Happy RealFlow Holidays!

We're in the Holiday spirit here at Fusion Studios - with Christmas tunes blastin' and eggnog flowing we conjured up a little holiday magic using RealFlow. Hope you like it!

This piece was created as a little internal project, although aspects of it were inspired by a recent SeaWorld spot we did in collaboration with Vitamin Pictures. For that project, we had to create water branches that Vitamin then comped into a tree form.

We thought the idea of a dynamic, fluidy Christmas tree fit us perfectly, since we specialize in CG fluids, so we extended and adapted the technology we developed for the SeaWorld project and built a little scene around it.

The blanket beneath the tree was created as a Maya nCloth simulation, the furry edge was done using Maya fur. The water branches were each done as 400 frame fluid simulations, using our newest technology for making fluids follow paths. This allows us to make fluid take contorted, art-directed paths while still maintaining a very natural flowing look.

The tools typically available for this kind of thing end up making the fluid look like a worm wiggling thru mid-air, which of course looks anything but natural. So we developed a custom tool that allows complete control on falloffs along the path and with distance from it, variations in strengths along the path, and also allows the release of fractions of the fluid to create splashy edges. And of course the tool has integrated into it our "smorganic" tool, which prevents breakup of the fluid into ugly cheesey / webbed shapes. The tree was then built from about 30 unique fluid branches, each placed carefully in 3D space to get a nice tree shape while maintaining an organic look. This year, our tree decorating was virtual!

Working on the project at Fusion were Mark Stasiuk, Matt Benson, Lauren Millar and Liz Catullo.


To see this movie a little larger, try this link: http://www.fusioncis.com/fusion/holidaymagic.mov

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• RealFlow
• fluid simulation
• cg fluids
• water simulation
• fluid effects
• fluid fx
• cg water
• RealFlow simulation
• 'cg
• simulation
• photo-real water
• photo-real fluids
• Christmas tree
• liquid Christmas tree
• card
• avatar
• card trick
• opening
• sax

[fusioncis]

There's nothing like a Fusion Holiday. Eggnog, cookies, and watery trees. We like to spread the joy ; )

[quand3r]

You like your own video. Congrats!

[mrmaxzzz]

Sweet, Merry Christmas