Explosion Test

[[posterous-content:pid___0]]Here is a render of a frame from an explosion I made using Houdini's powerful Pyro FX tools. This image took about 30 minutes to render at 1920x1080 on low quality settings and using depth mapped shadows 512x512. I unfortunately do not have the luxury of a render farm so I am trying to find as many ways as possible to optimise the explosion in order to reduce render times.

Houdini works with LowResolution and UpResolution simulations. The workflow being that you are able to quickly get the simualtion looking the way you want before switching the simulation to UpResolution to render it out. I have had many problems with this the main being that the render times sky rocket and is not feasible to achieve on my lone PC.

I am going to continue to try and find ways to change this but at the moment I am limited to a Lower Resolution render and I cannot use Ray Traced shadows. This obviously makes the simulation look worse but there is little I can do at this stage.

Truck Lighting Test

Here is a lighting test on the tanker. It was rendered using Mental Ray with image based lighting using a panoramic chrome ball HDR environment. I have used final gather and composited it with a Ambient Occlusion pass it make it sit in the environment better. This image took about 10 minutes to render and a bit longer or the Ambient Occlusion pass as I set the samples to 256 to stop noticable graining appearing.

Simulation Tests

Here is a simulation showing how the front windscreen would break once hit with the initial force of the impact.

glassTest.mov Watch on Posterous

This simulation was done using houdini's rigid body and fracturing tools. The window is broken by a hidden object that is fired at the back of the windscreen to break it and force it forward.

Texturing Part 2: close to final design

Here are a few photos showing the truck from various angles. The texturing phase is almost done now. Just a few refinements and bump maps to be added.

See the full gallery on Posterous

Texturing

The next major step for the project was to begin the texturing of the truck. To start with I assigned different materials to different components on the truck. These grouped components will have individual texture space. I have decided to go for a green and white colour scheme and have designed a logo to go on the side.

See the full gallery on Posterous

Animex

I am currently at the Animex Animation and Games festival - http://www.animex.net/

This is a superb event with talks from many of the Industry leading companies.

Will not be able to upload much this week but will keep you posted soon!