Final year project update 2

Having tracked my camera and created a scene for it to move around in my next 3D step was to create a particle simulation, mimicking the motion of a cloud of leaves. The idea is to emit the leaves from the bicycle geometry, creating the impression that the dissipation of the bike in 2D is matched with the areas the leaves emit from. I neatly modelled my bike with simple geometry. This was compared with a photograph and some precise measurements. I did not want complicated, perfect geometry, I wanted something light and easy to maintain edits upon.

Once imported into my scene I began the process of hand matchmoving the BMX to the plate. I used my scene's geometry as a guide as to where in space I would expect the BMX to be. Eventually I began to get a result that I was pleased with. I was matching the BMX frame and rear wheel to the plate, then adjusting the handlebar rotation as well. This was a long process across ~330 frames.

Once complete I setup a projected B&W ramp, parented to the animated BMX. This would act as an emission texture. I tested it with plain particles and eventually got it working right. This ramp allowed me nice control over the 'wipe' emission I wanted, from front of bike to back. I had some difficulty at this point as I needed the separately animatable bars and frame of the bike to be a single mesh for emission purposes, so I combined them and left the history alone. I opted to leave the projection and just planar project the UVs, applying the ramp as a texture. Same result as projection but much cleaner for my purposes.

Once I had reached a stage where I could emit particles from a texture, the next task was to craft the simulation and some leaves to instance. I will outline these steps in my next blog entry.