I've got a new project to drag my attention from all the other stuff I should be working on. I'm currently playing Ferdinand in a production of The Tempest, which is being presented in a steampunk style. The idea has been put forward to present the portion of Act 4 Scene 1 where the gods Ceres, Iris and Juno are conjured by Prospero as a projection, one idea in particular was to present them as a special effect of the gods forming from smoke.
Which is what I'm attempting to do using Blender 2.5. The effect is essentially going to have the face coalesce from smoke, a video of the actor performing the part will be projected onto the face with a textured spotlight, and then fade out with the face blown away in the wind.
Still early days, it'll be interesting to see if I can pull it together in time, given that the production starts from the first week in April.
Short Video Test.
Posts
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbZ5B1SSbDE
Thanks . Though I was in Treasure Island last Summer and very nearly did break a leg, took it a bit too literally. Got away with a few torn ligaments in my foot; finished the run though. Suffer for your art luvvie and all that .
interesting project
Thanks.
It has a smoke sim, but it doesn't seem to have the level of control I need. There's a full fluid sim built in, which I tried but similarly didn't give particularly stellar results. Having said that I don't really know how to use it, so it may be worth revisiting.
I did pull this together mixing smoke and point density particles. The problem is that the smoke sim drowns out the face, and I can't get enough resolution to produce the face purely with smoke. Anything much over a res of 94 unfortunately crashes blender.
I've also tested projecting a still image on to the face using a spotlight. It'll be the same technique when using a video.
Some obvious errors, the smoke is disappearing off the side of the domain, I think the Turbulence needs to dropped down a bit as it's too heavy, likewise the smoke is moving to quickly, and the face is to ill defined I think.
just needs refining really
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSsLZ_epF_Q&fmt=18#t=2m30s
not sure if that's helpful or not, but it does no harm to have extra refs
That's great man, thanks! Gives me some ideas actually...
The background is a couple of simple cloud textures overlaid and animated, the curves need to be edited as the animation shouldn't speed up and slow down at the beginning and end. Also it's way too fast, so I'll slow it right down.
Apart from that this is pretty close to the final set-up I think.
how about combining the appearance with some on stage lighting effects? if thats possible.
The other possibility could be forming the face before the smoke, because I can use more particles and effects for that portion to make the particle spawn less obvious, then hide the smoke generation behind the face.
Not sure it's going to be possible to have much in the way of stage lighting. The setup is ditching the stage for more of a Shakespearean round. The projection is going to played to the "back" of the round, but most of the lights are going to be set up pointing away from it. The tracking lights might be able to be used, but I doubt there'll be enough time to rehearse it. This is the first time we've tried to mix live action with projection, so it's all a learning process, and given that the first production is in a little over a months time I think it would be best to keep the live element and recorded interaction to a minimum. I definitely want to ramp it up more in the future though.
depending on how things are moving I don't think it's the end of the world, things can be tracked etc
I've thought about it and projecting on to geometry of the face might have been too ambitious anyway, given the time and equipment at our disposal. I might project on to a half sphere, that way the movement won't matter as much, and I could possibly work it into the effect, like the "soul" of the god is floating over the surface of the face, might look more ethereal.
I'm going to cut down the clips into individual passages and discard the miss-takes hopefully today, I'll try and upload some clips then.