Terrain animation

Renso

Hello,

First of all sorry for that generic title but it's quite complex to explain my question in a few words.

I have some years of experience in 3D modelling and texturing, especially in Maya and Substance Painter, but very few in animation and VFX.

I need to recreate the physical behaviour of terrain worked by agricultural implements, by now I tried Bifrost, nParticle and Realflow but I didn't get an optimal result.

To get a better understanding of what I have to make here it is some real-world examples and a CGI video I found on youtube:

Real-world examples - CGI [There are just a couple of seconds, so watch it at x0.25][0:16, 0:28, 0:32, 0:36, 0:52]

I have no idea if stay with Maya or try other software, for example, Houdini. I sincerely don't have any idea on how to reach a level of simulation similar to the real behaviour of real terrain. Have I maybe need to use a DEM software?

Thank you all!

Eric Chadwick

Welcome to Polycount!

The farming sim looks like straightforward particle systems, plus a shader mask to change from unplowed to plowed.

Are you interested in real-time FX in a game engine? Or rendered FX for video/film? How close does the camera get, and is the earth FX the focus or is the equipment itself the focus? You can hide a wealth of errors (literally $$$ in effort) depending on where the camera is. 

Renso

Welcome to Polycount!

Thank you!

Are you interested in real-time FX in a game engine? Or rendered FX for video/film? How close does the camera get, and is the earth FX the focus or is the equipment itself the focus?

I'm not interested in real-time fx. The main purpose is to show how the equipment affects the soil, the camera should be quite close and the focus is on the earth fx. Something like that, that or that but with a greater physical behaviour and render quality.
I know that is something extremely complex, time-consuming and expensive, but I'm trying to evaluate all the alternatives to give a full overview of the possibilities to my client.

Renso

I found the VFX breakdown of the Farming Simulator teaser: https://youtu.be/oiOb2MohjIw?t=33

It shows quite well how they did the terrain [0:33]. I think that with Realflow and some tweaks in Maya I can get at a similar result. I still need to understand how to make a "smooth" transition from the non-worked soil to the particles.

Eric Chadwick

Aha! There are some additional links in the Youtube comments that explain things further. Houdini was also used.
https://www.realtimeuk.com/blog/houdini-special-request-farm-sim-top-tip/