Cutaway scientific equipment, scary project...

[bjph]

I am working on a project miles above my ability, if you have any pointers on resources, here is a description of the animation:

1) A large silver coil begins to collect a millimeter thick cover of frost
2) The frost gets "blown" off the coil in a puff of air
3) The frost fog now is whisked down the center of the coil
4) We zoom in on the frost fog as it enters a steel chamber beyond the coil
5) Zooming so close we can now see individual sparkles of ice crystals that make up the frosty fog
6) As the fog expands, we see the crystals grow apart from each other
7) Now the crystals are far apart enough so that only one or two will fall into glass vials, roughly the size of bic lighter
8) We zoom in on one of the vials and see two tiny ice crystals fall into the vial, which is 1/8th full of water
9) When the two ice crystals hit the water, inside of the glass vial, they start off a nucleation reaction causing the water to turn into a slush of crystalized water
10) The water now about three seconds later solidifies into ice
11) The top of the vial has a rubber cork with vents on the side of it
12) The ice begins to vaporize and drift out of the vials through the rubber cork vents
13) Where the water used to be, there is now a cake of whitish powder remaining'

end of aninimation

 

[Helmut]

Hi bjph

* Basically your project is a mix of fluid dynamics + molecular geometry + more fluid dynamics. Some advanced trickery may be required to model the phase transitions of H2O liquid - solid - vapour.
* A - very quick and superficial - analysis of the experiment seems to imply that the entire procedure can be modelled using C3D standard tools and possibly selected Java scripts.

* A simple storyboard based on your description:
1 Helical Coil
* Modelling the cover of frost, the detachment of ice from the coil and the formation of a frosty cloud along the helical axis is fairly trivial editing & keyframing of the primary helical constructor using a particle mesh.
2 Steel Chamber
* This is a simple zoom (physical camera movement or shifting the focal lenght) to show just a small cluster of individual crystals.
3 Glass Vials
* More zooming in, if required. I have no idea what needs to be shown to model the nucleation reaction and the phase transition (?) of the water in the vial.
4 Cork + Vents
* Again, I lack the scientific expertise to know what needs to be modelled for this phase.

* Much will depend on how detailed / scientifically correct the full video needs to be.

 

[bjph]

Helmut, I am so thankful for your help. Truly grateful to you.

Here is how I am seeing it thus far:

It does not have to be scientifically accurate although it is indeed for scientists.

I made the coil, looks similar to yours, but on its side roughly

I learned by reading your posts how to make reflective material work, I was thinking of this coil turning softly as an ice crystal fog I would overlay with a particle generator with an adobe movie making software... so some parts will be made in cheetah some with a movie editor ... I am concerned about the lighting that may be something I need to fuss with

Here is an updated description of the animation --- not sure how to make a cutaway from a real photo, then the zoom in...

1. Photo of machine
2. Animated cut-away, photo quality shows condenser coil of Freeze Booster
3. Zoom in to realistic photo quality ice crystal fog puffing in
4. Coil becomes lightly frosted by fog
5. Jet of air pulls the frost off and sucks the fog through the throat of the machine into the adjoining chamber where the vials are, stoppers in the up position
6. Fog dissipates, expanding as camera zooms in to see the near microscopic crystals that make up the fog

7) One or two of the crystals drop into one of the vials, thereby expressing the microscopic seeds
8) When the two ice crystal seeds hit the water, inside of the vial, they start off a nucleation reaction causing the water to turn into a slush of crystalized water
9) The water now about three seconds later solidifies into ice
10) The ice sublimates, the camera pans out between steps 7 to 10 expressing the uniform reaction across the vials
11) The cakes are formed
12) Camera zooms out of the Freeze Booster cutaway to see the whole system

 

[Helmut]

* Can you provide a photo of the specific machine / equipment used in this experiment? I guess the proper name of the experiment would also help; there should be some refs in the web. I currently do not know what this gadget looks like and some minimal research may be constructive. Clearly, the components of your C3D model should look like the stuff in the real apparatus.

* Re helical cut aways:
1 the obvious Boolean
2 a stack of 270° 3/4 helices (as used in the sample below)
* Start with a 360° single loop helix (the rise needs to be the metrics of the diameter and add an array modifier. Keyframe the start / stop angles to open a gap in the helix so you can show the icy cloud accumulating along the axis of the helix after having been “blown off” the condensing coils.
* I have experimented a bit with Isosurfaces / Metaballs to model the crystalline structures. Animating the geometry of the frosty crystals is still performed on the basis of an invisible dummy-helix. I suspect that particle emitters may be more difficult to control.

* C3D V7 does not support volumetrics / SSS. I suspect our Good Doctor is working on this, but currently we have to cleverly fake some of this stuff.

* Plain condenser coil

* CC plus gap

* CC plus crystal fog

 

[bjph]

Thank you Helmut

Here is link to the actual product page, it is called a "Freeze Booster" https://www.millrocktech.com/freezebooster-controlled-nucleation-technology/

Here are movies of the actual coil, 1) clean and dry 2) as the fog is introduced and 3) when the coil is loaded with frost

The throat of the freeze booster is attached to a chamber of a pharmaceutical freeze dryer under vacuum. When a valve is released the pressure forces the ice crystals off of the condenser, some frost is left on the condenser but most enters into the chamber.

As it enters the chamber it quickly dissipates and vanishes, but a minuscule number of ice crystals are drawn into the vials, on a tray.

The fog sort looks like steam that you would see puffing from a clothes iron:

http://www.whitepaperdirect.com/photos_for_helmut.html

 

[Helmut]

* Thank you for the links.
* Modelling the physical / tangible components of the apparatus is trivial. All you need is:
1 a helix for the condenser coil
2 a glass vial for nucleation

* Problematic is the modelling of the crystal fog. Options are:
1 Isoballs: definitely useless, this looks like an old fridge which has not be defrosted for years
2 Particle Mesh: no problems
3 Particle Emitter: no problems
4 Material Node Fiddles: Experiments required; state + gradient nodes may be useful for the initial frosting phase

* The tail end, ice crystals dropping into a vial / initiating nucleation is, again, trivial; at leat, on a macroscopic level.

I get stuck at trying to show the crystal fog as a fluffy amorphous shape shifting cloud being sucked out of the core of the coil´s helix. Of course, the request for photo-realistic renders complicates matters. As mentioned, C3D currently does not currently support volumetrics. You may have to consider post-processing trickery.

 

[Helmut]

* Crystal Puff:
* I have experimented with a few cloud-based materials. Of course, you will need some object to represent the cloud and animate that to show crystals detaching from the helix, the puff being blown out of the core of the condensation coils and floating down to spawn the nucleation reaction in the vials. I have used a simple capsule with a taper added to create a shape similar to a mushroom.
* I added a point light in the centre of the puff, but you will discover in your experiments what produces a realistic render and which effects you find useful.

 

[Helmut]

* Nucleation:
* A particle mesh of ice crystals is linked to the water in the vials
* Animate from 0 (all water) to n (mostly crystals)

* Sublimation:
* Add a particle emitter
* Animate the speed so the vapour rises vertically
* Optionally, add an effector for turbulence

* You probably can combine particle mesh and emitter; set the speed to nil for the nucleation and then boost to 1 (or whatever) for sublimation. Animate the material to show that you start with solids and end up with gas.
* Add a minimal layer of slush which remains in the vials.
* At the end, fade out the particle mesh and fade in a cloud of vapour atop the vials.

 

[Swizl]

Nice problem solving Helmut!

One other method that might help as a work around is to use a material paired with a displacement modifier. At least for the frost portion of the animation.

 

[Helmut]

* Note that the above "story board" can be used for a fly-through effected by a spline tracked camera. Using some precise editing you can create a single-take-video:
* starting outside the apparatus (frontal image),
* zooming along the axis of the helix (show frosting of coils),
* showing frosty puff being sucked out of the core of the helix and
* tilting to the vials (to record nucleation and sublimation).
* Just switch the focal length wherever close-ups (eg single crystals) are required.
* If using a fly-through you will not need a 3/4 helix, as you can see the inside of the condensation coil, anyway.
* In my experiments I have used exclusively parametric objects out of C3D´s toolbox. There are no destructive "make editable" meshes. YMMV.

* Start

* Sublimation

* Slush remaining

 

[bjph]

Amazing I am back at it, I am not proficient enough in Cheetah to do what you are doing... working on it now! Thank you so much!

 

[Helmut]

* Don´t worry and take your time. Skill comes with experience and lots of experiments. If need be, just post questions on this forum.

* As I guessed initially, manipulating the crystal cloud(s) to achieve realistic fluid dynamics / volumetrics without artefacts is the major challenge in this project. I used preexisting cloudy materials (presumably copied from the pig thread long ago). Perturbations in the cloud were effected by adding an animated crumple modifier.
* There may be superior solutions.

* Bear in mind that render times will be significant. On my equipment (iMac 27 2014, 3.5GHz Quad-Core i5, 24GB 1 600MHz DDR3) a render of 30 frames = 1 second @ 800x800 takes about 3:00h.

* It may be useful to deploy post processing trickery (chroma key compositing) by recording separate videos for background and foreground (+ green / blue screen).

 

[Jeanny]

@ Helmut
Talk about briiiant! I need sunglasses to read your posts!

Your intellect is constantly blazingly scintillating.

scintillate: * Physics fluoresce momentarily when struck by a charged particle or photon: a zinc sulphide screen scintillated when it was struck by an alpha particle.

Can’t thank you enough for your generous helpful and inspiring contributions to this forum.

Ditto to Frank Beckmann and Zoohead. They walk along side you in their own areas of expertice.

My Best
Jeanny