For my final project I wanted to create a short film. I was inspired by the movies we watched from SIGGRAPH and by Professor Lovaglio's talk to include varied camera angles and an actual story, as opposed to a technical demo. I also wanted to continue working with the soft bodies I developed in 471. At the end of 471 I had a working soft body simulation, but I wanted more control over the movement of the bodies to allow for
more complex animation. To do this I had to create various animation handles.
Main Features:
Realistic soft body physics with collision detection and animation handles
Music
A (weird) story
Varied camera angles
No still frames
Curved Movement
Squash and stretch
Pretty colors
Phong shading and per vertex shading
Specifics:
Soft Body Animation
The primary feature of this project is the soft body animation, which uses a physics engine that I based off of Maciej Matyka's research on soft body animation in 3D. (see reference below)
In order to simulate the soft bodies, a mesh is filled with a gas that keeps an internal pressure on the cloth-like body. These forces are modeled using springs. In addition to the
internal forces, gravity forces the ball downwards. By integration, we can continuously calculate the
sum of the forces acting upon the ball, and update the positions of the vertices accordingly. This method provides an impressive simulation of soft body animation.
To control the soft bodies, I used a variety of animation handles. These included manipulating the pressure inside the ball, the gravity affecting the ball (in 3 dimensions), the boundaries of the ball, and subjecting the ball to an impulse force.
Audio
I felt that this short could benefit greatly from a soundtrack, so I added audio using FMOD. I tried to sync the movie to the music as much as possible, and I am happy with the result.
Camera Control
One thing that I felt was lacking from my previous projects was camera placement and movement. So in this project I made the camera one of my top priorities. I tried to lay out scenes in a logical manner, beginning with establishing shots, and then capturing the action of the short as artistically as I could.
The Story
Another thing that I felt was sorely lacking from my other projects was any semblance of a story. My initial inspiration was that "dancing blobs would be cool", so I took that concept and ran with it. Originally the blobs fell together into the chasm between them, but I thought that was too sad so I altered the ending.
No Still frames
Lastly, after Mr. Light's talk, one thing that really resonated with me was that still frames can ruin a good scene. So I always kept something moving throughout the short, and I think this greatly improved the film.
