Galaxy Buck
Rig and Procedural Tentacle System
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On this "Galaxy Buck: mission to sector 9" episode I was assigned to model, rig, and creating a procedural animation for the blinking tentacles. I'm using spring-like tail set up that comes with Softimage rig option. The undulating movement is the result of assigning sine wave expression on root joints so that they are continuously rotating back and forth. The blinking tentacle system, made with ICE, is an instance of a single cube ( plates) that are distributed evenly on curve and programmed to continuously flip and change color based on current frame input.
Tentacle Setup
The purpose of tentacle system is to attach the tentacle plates on the jellyfish and consecutively flip or rotate each plate to create a flowing motion. Curves are extracted from the jellyfish body and used as the base to attach the plates. It is important to keep the curves history intact so that they move with the body. Few things that might need to be done to ensure proper scattering:
- Rebuild curves so that the knots are evenly spaced.
- Reparameterize curves ensure that the U value is from 0 to 1
- Rebuild curves so that the knots are evenly spaced.
- Reparameterize curves ensure that the U value is from 0 to 1
Plates Distribution
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To distribute plates on the curve we need to divide its U length ( 1) with the desired amount of plates. Lets say 25 plates. We then build an array of 25 points along the U length and instance the plates there.
Flip itNow that we have the plates in order and has ID, we can pick their ID and assign attributes. In this case, the chosen plate is assigned value 0 for z rotation and the rest of the plates are assigned 45 degrees. I use current frame value as the counter, to decide which plate to flip. so frame 0 will flip plate ID 0, frame 1 flip plate ID 1, frame 2 rotate flip ID 2, and so on. Since we only have 24 plates to flip, when the current frame is over 24 the counter need to go back to 0. Modulate the frame number by the total plates will make sure that the counter never go out of range.
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Adding Fall OffTo make the animation smoother we can add fall off to left and right side of the counter. In this example plate ID 12 is the median and fall off of 3 unit is added on both direction. The rotation value is interpolated between the fall off limit to median.
And the ICE Tree can quickly grow more complex
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Adding ColorUsing the same method for assigning rotation value, we can also assign different color to the plates. I'm using gradient that blend the color on rotating plates
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Wrap up
After laying down basic functionality, we can add extra features to the system:
- Speed adjustment
- Reverse direction.
- position offset
- secondary rotation and offset.
The ICE tree is very messy at this time that I need to wrap it inside a compound and expose only necessary parameters. This way I can easily export the compound and use it for other system.
- Speed adjustment
- Reverse direction.
- position offset
- secondary rotation and offset.
The ICE tree is very messy at this time that I need to wrap it inside a compound and expose only necessary parameters. This way I can easily export the compound and use it for other system.
