Motion Visualization -Research
March 9, 2023
I have started researching different elements that are best to express my motion figures emotions and moods. When I have to do a practice trial of trying to make NParticles Motion, I have an idea inspired by the trial that I made. This is going to be the main part of the storyline and I am going to use shades of grey and a colorful tone for contrast and compare each other.
White Foam Bubble &Bubbles Particles
This imbalance scale of particles and how some particles moving opposite directions gives life elements. This makes me more curious about the movements of the white bubble foam and the tiny bubble particles that are left in a trace. I want my protagonist who is lost in thoughts. With all the foam mixing together without showing the clear bubbles, representing her chaotic and confused mind is all over the place. Comparing the foam and the big bubbles, I can clearly see the big bubbles are clearer and give a brighter atmosphere.
The swimmer jumped deep into the sea, and different sizes of particles forms when she jumped on a really high platform. Those are the particles that I imagined for the protagonist.
I want to use the colorful bubbles from the end of the story. And I want to study how the bubbles pop, they form into those tiny particles. Since I want to increase the accuracy to make the person pop like bubbles.
But the interesting unexpected turn is, I want the protagonist pops, she becomes the colorful bubbles and floats away to end the story.
Studying how I want the particles to move.
Lights surrounding body
Around the trace of her body, it shines.
She is in a dark place, but only she who is bright and shiny highlights the protagonist's existence and attracts the audience all attention to her.
There is no sign of another person shining bright like her, which means there is nobody but herself.
I like the way how the animation that I have shown below, uses shine, no skin color just white outline traces on his body, simple yet from this scene, he was having a dream, he didn't go to another dimension, is all just in his thoughts. This is what I want to do for my story, by letting the audience guess, whether is she just in her own thoughts, in a dream or she does live in this dimension, which has no idea where is she because there are no environments, just pitch black background.
Also, having a trace of light surrounding her, gives a spark of light, a spark of life. It fits the concept since the protagonist already died ages ago, but her soul is still alive, the lights represented, she still has hopes of being alive, and still has the soul that hasn't been reincarnated yet.
Multiple Motion Dances
I like the motion captures in blur effects, not only are aesthetic but they show the art of body movement. The camera is able to capture different aspects of the body, not only it is pretty fascinating to see different body motions in a short time combined together, is kind of telling a story, especially when the dancer dance in a line, they traced a beautiful line to tell their own perspective of their stories.
This kind of blur motion can either be telling a happy story or a sad story, it also looks like some kind of illusion. Some people might not understand, so I have to use different color tones to tell the audience the mood of the protagonist and environment.
Separation from the Shadows
These pictures inspired me for the ending scene, I want her remaining older self as shadows, slowly fading separate away from her body. This shows she finally accepts herself, escaping from her sad chaotic thoughts and ready for the new life awaiting her.
The way how the shadow is separated further away from the human body, only their real body remains. They look like they get rid of their older self and starting fresh.
But also, I want to use this technique in one of the scenes when she sees her past self hanging around with friends happily with multiple faded shadows wandering around, it shows the audience that those people are not in the present is the past, and the protagonist is looking at her past.
I was thinking this kind of separation body elements. Seeing the particles leaving the current body, though we can still see the old self really clearly just standing behind our back with long distance.
Explosive Particles
"Pretty Rhythm Aurora Dream" is an anime that inspires me a lot with the idea.
How the particles engage around the protagonist, but not surrounded by it closely.
The particles in the background are telling the atmosphere itself, by how it was expressed by the protagonist and how many particles have been shown.
I wanted to use this technique when my protagonist is going to transfer into another dimension, the inner side of her heart is going to burst and form a new world, which is going to explode with lots of particles and colorful colors around her background.
Sailor Moon Transition Scene
I was planning to use particles to fly around the protagonist's younger self, but I feel like it kind of lacks something, so I search around magical girls anime because they tend to have so many types of transition particle videos. Thankfully I found "Sailor Moon's" transition video clips during the search, is perfect because I wanted her young self to move/ dance around and in the same spot. While her hand movements draw a trace of particles. Nothing too complex, just simple lines of particles.
This anime uses a different technique of how to use their whole body movements to form a whole new area of particles. How they were figure skating and use their whole bodies to draw the big heart. I like how Sailor Moon and Pretty Rythm have the same thing in that the particles engage around their bodies, forming into pretty elements and shapes, though the particles are always so close to their bodies, never actually touching their bodies.
MOOD BOARDS
Mood board 1 - The Dark
I am using this colour palate which clearly shows what kind of mood I want to focus on. The dark gloomy tone, the sadness. How the protagonist doesn't want to leave the past, so her past self is still clinging to her present self.
But also, I am using this inspirational mood board to get inspiration for visual movement and I have decided to use a fading silhouette with particles.
Is as if those silhouette is not letting her go of her past, regrets, grief, and how she suffered from the sudden death she has to face, is overwhelming for everyone who has to experience this tragedy, and I want the audience to feel empathy and get attracted by only seeing the effects with this depressing scene.
For the heart in that picture, I am wishing I can do that, and make that small black heart roll around when the protagonist moves.
Mood board 2 - The Pastel
This is opposite to the first mood boar, this mood board includes lots of pastel colours. I want to use this colour palate for my Reincarnation scene, which is the very last scene. Where the protagonist will burst into another dimension with a colourful pastel background. I want to convey to the audience this happy mood and show them that the protagonist has overcome her worries and is ready to look forward to her new future. For the floor, I want to add water reflection using Ncloth, but that is just my extra idea, I may skip that if I do not have enough time.
I am thinking about how should my protagonist's heart explode in colour background, whether bursting with colourful lines effects, or just an explosion of colours.
Mood board 3 - The assets and background
The mood board is to help develops my ideas of what kind of visual I want for the Reincarnation scene. I want the background environment to be mysterious but dreamy, a place that gives comfort. The environment is not going to have any buildings or any creatures, is empty like the pitch-black scene but has a different atmosphere instead.
I am not sure if I will add a cloud because I do not want to overcrowd the scene, because I want to remain focused on the protagonist the protagonist's body will remain transparent, and you will see through her body with the background we can also see her inner self.
And one more thing I hope I can achieve is the fluid in her heart, with some kind of colourful substance liquid or light. Her happy past will be filled in her heart and when is fully filled, her heart will explode into the colourful Reincarnation scene.
Story Board
So basically, the protagonist appears to be sitting and doing her own thing, drawing with her own particles. We can also see there is an empty heart with a smaller version of the black heart rolling around when she moves.
And suddenly she heard some familiar music/voices, and she decided to get up and follow the sound, where she can see the particles flowing around, and the particles is flowing further away from her so she decided to chase after the particle, which shows she is interacting with the environment of the particles.
During the chase, she saw her past self swarming around the particles and slowly fading again as the particles fly by. One by one, those past self is collected in her heart, even the particles. When is fully filled in, the protagonist feels a slight pain, and she cannot take it anymore and her heart explodes into a new dimension.
The protagonist floats a bit and she is facing the back of the screen, when she realized she is facing the other way, she turns her head and waves goodbye to the audience before she pops into thin air.
Below is my more detailed storyboard, and some minor changes.
Audio (sounds effects, music
I will be using
Magical Particles sound effect
Pop bubble sound
And music in the background
Work-In-Progress
Using motion builder to
Retargeting my data to a mesh
and female human
Somehow when I try to retarget the Actor mesh to the data, I use the drag in body points to the Actor, it didn't let me select more than one to drag in the Actor, so I have to do it one by one which I wish I didn't have to experience this strange controller, the next time when I have to do this steps again.
The retargeting human part is more simple, just simply retargeting the human and hiding the Actor, and the human successfully combines with the data movements.
Using Maya to
Create Heart Model
I am creating the heart model in Maya and is going to have transparency like the audience will able to see through what is inside the heart.
I have decided to make the big heart colour grey and inside the heart is a smaller black nontransparent heart. To show the inside of the protagonist's inner heart, from the start is empty with sadness which the small black heart represents the mood of the current situation.
Create bubbles model
I am thinking to use the bubble model for the last scene when the protagonist recorinated in the last scene and float up to the sky.
Playing around with the scales of the bubbles and duplicating them, makes the bubble looks more realistic when adding more amount of bubbles, it looks realistically blends in the environment.
Thanks for the tutorial that I have found on how to create a bubble with Arnold Lights, the results look really accurate, of how the bubbles look like, with the help of lights.
NParticles Particles Trial
To able to apply particles to locators to wherever I want them to fly, without needing to use markers of the mocap data to control. I have tested, using any object, and located the Nparticles to the sphere and move the sphere to the left, and the particles followed the sphere, which will be useful for my flying particles scene in my project.
Particles Magical scene
putting object, and then emit object
I hidden the objects, just so only particles are shown in the scene.
I have to delete one of the particles because it load forever for Maya to load, and I untick the cashed playback settings, and the particles finally renders the whole frame.
Time Line Editor
I use Time Editor for several things, like combining the animations into one, like this running shot, combining them into one with 2 different angles, and I also use it to crop my shots that are too long for the clip and also can make the speed faster if the motion is too slow sometimes.
NParticles Particles Body Motions
I have added NParticles in the body motion using the Mash tools. To my dancing scene. So that it will look like the particles form the illusions of the bodies shape.
I have added the Trials, based on my original idea of "Salior Moon" trail particles controlled by the hand motions.
Later on I want the body slowly disappears, so I make the particle numbers decrease slowly until you can no longer see the form of the body shapes, and later on, I will make it fully disappear with the transparency settings.
All Dance, act scene.
From the first start of the scenes, I need to put particles in the body, while when the protagonist moves to another location, her previous body particles will stay. To able to achieve my vision, I have watched a similar Tutorial video:
From this tutorial, I can learn how to add particles when the protagonist moves, like running, and the particles will fall down while the particle trial still continues. And I have experienced the settings of the Emit particles to object tools, if I want the particles left with the trails of the body shapes, I'm thinking to use the "Scale Rate By Object Size"
but somehow it didn't work out how I want, her whole body of her back didn't have enough particles, and so I have decided to check the school Canvas again to see if the lecturer have done any tutorial about that, and thankfully he did.
I just have to play around the settings, that the lecturer shows and gratefully I able to achieve the same vision as I want for the start of the scene.
so basically the Cashed playback is slowing down my process... so I just have to untick the cash playback, and my particles are back.
NParticles Particles Morph to heart shapes
To be able to achieve my vision for explosive heart particles, I have to use my previous heart models to help achieve the heart shape explosion.
With the help of this nParticles Morphing tutorial, I can able to create the visions I want from the storyboard.
I learned to not let the particles fall from the ground, I just have to tick the "Ignore Solver Gravity" and now the particles just grouped together and is floating because there are no gravity anymore.
From here I am just learning how the particles target to an object, which later on is going to be the heart.
At first, I want the nParticles to gather all together in that first small size of the heart, to create tension for leading the audience's curiosity, about what would happen next with those nParticles.
From the storyboard, this is my original vision. Seeing the particles gathering in the heart of the protagonist. And is going to explode.
From the second step, I want it to explode into a big heart shape. So I have to send the 1st step nParticles to the next step to the big heart.
This is what I want for the next scene. I will be inputting the heart model to replace the nParticles. Maybe later on I will also add glow to the heart particles.
At first, shooting with smaller hearts, and can able to see the big form of heart shapes. Although the hearts are mushed up a bit too much and seems like there are too many hearts combined together, so I will decrease the numbers of the hearts and change the scale of the hearts, since is too big, I can't see the heart particles too well. Also, I was trying to follow a few tutorial videos of having different geometry in the particles, but I cannot achieve that, trying to find the mistakes, but I just cannot find them, trying to follow other tutorials, but it still not working, so I will see if I will fix that after I finish other texture for my scene.
I was able to create my vision from the storyboard, changing the scale and numbers of the particles, but geometry still cannot able to add multiples. I also changed the conserve speed to 1.5 instead of 1.0, because I want to it not explode too slowly or too fast, I want to show the process of the explosion.
After making the heart explosion particles, I parent the particles explosion to the body's spine. So it will look more accurate, that the particles is just aiming to her inner heart.
Adding particles surrounding her body, before the heart explode.
Lightings shading problem solving
My first idea it was having a transparent body and white outline with using Arnold shading and Toon shader, but my lecturer said I may cannot use both, but I tried it anyway, and so I have to choose between using the Arnold shading or the Toon shading for my dark scenes, and I might not use the simple Toon shading for white outlines , because later on for the reincarnation I really want to try using the Arnold shading to do the glass transparent skin mesh that we can see through her body while combine with the beautiful scenery.
from this heart explode scene, I kind of added light blue and bright pink direction light to create that pretty transparent with blue and pink glow reflection.
Which in the reincarnation part, I have also using the bright pink and blur light to reflec her transparent body.
So because of needing to change the idea with having no outlines, my research going to change to focus on having transparent body
New Research: Transparent body
I think is not a lost for not able to use the Toon Shader with the Arnold Shader, which I cannot able to put white outline for the transparent body, but instead of having white outline, I prefer having the transparent body for my protagonist, because it shows more depth of the body, and it could hiddenly tell a back story, and gives some emotional feelings seeing her unsolid body, and looks like she feels lost, as if she have lost her identity, she is confused, her inner heart is empty with black heart, and with adding particles from her back looks like she is slowly fading away with her past self.
Then later on, when the scene of her reincarnation, her transparent body will be glossy, with pretty pastel colour lights reflecting on her body, and see her pretty transparent body blends in with the scenery. Seeing beautiful side of her at the end, giving a happy atmosphere and relief mood.
NParticles Particles dark scene
I have parented the heart to the skeleton and also added Nparticles to the transparency body.
This is the scene when the protagonist is chasing after the particles. At first I was planning to add the particles while she is chasing after it, but Maya software keep crashing when I add particles to the same scene, so I have decided to do it in a separate scene.
I was going to add particles flying around while the protagonist chase after them, but Maya keep crashing when I try putting the particles in, so I have to show them separately.
Reincarnation scene
I have decided to use a preset from a website called Sketchfab, they have tons of free sky dome preset that I can choose, and I think the one I have chosen is the best choice that suits my vision from the storyboard.
And this is the last vision I want it to look like, is pretty, and from her body can see through the sky, it gives lighter feeling compare with the dark version of her, it looks like she have accept herself and ready to start the next journey which is awaiting her.
At the end of scene, I added the bubble with the pretty scenery sky dome, when she pop become bubble, it looks so unreal with with how the transparency of the bubble and the scenery have combined into. And animate the end of the bubble floating out of the frame.
Camera Shots
I was thinking to use some camera angles, like movements, following the particles, but because Maya keep crashing when I add the camera, even though from that scene is just having particles flying around, but the software keep lagging and crashing when I add a camera and moves it, so I just decided to just let the particles past by in front of the camera.
There are some scene I cannot move the camera, but from my last scene I wanted to pan the camera up to the scene,
Rendering
Thankfully my particles body and other scene that have nparticles also, doesn't take that long to render.
But my first four scene after getting "Distracted" by the music and particles and sit up and start walking towards the direction where the music plays. Because when I parent the heart to the skeleton and particles, the Maya keep crashing, and when I reopen the file, it corrupted, so I have to give up on these scene.
This is going to be the new start of the scene.
And from this chasing after the particles scene, from the render view, before I actually render, it have the particles, but when I render the image sequence, the particles are not showing, after I try to render from the other computer, is still not having particles...
so I might have to try use in a different angle of camera, and try to see if it will show the particles again.
Using After Effects software
I am going to combine all the image sequence that I have rendered in Maya, and combine them together, and edit some of the frames with fading effects sequence for the dancing scenes. Because I cannot play around the lights in Maya, it just didn't show any differences.
I have to use the Explosion transition for the heart explosion scene, and after the explosion, her background location changed.
After that I will add chilling background music, and sound effects to add more atmosphere to the video.
Thankfully the background is just black, so I can easily put the two dancing videos in the same scene, and can combine the dancer and acts together.
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