The Violinist: Fish!!

Explored options of the fish swimming around using Vellum with VEX and Crowds with KineFX

CURRENT PROJECTSSENIOR THESIS: "THE VIOLINIST"

1/13/20242 min read

Collaboration Partner:

Emma Schaberg: https://www.emmaschaberg.website

Current Visualization (Previs):

FX TD:

Kyle Lin: https://kylelinvfx.com

02/15/24
Crowds
02/15/24
KineFX

After the fish model was prepped, I was trying to find a way to animate the fish without using vellum. The vellum system worked, but was limited with the many different parts of the fish. The second issue with using the swarm system with vex was that technique gave limited control and it caused some of the geometry to glitch. Some fish were even swimming sideways, and although it can be charming, it was not what I was going for.

I have not rigged or animated in Houdini so this was an exciting start.

Swarm Technique

Using the tutorial of the fish swarm found below, I tested the technique to see if it was what we were looking for. I thought the set up would be easier to control, but in fact it was harder to manipulate for our needs. While this gives a natural looking clumps that avoid each other based on where the other points are, we were looking for more streamline fish.

Here is a prelim render with this swarm technique. There is a lot of glitching and the fish are swimming sideways, not a good look so back to the drawing board:

Vellum Fish Testing

This week I focused on R&D testing on the fish model to establish what techniques I would use to make the fish bend as if it is swimming.

Listed below are the resources I crossed referenced:

The technique that I explored first uses a line to create the initial simulation then point deforms the render mesh to the line.

Showcasing the initial line, simmed line, and deformed render mesh:

Result of deformed mesh:

Things to keep in mind:

  • This technique is best for individual fish

  • Sim multiple parts of the body separately or with different constraints (EX: Body vs fins )

Swarm resource for smaller fish:

Resource for particles morphing into the fish:

01/15/24
FX References

What's Next?

  • Fx Tests

    • Particle sim to test Houdini-Unreal Pipeline

    • Vellum tests on prelim models