growing vine effect
 

I need to create the effect of having what looks like a vine growing out of a character. It will then move along the ground go down under the ground and sprout back out wraping itself around a characters leg. I could probably go about this by rigging a long vine and then animating it but am wondering if it might be possible to get a good result using dynamics. I asume the 1st part of this would involve creating a curve plotting the direction the vine will take. From here on I am guessing but can I attatch a curve flow effect which I then attatch a dynamic effect to. I have only used dynamics to create hair and fire and so if anyone can give any pointers and suggestions it would be a great help.

Many thanks,

Leon Labyk

Re: growing vine effect
 

You are half way there:)

1. All you have to do is do your curve animation (path) part.
2. Then, attach a Paint Effects brush to it using the Brush Utilities menu.

3. Then it is all a matter of animating the Min and Max "Clip" value in the brush settings to get the brush to reveal itself along the curve.

4. If your brush has flowers or thorns, etc. you can animate those settings as well while the reveal happens to achieve the look of "growth" as the "vine" reveals itself along the curve.

Use whatever vegetation brush from the visor to start with or customize your own:)

Good luck!

Ok I am able to attach the paint effect to the curve but cannot get it to animate. I could adjust the max clip for every frame but how do I set this so it will be automatic. Preferably so it will follow either my curve flow or a motion path.

Cheers,

Leon

Just so I understand your question, when you say "automatic" do you mean, how do you get it to start at one end and have it appear to grow to the other end, even if the curve is animated?

If that is the case, then my instructions above should work for that.

Key the max clip at the start of your shot at 0.
Then, go to the frame where you want to see the whole vine, and key the max clip at 1.

Then, regardless of the curves' animation, the vine should follow the path and reveal itself more and more each frame till its' max clip reaches 1:)

Now keep in mind that when your curve is animated, a PFX brush can be set to display on the curve based on the curves' normal direction, etc.
So be carefull there, as the brush will alter shape per frame based on those settings.
This means as the curve turns direction, the normal value can change to be a negative value, thus flipping the brush around in undesirable ways.

Good luck!

NOTE: attached is a sample Maya 8.5 file of an example test I made for you:)

Ok, HERE IS A SAMPLE VIDEO if the above test file I made for ya:)

(Quicktime H264 encoded .mp4)

Wow thanks for the assist, I have now got it looking perfect. Did'nt realise you could set keys for those attributes.

Many thanks,

Leon Labyk

No problem:)

Yep, for everything in the channel box, you can keyframe it or apply an expression to it.

If you check my sample project, I only keyed like 4 or 5 attributes to get it like that.

....if you do more on a larger scale, and maybe even more than one PFX brush type, I think you would be able to make something super sweet:)

Good luck!

Ok I have created the vine growing out and into a hand but have a problem. They want the vine that grows out to be more like the one in the image and I dont seem to be able to get it to look like this. They want to have a few vines intertwined with each other that will grow along the curve and then go under ground. I think the best way to create the forearm leading into the hand will be as a poly object that I hope to make the vines grow into and wrap around the begining of so the whole thing looks like one piece. This will then burst out of the ground to grab a character in its complete form and not grow out. The hand/forearm will be tree like and have a subtle resemlance to that of a humans. Does anyone know where I may be able to download pfx brushes for maya that may get the look I need since I have tried mixing brushes but to no avail. Once the shot is complete there is one other thing I would like to do but am not sure how to go about it. I am going to rig the hand so it will grab the character and hold them but I wan't to have it move up into the air and have the vine pull up out of the ground and have a mud/dirt effect that will fall off it. The vine will be attached to a few curves intertwined with each other so will this work if I just select the control verticies for the curves that are under the ground and set keys to have it rise up from the soil.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xbWdoiYghg

Sorry about the lenghty question, any advice and help on this is much appreciated.

I am wondering if I can do this without modeling and rigging the hand after all. I have attached a screen grab of the curves. Does anyone know a way I can animate the curves at the end so they move like fingers though. I was thinking I could create each curve as a nurbs cylinder instead and then duplicate a surface curve on each one to attach my pfx to. I have never tried to do rigging with a nurbs object though and is it the same as using polys. If this can be done please let me know since it will make things a lot easier.

Thanks,

Leon

Wow, ok I hate to say this, I really don't think this is a job for PaintFX, but rather SplineIK.

PaintFX will just keep flipping around in a jerky manner on you if you move the curves too much, or twist them back over themselves too much.

For the specific type of shot your going for, you might be better off modeling a long "branch" with bumps and small branches, bark and dirt textures etc. then check the help on how to hook up a splineIK rig to it.

I've never done it myself, but I've seen character riggers at my job do it, and they get great results in a short amount of time.

So, instead of going for a "hand", you might want to think of it as creating a few "tentacles".

Lemm know if that helps you or not:)

Thanks for your thoughts on this racecgi much appreciated. I have created the vines as nurbs surfaces which I have then converted to polys and attached to my skeleton. I will tweak the poly objects in zrush and try and add a crusty wooden feal to them with twigs and what not hanging from them. My only problem is I am trying to work out how I can go about making it look like these vines are growing. I could cheat and keep trying to get a pfx brush I can attach to the curves on the nurbs objects. Then have my poly hand burst out at the end, the hand will have to be identical to the pfx brush though. I would then have to add another shot so when I cut back to have the hand rise up from the soil bringing up the vines that went down it will all be the polygon version since I think making the pfx go seemlesly into the polys will be to tricky.
Or is there a way I can make my poly object look like it is growing in the same way.

If anyone has any thoughs on how I can get a good final result please let me know.

Many thanks,

Leon

If you have money to spare and you need complete control and growth control with the vine animation, you could buy X-frog plugin for Maya. Couple of problems with the software though, virtually no customer support and it's only available for Maya 8.0. Also available for Cinema 4d.