HMP Contest - Jim Crafton

Jim Crafton

Here's my entry, more to come soon.

Anais

Welcome and good luck, Jim!

Jim Crafton

Some initial work getting the a base mesh ready. First built an older base mesh built in Houdini and subdivided and sculpted in ZBrush:

Jim Crafton

Brought into Modo to change the feet, adjust some of the topology. Topology adjusted for what I hope will be better animation deformation, and I changed the feet so that she's wearing a nice shoe, something with a bit of a heel.

Jim Crafton

Some updates, got the basic body done in ZBrush, and the face finished to something that looks halfway human. First pass at some coloring in the face to see how she looks. Working on dress concepts to see what looks nice. Trying to use the dance sequence and trying different sim tests to see how things looks.

Jim Crafton

Hair test, default material settings, just trying to verify that the custom hair guides will work properly.

Jim Crafton

Here's a simple video showing some potential dress designs and how they look when run through the cloth simulation. Still not 100% sure how I want to do this, but I'm leaning towards the last one.


http://vimeo.com/59124596

Mimiws

awesome cloth and hair test! is the hair rendered from houdini? Jim do you have any basic tutorial/links/tips how to import animation and how to apply cloth sim? i tried to import my animation using collada but when i play it wont work im newbie at houdini. Thanks in advance cheers and goodluck

Jim Crafton

Yes, the hair is all Houdini rendered with the default hair material in mantra. What I'm doing different is creating my own custom guides from NURBs curves/surface and then bringing that into the hair asset's guide node.

I've never tried collada, so I'm not sure about that. But...since we're using Mixamo stuff, that imports just fine, and gives you a basic rig that you can expand upon in Houdini if you want. You should be able to import the FBX, and from there it's just a matter of creating your cloth geometry, then using the Cloth shelf tool to turn it into a Cloth Object (along with creating the basic DOP simulation network for you). There's a masterclass on the Sidefx site that goes into the Cloth stuff. If you want something in more detail let me know and I can block out the steps I used here.

Robert.Magee

You can follow the steps here to go from Mixamo to Houdini - FBX is the preferred method:

http://www.mixamo.com/c/help/workflow_houdini

Houdini Apprentice imports fbx but doesn't export it.

Dryulya

sculpt, fabric, cloth is very good.

Mimiws

Thank you Jim and Robert. ill try to test my character asap in houdini though i still need to sculpt other garments. I'll just ask question if i get into trouble. It would be a great help if you block out some simple steps for first time users also with hairs and mantra render. I've heard houdini doesn't support tangent normal map? Any idea what should we use/do as early as now. im using zbrush for hi res. thanks!

Jim Crafton

You might want to check this out for tangent normal maps
http://www.sidefx.com/exchange/info.php?fileid=561&versionid=561

Might be useful.

Dryulya

Hey. Moved into your branch for your convenience. Can help solve just such a problem. When stitching two objects with an equal number of points, but not equal to the area of ​​the objects are connected objects is not ideal (see attached file). With a large number of polygons, this imperfection hardly noticeable, but the small amount it hurts the eyes.
The question whether it is possible to turn these two entities into a single objec with a single topology or make imperfect connections are not as noticeable

Dryulya

I want to say thank you for such a complete answer in the thread Edrice. I will take advantage of this.

Jim Crafton

Dryulya, no I don't know what's going on. I'm still learning cloth myself Might want to post that on the sidefx site or on odforum.

Dryulya

There, I already asked. Harmless as advised here. Tomorrow I will try.

Jim Crafton

Some variations on tattoos. The first is the more traditional curly designs, the second is a more Tron like motif. The electronic design lloks cool, but maybe not for a salsa dancer...

Jim Crafton

some shoe ideas, variations on the original with various tweaks

Jim Crafton

Worked out some weighting issues and a workflow for myself. All I can say is Thank God for Modo 601! It might be faster to do this in Maya or Max but I don't have enough experience with those to tackle them at this point.

The attachments show the fixed rig (in green) and the weird deformations from the raw mixamo rig. In general I found the Mixamo produce rig really nice, but I think the heels on the shoes were giving it problems. Much more stable now.

Dryulya

You go to the finish line. Good luck.

Jim Crafton

Some more updates, got the hires animation rig worked out so that I can drive it from either the direct channel animation from an imported lo res rig, or, using CHOPs, I can load up a bclip and drive the bones from the animation saved to disk. This also lets me potentially modify the animation using CHOPs, things like shifting it, noise, etc.

For some perverse reason I thought it would be fun to try and learn how to add shape blends to the rig to help out on some problem areas, so that took a little longer than I expected to get it all sorted out. Didn't add as many as it probably needs, but hopefully what I added helps a bit.

Also added the hair back into the rig.
here's a link of a test render of the animated hair
https://vimeo.com/60534898

another link of the full adjusted hi res mesh animated
https://vimeo.com/60534896

Another video with the hires mesh and cloth sim and hair (using wire solver) results
https://vimeo.com/60555487


The dress has sequins on it that are modeled and then instanced on to the cloth geo.

Some test renders attached showing the displacement and initial texture map.

Not at all sure about the colors on the dress, that needs more work fro sure...

Any C&C would be most appreciated.

Guedin

I'm impressed by your cloth and hair simulation Dryula ! I really like what I'm looking here
Have you got by any chance, some links to turorials for making hair ? I'm currently trying to do a huge pompadour to my character but i got a really diffucult time to brush the hair the way I want.

Jim Crafton

@Guedin, thanks! (by the way it's Jim, not Dryula:) )

Not really, just a lot of experimenting in the past. I wish there was more a more thorough set of documentation on using the fur SOP specifically for long hair. What I've been doing is using a series of NURBs curves that are then surfaced to create a singel NURBs surface. With this, I can use the creep sop to "creep" or project a line along the surface. This becomes a guide for the hair. Use the Copy sop to repeat this a bunch of times and you end up with a set of lines that follow the surface that you can use as guides. You can then take that into the guides node in the Fur SOP and use it to drive the fur guides.

Any suggestions for the rest of the model? I have the sneaky suspicion that it's entirely too boring from a costume standpoint

Guedin

I'm really sorry for the mix up Jim !

Thanks so much for your answer ... it's gonna be really useful indeed !
About some costume ideas, I would say maybe it's missing some larger piece of cloth. You got some of them around the body but it's tight, and while it makes the character more sexy, it makes less wrinkles pattern that are always great to see in action . I was maybe tinking to add large sleeves from the biceps to the hand for exemple ? Or just simply a skirt beneath the stripes of cloth ?

Good luck and thank again for your time

Jim Crafton

Thanks for the feedback. I completely redid the dress last night and started another sim run this morning, so we'll see how it works. I *really* hope someone at sidefx sees this and puts some more effort into making the cloth sim run a little faster I'm currently running at probably a 2 minute per frame.

Guedin

I'm with you with this man !

Jim Crafton

How fast are you running the sims for your character? If it matters I'm running a Mac Pro (2008) 8 core @ 3.0Ghz 12Gb RAM, Nvidia Quadro 4000.

harmless

I think 2 minutes a frame is speedy. I think you are doing a lot of collisions per frame, which will account for your simulation time. The sims for my character took 7 frames at best at 30 at worst and I am pleased with the quality! I suggest turning off collisions and lowering the resolution to get the feel of the sim before running higher density tests. Good luck to you!

Guedin

I got pretty much the same thing than you ... 2 min by frame too

Jim Crafton

More updates. Redid the dress and started a sim, and then another and another...

Hopefully this is a little more interesting. No materials yet, just a quick render to see how it looked...

Guedin

Something I did to try to speed up the thing for testing : if you look at the cloth solver node you should be able to put the substep tolerance to 1. It should speed up a little bit the simulation ( according to the doc ). Just don't forget to put it back at least to its default value before rendering the final simulation

Jim Crafton

So this is the result of over 35 hours of sim time. I tried setting the upper part of the dress to have softer/weaker bend values (using attribute and groups SOPs), hoping to get something like silk. Unfortunately this didn't work out at all, what I got didn't look that good, lots of intersection with the body (see the elbows), and took around 7-8 minutes per frame to sim.

http://vimeo.com/61064377

So I gave up on that approach and resimmed it using the defaults, and that worked much better in terms of performance, and intersection, but not really the cloth look I was hoping for. Oh well, have to move on.

Jim Crafton

A little more progress, more work on materials, and textures.

https://vimeo.com/61496596

Jim Crafton

Got a little more work done on lighting and shoes, and some modifications to the SSS settings in the body mat. Also integrated the tattoo mask into the shader.

ChewyPixels

The tattoo is a little hard to read being as light-colored as it is. I suggest using a darker "ink".

Keep it up man!

-Chewy

Jim Crafton

Thanks! I was trying to go for a glowing sort of effect. When I made it brighter it seemed too overpowering. The goal is to make it glow a bit more in post .

ChewyPixels

Ah, that would be a nice effect! Be sure to make it pop.

-Chewy

Jim Crafton

Any other suggestions, things I could improve on ? Thanks!

Guedin

Nice update Jim.
In my opinion, your pictures are too dark right now. You chose vibrant colors for the clothes but unfortunately, it doesn't appear as vibrant as it should be.
I may suggest you to go for a 3 point light rigg for exemple, with a key light coming from the behind and side of your camera, a strong rim light in the back of your character to outline the her, and a fill light to smooth some harsh shadows
you can find some lighting exemple here : http://www.marmoset.co/toolbag/learn/character-lighting

nacertag

nice progress
and i agree with Guedlin your render are too dark a strong rim light will pop your model out and once you put the hair back on your model she will become alive
good luck

ChewyPixels

Hi Jim. Another suggestion would be to try toning down the specular on her dress. Right now her dress looks a bit plastic-like/rubbery if you know what I mean.

Good luck!

-Chewy

Jim Crafton

Thanks, I redid the lights last night, definitely looks better, trying to get the hair done in time, I'd forgotten how big of a render hit that is.

Dryulya

She is a beauty. And cool idea with the glowing floor.

Jim Crafton

Some experiments with changing the lighting around. Ultimately I went with something a little different and decided to try and add some volumetric lighting to the shot. The final attachment is a shot from the currently rendering scene. Hopefully I can get them all rendered in time, currently taking about 8 minutes a frame. I'm not sure why it's taking so long, but at least it's on it's way.

Dryulya

Looks impressive. And I see that there are no problems with the SSS and hair.
8 minutes is not so much because the three days ahead.

Jim Crafton

Well I was hoping to have 738 frames in the animation But I think I may need to do some trimming

ChewyPixels

738 frames is definitely ambitious. I'd be lucky if I can get my 260 frames rendered on time.

Good luck!

-Chewy

Jim Crafton

Yeah, I'm not going to make it. At 5 min per frame I could sneek in, but ~10, it's not going to happen , I'll render as much as I can, and leave it at that. I really wish I understood why the render times have doubled from my initial tests last night.

Dryulya

I think that the number of frames you take the record.

Vivi_ZA

Jim Crafton wrote: »

Yeah, I'm not going to make it. At 5 min per frame I could sneek in, but ~10, it's not going to happen , I'll render as much as I can, and leave it at that. I really wish I understood why the render times have doubled from my initial tests last night.

what are your settings? if you want i can have a look and maybe help you get time down if there are some "unnecessary" options ticked