumb.png.823b0996d20d0064744d7ed0b0cd5984.png

cloth would work quite nicely as separate sheets. But the issue is the binding to the surface.

I cant bind it to the surface in that way, that only the vertices closer to the surface are fixed and the others (of a quad, e.g. leaf) would be simulated as a cloth. 

A binding via vertex colors would be great, so it would be controlable.

e.g: the first plane would bind correctly.

image.thumb.png.42232ffa8dc3f9e47c7937c8a23c24d3.png

Edited by werner.poetzelberger
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What about something in between, add bones into leave cover and bake results of physics into each animation (there are some 3rd party tools, which can do this)? So it will be "reactive" on each animation (fake inertia) + additional individual leaf movement (wind etc...) can be done by shader. It will be not as realistic as with physics, but should perform much better.

Edited by demostenes
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5 minutes ago, demostenes said:

What about something in between, add bones into leave cover and bake results of physics into each animation (there are some 3rd party tools, which can do this)? So it will be "reactive" on each animation (fake inertia) + additional individual leaf movement (wind etc...) can be done by shader. It will be not as realistic as with physics, but should perform much better.

Baking its an idea. But we have a generative motion system, which creates new animations 'realtime' additional complex blending of animations etc. Unfortun. there is no way to bake in our case.

Fake reactive would be an idea. I thought of bland shapes for the leaves e.g. up, down, left right. Then blend these according motions (eg. positions or speeds whatever).

But it would need to be selective, not an overall one, which again is huge effort (split body into areas, different blendshapes...).

Acutally I want to avoid any pre-baked data (if possible).

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What about this? http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1022965/Animating-With  It essentially talks about how animating hair and cloth with vertex offsets is a really good idea from a technical standpoint as it removes the necessity for bones (joints) for many different hairstyles and various character accessories. She goes over how she used painting of vertex colors to store and control different aspects of the animations, such as drag, timing, and follow through. She goes over how they used a sin or cosine to oscillate the hair as the player moves and hooks up the intensity based on the velocity of the character. 

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6 minutes ago, demostenes said:

She goes over how they used a sin or cosine to oscillate the hair as the player moves and hooks up the intensity based on the velocity of the character. 

Yes, such a thing I have in mind. We have started with a basic vertex shader. The modification works (not very performative atm). but we would need a clever method to react to the animations.

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