CoP 3: Piece of Text / Interview That Inspired My Subject

While having a conversation over email with Oliver Winwood he mentioned that he had worked on films such as 'Harry Potter', 'Batman Begins', 'Guardians of the Galaxy', and 'World War Z' using particle simulations and how he used and controlled them. There are two things that he said in them emails that really inspired my subject. One is about how he controls the particles in a simulation and the other is about what softwares he and other practitioners use.

Oliver talked about how he controlled the particles using a fluid within Maya. The thing that he said which inspired me was this, "I worked on a few of the Potter films where we used maya particles. The main reason is due to how scriptable they are. We obviously apply forces, but also script a lot as well, giving us very precise control over what happens and when. Another favourite trick is to advect the particles with a fluid. It doesn't even need to be that high res as you're using the fluid as a force." (Winwood. O, 2016) This gave me the idea to try this out in Maya and tried using particles with a fluid. This what a great way of manipulating the particles with a good amount of control and this was the outcome of my simulation.

However I found the method behind this a bit complicated and hard to render out with arnold renderer. So I feel like I will be sticking with bifrost for the final simulation I will be producing.

The other thing that Oliver said that gave me some inspiration and intriguement was this, "I would say for pure particle work Maya is easily and strong as Houdini. But you will find more artists comfortable doing the work in Houdini. I also feel (and I know others who are Houdini artists that share this opinion) that simple Maya effects are easier and quicker to achieve in Maya, while you have to build something in Houdini. Of course once you start getting into more complicated FX where you are manipulating geo along with the particles Houdini is far easier." (Winwood. O, 2106) Him saying this made me feel more confident using Maya for my simulations because its as strong as Houdini, but for me Houdini is too expensive to get right now to try it out and experiment around with its liquid simulator.