Category: Research

A continuation of the displacement creation inside of C4D, this time I tested a couple different ways in which I could make the map more defined on the cube as which I scrolled in the edges were slightly bevelled.  The video below shows my workflow:

Within this time-lapse video I was trying to tackle my problem with the displacement map – on certain areas of the map I experienced organic looking protrusions coming from the object and I didn’t know why it was happening. In addition, I also saw the some of the edges seemed very bevelled even when the segments were turned all the way up – soon after the software locked up and froze due to all of the RAM being used up on the computer. As this was either to do with the displacement map itself or the amount of segments on the object, I set about experimenting with all of the different settings.

Firstly, I tried to turn up/down the amount of segments within the cube itself to see if this had any effect. I found that the less number of segments the object had, the less flexibility the face of the cube had to deform to the displacement map, this often resulted in a less detailed map.

Secondly, I tried to alter the height and strength settings of the map but this didn’t really benefit the clarity of the protrusions in any way – When the height settings were increased, the physical length in which the protrusions came out to were increased as well and the this was the same for the strength setting too. Changing these settings at times did help occasionally, however, this wasn’t very beneficial as the whole aesthetic of the cube had changed to something I didn’t want.

Lastly, I tried to add Sub-Polygon Displacement to the cube which was under the displacement tab within the material editor. With this particular project I found that it drastically slowed down my computer and wouldn’t even allow me to render as it produced an error message: ‘Run out of application memory’ and prevented the scene to be rendered any further. I created another project file and loaded up the same displacement map (enabling the Sub-Polygon Displacement) and found that even with 1 segment for the X, Y & Z settings, the displacement map worked.

*Sub-Polygon Displacement – “In principle, sub-polygon displacement (referred to as SPD in the following text) is similar to displacement: an object is deformed during rendering based on a texture’s grayscale palette or, in some modes, color palette. The trick lies in the object’s own internal, adjustable and relatively high subdivision, which allows for very detailed structures without having to actually subdivide the object permanently. In many cases, it is impossible to achieve the same degree of detail through modeling because too much memory would be required.”

Sub-Polygon Displacement disabled

Sub-Polygon Displacement enabled

Map Resulting Geometry

All of the renders produced had 1 segment for the X, Y & Z settings – found that this was much faster to render with my computer and I also feel like the edges of each protrusion are less bevelled than before.

Conclusion

After experimenting with the sub-polygon displacement, I have come to the conclusion that the displacement map is far too detailed for what I need, meaning that there are too many fine details in the map that the displacement cannot displace – this is evident in the physical renders that are produced as you can see some of the shapes created in the map itself aren’t very geometric in shape and are more organic looking. To overcome this issue, I will create another displacement map that is more simplistic, this will allow for the displacement to produced protrusions which are more defined which could also be developed by experiment with colour in it. Additionally, Im looking at adding extra elements to the cube that might cover some of the sides – examples of this could be rectangular faces in the centre of the cube to add some diversity to the shape.

Here is another Youtube tutorial by Greyscalegorilla, the project being done doesn’t apply to my animation at all, however, there is a specific part which goes over x-particles materials in great detail which was very useful. The specific part in the tutorial starts at 15m 20s and ends at 19m 50s, which can be viewed below:

When experimenting with X-particles before in my X-Particles Research post, I didn’t know how to make glossy X-particle materials, specifically looking for a reflectance within the material.  When experimenting I came very close to discovering how to do this, however I didn’t select the right colour mode under: X-particles material > Illumination > Lighting > Mode. Under this section within the colour shader of the x-particles material, there are many different settings to choose from, each with their own unique effect which can be seen in the renders below – I feel overall the only one that I will use will be the Phong colour mode as it gives that glossy aesthetic to the material which I desire. However, it is key to note that there were other modes that also produced interesting features:

• Diffuse – The diffuse mode is very much similar to phong as it brings a 3D effect to the particles emitted, it understands where the light is coming from within the scene and creates shadows accordingly to create the 3D illusion.
• Fuzzy – The fuzzy mode is also very interesting as it blurs each of the particles making them seem more like dust or light splotches – I could see this being used within my animation to create a hazy atmosphere, however, the colours and opacity would have to be changed accordingly.
• Neon –  The neon mode is by far the most different setting compared to all of the others – it adds a slight blur to each of the particles but also adds a strong luminance to each of them which can be seen in the background of the render. To me, I could see this being used to denote a blood vessel if a swatch of reds and dark pinks were used, the particles could also them be red blood cells or other cells found in the bloodstream.

Renders:

1) Diffuse

2) Phong

3) Flat

4) Fuzzy

5) Neon

6) Henyey-Greenstein

7) Schlick

8) Rayleigh

After creating a successful test of the displacement/height map, I decided to put that task on hold and try and conduct some research into X-Particles and try and find a way of creating a ring of spheres for my animation. After a generic search on YouTube, I can across this video by Greyscalegorilla that gave essential information on x-particles, which can be seen below:

The video mainly focusses on the Modifiers section within the X-particles plug-in, with trying to make the ring of spheres I though it would be a good video t watch as it might contain a lot of really useful information that I wouldn’t be able to understand in a quick time frame.

The first part of the video focussed on a particular modifier called xpNetwork which makes the particles that are emitted change direction at a specified angle at specified times/frames – for example, a particle would change 90º in any direct every 10 frames which creates a really geometric look. With the addition of  trails added to the particles, it creates a physical line behind it that tracks its path. Overall, this creates a really unique look that can be adjusted to your project needs – I could see this being used within a sci-fi film where a computer  generator created something within the real world but however, it doesn’t match my aesthetic that I want to achieve so I wont be using it.

The second part of the video focussed on xpSpeed which is a modifier that allows for better speed adjustment of the particles. Within the modifier, I would  be able to control the speed  by going into xpSystem > Modifiers > Motion Modifiers > Speed. It would then allow me to insert a value to tell the software to slow down or speed up the rate at which the particles are travelling – the larger the negative number would mean the faster it would slow down and vice versa which would enable me to achieve the aesthetic I would be looking for.

The last part of the video looks into xpTurbulance, this is very similar to the turbulence effector that is already on the stock version of C4D, however, its for the x-particles system. As its fairly similar, I wont go into details about it but It was a very effective way of making the particles react differently within the editor and could be something I might be able to use within my project.

After watching that video, I decided to experiment in the software and dive in head first. The screen recording below shows my workflow and captured all of my different experimentation of trying to get the emitted particles to: A) be emitted in a torus shape (a ring), B) to make the emitted particles group together around the torus and C) rotate in a clockwise fashion.

For task A, I was able to make the torus become the emitting object for the particles, overall, this wasn’t a very complex task but as I didn’t know I spend a lot of time tweaking different settings as I though it was under another sub-heading in the Emission tab but I got there in the end. For task B, I wasn’t able to make the emitted objects group together, I tried adding a rigid body tag and experimenting  with the force as this worked within the Glowing Sphere Animation, but this didn’t work. Within the video embedded above, I might be able to control the speed in which the particles are emitted by going into xpSystem > Modifiers > Motion Modifiers > Speed. I would then have to insert a negative value to tell the software instead of speeding up as the timeline goes on, to slow down instead – the larger the negative number would mean the faster it would slow down and vice versa which would enable me to achieve the aesthetic I would be looking for. Lastly, for task C, I will have to experiment further with the rotational aspect of the project, I feel that I might have been able to make it do so by animating the emitter object (the torus) with key frames – At frame 0 I could have set a key frame so that by frame 90 it would have rotated 3 times for example. But to fully test this hypothesis, I will have to go back into the software and test it out.

Here are some renders form that scene: