Entertainment Design Studio: Progress Pt. 2!

As part of my elective this semester, during which I am learning Houdini 12, I recently finished my bowl-breaking simulation. Watch the video of my progress and the final version below:

I'm quite proud of how it turned out, especially considering what it looked like to start with and the number of iterations it went through. One of the main things I changed between the previous iteration and this one is the way the bowl is broken. I initially used the "Make Breakable" shelf tool, which breaks the object immediately on impact. For the final version, I instead went with the "Break" shelf tool for the model itself, followed by the "RBD Glue" shelf tool to ensure that the break occurred gradually.

There are a few things I think could use some work, if I had more time to fix this up. I would definitely like to do something about the leakage from the bowl. My initial idea was to use a proxy volume, but the problem was that the bowl needed to be a rigid body in order to be able to be broken by the falling rock. When I tried to use the proxy volume, it collided with the bowl and popped out on top of it, defeating the purpose of the proxy volume entirely. Finally, I came up with a sort of makeshift fix for the leakage: I compensated for it by starting the simulation with the bowl already tilted and slightly cracked. This made the splashing and movement of the leaking fluid plausible, as the whole bowl was moving and cracking further. The other issue I'd like to fix, given more time, is that the fluid that leaks out of the bowl becomes thinner and eventually disappears, as is evidenced in the video. I think the leakage would be more convincing if I could add some fluid emitters beneath the bowl which emit fluid as the fluid leaks from the bowl, keeping the amount of fluid present in the scene constant at all times (rather than slowly decreasing).

I also had some technical constraints to work with. I would have loved to have used a glass material for the bowl, to give it that extra bit of realism. However, I discovered that the machine I have to work with is not powerful enough to render scenes with complex lighting or simulation. While this put a damper on my creative juices, I think it also poses an interesting and definitely useful challenge for me: learning to construct an effect such that it is as easy to render as possible, while still looking realistic.

All adjustments aside, I'm pretty pleased with the final outcome. I've added the bowl breaking video to my film demo reel, which can be found here.

I've started my final Houdini project for the semester this week, so expect a progress update on that soon!