Halloween stuff

[MonkeyT]

I'm tinkering with making an animation to project onto a darkened window scrim for Halloween. This will probably mean a lot of subtle lighting and emissive values on a pitch black background.

Right now, I'm collecting textures (both subtle and loud). It's hard to make Cheetah textures appear soft at the edges. I suspect I could make good use of the "eye" vector from the State Node, but haven't worked with it yet. Here are a couple of early experiments. The pseudo flame is actually an animated texture, with the pattern changing as its slowly drifts upward. All of the textures will probably be applied to soft body objects that wave or dangle, once I decide what I'm going to animate.

Any other ideas out there?

 

[Hasdrubal]

It's hard to make Cheetah textures appear soft at the edges.

That's usually done in post (some apps like Lightwave, Modo, Keyshot and Blender have that built-in, but it's still a post-processing effect).

 

[MonkeyT]

Yeah, yeah, I know. But I still have this weird theory drifting around in my head about using the State's Eye vector to modify the transparency mapping...

There's only so much sleep you can trade for free time.

 

[MonkeyT]

It's kind of a trick. The closer the camera is to viewing a polygon from edge-on, the more transparent that polygon becomes. When it faces you directly, it is completely solid. So, rounded shapes get nice soft edges, but large flat planes - such as the sides of cubes - lose that softness as huge areas become transparent as they turn away, but the polygons next to them remain very solid. Toruses get very, very weird,

However, I expect this tactic to be very effective on a soft body, such as a blowing shroud around a lightweight form.

 

[MonkeyT]

Soft edges and bottom weighted emissiveness applied to the animated flame's transparency. No soft body effects, yet.

 

[BTT1024]

Soft edges and bottom weighted emissiveness applied to the animated flame's transparency. No soft body effects, yet.

View attachment 36522

MonkeyT,
I clicked on your youTube channel from the oblong/Oval Eyeballs video example you posted on the other thread - I looked at some of your other videos and spotted the Ghost Flame video... I came back to the forum to find this thread... Your Ghost Flame is very well done, looks amazing, I like it...

On my to-do list, is to learn more about the Material/texture node editor to be able to create things like you and others on the forum have created using the node editor... I downloaded your screenshot of how you setup the Nodes for the Ghost Flame, so that some day, I can spend some time re-creating it and trying to learn how you did it. I can see that a lot of work and knowledge went into what you did.

I also subscribed to your youTube channel, so now you have a new subscriber, only 999,999 more subscribers to go and then you get one of those youTube plaques for a million subscribers .

Brian T.

 

[MonkeyT]

MonkeyT,
I clicked on your youTube channel from the oblong/Oval Eyeballs video example you posted on the other thread - I looked at some of your other videos and spotted the Ghost Flame video... I came back to the forum to find this thread... Your Ghost Flame is very well done, looks amazing, I like it...

On my to-do list, is to learn more about the Material/texture node editor to be able to create things like you and others on the forum have created using the node editor... I downloaded your screenshot of how you setup the Nodes for the Ghost Flame, so that some day, I can spend some time re-creating it and trying to learn how you did it. I can see that a lot of work and knowledge went into what you did.

I also subscribed to your youTube channel, so now you have a new subscriber, only 999,999 more subscribers to go and then you get one of those youTube plaques for a million subscribers .

Brian T.

Thanks! Finally, some getting traction!

 

[MonkeyT]

A while ago, I posted a number of short examples demonstrating material basics. Basically, don't be afraid of the math - that's how each step works.

 

[BTT1024]

A while ago, I posted a number of short examples demonstrating material basics. Basically, don't be afraid of the math - that's how each step works.

MonkeyT,
Thank you for the forum link for material basics, I've bookmarked it and will start to look at exploring the node editor on the side while I continue work on my Bug animation project.

Brian T.