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The Masked Deflater
LOL, OMG you're right!
70. Making Caves. I was a big caver as a youth and still enjoy going in them today, so I’m always on the lookout for a way to model caves in 3D. A year and a half ago I posted a tutorial on making a cave with push modifiers, but a better solution is to use dForce.
a. Create a single sphere of 2 foot diameter and 32-64 segments and sides.
b. From the main menu select Edit/Duplicate/Duplicate Node Hierarchies. Duplicate the sphere 7 times for a total of 8. Do not make instances as dForce ignores them.
c. Z-translate the 8th sphere a short distance.
d. Open the Align pane Window/Panes (Tabs)/Align. Select all 8 spheres in the Scene pane. In the Align pane, for Z-axis choose Distribute : Centers and click on Apply.
e. With the 8 spheres still selected, choose Create/New Group from the main menu and give the group the name Upper Spheres.
f. Now adjust the scale and position of the 8 spheres. Move some to the right or left, others up and down. Scale some bigger and some smaller, both overall and on different axes. Make sure they overlap otherwise your cave may come to a close.
g. Select the group and choose Edit/Duplicate/Duplicate Node Hierarchies. Use the name Lower Spheres for the new group. This group will serve to support the dForce mesh so it doesn’t hang down too far.
Optional: Adjust the scale and positioning of the lower spheres so the floor is different than the ceiling.
h. Create a Z-positive cylinder of length 8 feet, diameter 2 feet, 100 segments and 64 sides.
i. Adjust the overall, X, Y, and Z scale and rotation of the cylinder so the upper spheres are mostly or fully inside.
j. Use the Geometry Editor to select all the faces on each end of the cylinder. Right click in the viewport and choose Geometry Visibility/Hide Selected Polygon(s). Right click in the viewport and choose Geometry Editing/Delete Hidden Polygon(s).
k. Add a dForce dynamic modifier to the cylinder.
l. Set up an animation timeline. At frame 0 have the group Lower Spheres well below the cylinder. At frame 10, raise the group so it sits just below the group Upper Spheres (it’s OK if there is some penetration of the two).
m. Run the simulation.
n. Hide the two sphere groups. Now you have a dForce cave! It’s OK if you have some spiky spots as they can serve as cave formations (if you don’t want them, adjust the height of the Lower Spheres group at frame 10).
o. Position a camera within the cave and add some lights.
p. I rendered using 3Delight as it’s easier to light interior spaces. You can also use Iray if you take steps to add enough light for rendering.
q. Add a rock texture, preferably one with some degree of bump and/or displacement.
r. You can also use the push modifier tutorial I mentioned at the start to create even more variation.
s. Another cave with a different look.
t. If you are going to include a figure in the cave, you’ll want to either scale the cave after creation or the figure to fit, as I only used 2-foot diameter spheres. You can create much larger spheres to start but I find it less convenient to navigate the viewport with the larger spheres.
Very clever idea, and it got me thinking this could also work as anatomy, with the right textures. For your 'micornauts', like in the old movie 'Fantastic Voyage'.
That inspired me to do this with a dForce artery and dForce blood cells
Cool
Bingo! Exactly the effect I was imagining.
Woa! Blast from the past! Fantastic Voyage, anyone?
I heard they're doing a remake.
71. Fantastic Voyage: Making Artery and Blood Cells. After I posted section 70, @dragonfly_2004 mentioned the movie “Fantastic Voyage”. I took up the idea and made a scene with a miniature human diver amid blood cells in an artery. It's similar to the cave but with less sag between spheres. Plus I use dForce to create a red blood cell and then use UltraScatterPro to make multiple copies.
a. Follow steps a to f of section 70.
b. For step f, you want larger more overlapped spheres to smooth the walls. At frame 10, I set overall scale of the spheres to 150 and Y-scale to 200.
At frame 0 I set overall scale to 55 and kept Y-scale at 200. These smaller spheres will grow and push out on the cylinder’s walls
c. Create a cylinder as in steps h to k of section 70. Adjust cylinder size and position as shown below.
d. We are not using lower spheres this time. Instead, set dForce Simulation pane Gravity and Air Resistance to 0. The scaling between frame 0 and 10 will push out on the cylinder. Here is what it looks like after simulation:
e. Select the cylinder in the Scene pane and in the Parameter pane set Freeze Simulation to On.
f. We next need to make a blood cell. Create a large sphere and two small spheres. Add a dForce modifier to one of the small spheres and flatten that same sphere along the X-axis. Position them as shown below (the sphere with the modifier is on the left). Set the Stretch and Bend Stiffness to 0.1 (this is done to manage the triangular polygons on either end of the sphere) and set Density to 2 (to make for a stiffer surface).
g. We are going to animate the small sphere on the right. Select it and add a keyframe at frame 0.
h. We want the movement to be slow to avoid momentum changes, so at frame 28 set the right sphere embedded into the left sphere as shown in the image.
i. Set Gravity and Air Resistance to 0. All the deformation will come from pressing one sphere into the other. Here's what it looks like after simulation:
Tip: It can be hard to see what’s going on with the sphere blocking the view. Create an instance of the left sphere and choose Copy Selected Item. Then you can see what's happening during the collision.
Before simulation (the instance is at the far left): During Simulation:
j. We want a bunch of blood cells, so I used UltraScatterPro to create instances as it has a volume fill option. I created a new cylinder smaller than the artery to be used as the target, as using the artery cylinder itself can lead to items embedded in the wall. Position the new cylinder so it is inside the artery (see orange highlight in images).
k. This is the result after scattering 70 blood cells.
l. The final render:
Hey Rich, I have a question about a topic that was brough up in another thread in Commons: 'dForce skin pressure settings'.
I was wondering...is that similar to how you'd get someone to look when they are fighting/boxing, etc., when they get kicked in the face or stomach? You know how flesh reacts in real life with blows like that, so can that be done with bare knuckles to the face or abdomen and you'd see where the knuckles make inpressions, or a boot/shoe to an area face/abdomen (or wherever). The also how the face contorts by being pushed to the side opposite of the punch/kick. Or how a boot to the belly or wherever would do the same thing. You get kicked, then the flesh gets push inward and then over slightly if that makes sense.
Hope that's easy enough to understand! Thanks.
I was reading through this interesting topic and did not see this specific area of investigation, perhaps I missed it though: I hoped to place a wind node behind a large number of feathers and have them "blown" through a specific part of a scene by a wind node. The only issue is that to obtain the large amount of feathers, I originally created hundreds of instances from the original prop by using UltraScatter around a sphere primitive (then deleted the primitive), but in reading elsewhere it seems that since instances have no geometry of their own, they cannot become part of a simulation.
Creating hundreds of prop copies manually will take some time and eat more memory in the scene, unfortunately - is there a more efficient way to create this type of scene effect, perhaps? It just seemed that throwing wind on them would lead to an a nice, random distribution.
EDIT: I may have found a decent solution - mCasual's Fill a Cube With Things script can randomly toss around instances in a defined space and create a similar effect, just not quite so directional https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/292921/script-to-randomly-place-in-a-cubic-volume-objects-in-a-selected-group . I would still like to send those instances into a direction from a wind node or equivalent, though.
RGcincy
These are awesome. Thanks!
Any chance the PDF version will get updated for parts 60-72?
thanks for the link. Very interesting.
Yes, I will be updating the pdf. I was hoping to get up to 75 so I can issue it once (there's a size limit on Daz forum that means I can cover about 25 sections at a time). That shouldn't be much longer.
Sorry for the slow response Sapat, I was traveling and away from my main computer. What I see with dForce is that it distorts the surface mesh but does not preserve the volume of the mesh. In other words, if you push into the stomach it will distend the skin but you will not see a bulge where the underlying muscle and fat would be displaced up and out. You can mimic that yourself by pushing from the inside with a torus or by using a push modifier post-simulation, but then there's no automated physics involved. When I get the chance, I plan to post a section on this topic.
Hey, no problem. I know you have responsibilities. That would be great to see the process. Wanted to do a boxing theme, and an MMA theme with more realistic reaction to direct blows. Just whenever, no rush. Thanks so much.
Unfortunately dForce ignores instances. There is a product in the store that does dForce leaves (I don't have it) - you may be able to replace the leaf image with a feather image. There's also an Instances to Objects product in the store - you lose the benefit of memory preservation but if your feather is a transmap on a plane you may not use that much memory. If the feather is a detailed prop, you could do some renders of it and create your own map to put on 1-polygon planes.
mCasuals scripts are great, aren't they? Thanks for sharing the link. You may also find that UltraScatterPro can work as it has a volume scatter mode (that the original Ultrascatter does not) and I think you can constrain rotation.
Thanks!
Yes, I can see the logic behind updating in sections of 25.
dForce hair tutorials are always welcome, if you need more topic ideas, lol.
I'm getting an error message while trying to use dForce. It fails and refers me to the log. Here are the warnings from the log:
2019-04-11 17:00:12.098 WARNING: ..\..\..\src\dzopenclkernelfactory.cpp(30): Open CL notify: CL_MEM_OBJECT_ALLOCATION_FAILURE error executing CL_COMMAND_NDRANGE_KERNEL on GeForce GTX 1080 Ti (Device 0).
2019-04-11 17:00:12.099 WARNING: ..\..\..\src\dzdynamicsengine.cpp(2294): ERROR: Memory Object Allocation Failure (-4)
2019-04-11 17:00:12.449 Total Simulation Time: 2 minutes 7.96 seconds
2019-04-11 17:11:04.231 WARNING: cloud\dzcloudtasknotifier.cpp(178): recv failed errno=10054
Does it happen again after rebooting the computer? I have had my GPU disappear from the dForce option list until I reboot.
Can you run dForce using CPU (go to the Advanced tab at top of Simulation Settings pane).
What version of Daz are you using?
I'm using 4.10.0.123.
When I go to the Advanced tab, my only option is OpenCL Device: NVIDIA CUDA GeForce GTX 980 ti.
After more experimentation (and a couple of reboots), it appears that my problem is with a specific dForce dress. Other dForce clothing items work fine, but this one dress has been giving me fits. I'm going to open a ticket.
Thanks RGcincy for your assistance.
72. Skin Indentation. SnowSultan asked on the Daz forum how to simulate the effect of pressure from a hand or other object pressing on human skin. You can create such an effect using dForce although there are certain limitations as I’ll mention below.
a. Load a figure and apply a dynamic modifier and a dForce weight node to it.
b. Create a sphere and position it near the stomach. Have it slightly away from the skin’s surface at frame 0. At frame 10, have it half-way embedded into the skin.
c. Add an influence weight map then right click in the viewport and select all, then right click again and select Weight Editing/Fill Selected and set the value to 0. This will remove all the red color. Next use the paint brush tool and paint a small area of red where the sphere collides with the skin.
d. Set Gravity and Air Resistance to 0. This allows the changes to be driven by the movement of the sphere only.
e. Run the simulation. You will see the skin indented by the movement of the sphere. With this large sphere halfway embedded, the depression is quite deep.
f. Repeat steps b - e with a smaller sphere. You can use the same weight map or repaint it to make the red area smaller. You will see a smaller indentation.
g. Create two cones and position them in the same area as the sphere had been located. Set them away from the skin at frame 0 and into the skin at frame 10. Repaint the weight map to have two areas of red. This will let you create two points of indentation.
h. Remove the spheres and cones and animate the left arm so the hand moves into the stomach at frame 30. You will see the skin indent.
i. The hand shows one of the problems modeling skin indentation with dForce. Because the polygons in the base mesh of the figure are fairly large, you cannot make the map fine enough to show each finger’s indentation.
j. If you don’t mind some extra work, you can hide everything but the figure, have it set to High Resolution, and export it as an obj file. Reimport the file and it will now have the finer mesh. You can’t animate the arm but you can use the original’s figure arm to do the pressing. Hide the unneeded body parts of the original mesh so it doesn’t interfere. The biggest watch out with this approach is you have to have finalized the figure’s pose before exporting.
k. Repaint the weight map with red around the finger tips and some blue in between.
l. Run the simulation. A render with the finer resolution mesh. Note the depressions by each finger now.
m. The other main problem trying to simulating skin indentation is that dForce distorts the surface skin but does not preserve volume. You push in and the skin depresses but the fat and muscles do not bulge out elsewhere. You can try and mimic this yourself by pushing from the inside with some form of primitive or by using a push modifier post-simulation, but then you’ve left the realm of physics and entered that of artistry.
This is great Rich. I had asked about this a few threads back on this page, and here it is! I imagine it would similar on the face if someone got kicked by a foot in kick boxing, or just taking punch to the face. How would one then distort the face so it reacts to the impact by being hit? Is that similar to above, or another thing altogether?
Thx, Suze
I'm not sure of how to do it - but this is a sequence from Mythbusters on quick sobering techniques where Jamie slaps Adam on the cheek, both real-time and slow motion, to use as an example.
First off, that was about the most hilarious thing I've seen for a long time! Secondly that's pretty much what I was talking about. How when ppl get hit or kicked (face, belly, wherever) there always a displacement of the body part (like his mouth, chin, side of face) in this case I'm looking for a 'stop motion' displacement of the flesh that would work for a face (or belly, or other areas). I'm imagining that the facial expression and the body part pose position would have to be done before the displacing blow so you'd know where to start making the area of impact, but have no clue. Hope that makes sense, and it's something that I'm capable of recreating if someone can lead me (us) in the right direction.
This is a snip from a pack I own that shows displacement with body blows, but this was probably done with smooshing things around. The face here is just for example.
My first try at face deformation
Frame 7
Frame 10
It will be a while before I can write up more formally but basically:
There was one odd behavior while doing this - the jaws began to deform before the fist was close. Not sure what was driving that. After the sim, the skin was away from the fist so for the renders I moved the hand in closer.
Weight Map:
Sphere Location Frame 10:
Jack, this is amazing! Even showing this much as basic, looks like a very good start. I'm excited.