This project my aim is to create something beautiful, something pleasent, eye catching. So by surfing the net to see what catches my eyes and somehow

Medication Pills struck me. So I got down some reference pictures.

However, through out this whole quarter I have pick up alot of knowledge on Slim, RSL shadering, Vex and Baking Point Cloud and Brickmap.

It was really hard to come up with something that I really want to work on.

So my first step was to explore into all the subjects that I have learnt, and see which path I would take to work on my final project.

Pills Reference Pictures

.

 

I started off looking into VEX shadering.

However there were some road blocks.

1st - I am not familiar with Houdini.

2nd - There were some Issues with the shader when I use my own model which I brought in ,in OBJ format.

Click Here to redirect to VEX shadering page.

 

I also look in pointcloud and brickmap to see what results it can give me.

Brick maps looks promising as it could do some cool tricks due to it structure.

It could automatically decide the level of detail according to camera distance and

displacements can do some wonders to this bricks.

Click Here to redirect to Point Cloud and Brickmaps.

Here is a setup of the scene that i am planning on for this individual project.

This pills are setup using maya particle instances.

The name of the title will be the dancing Pills.

The idea is about pills dancing in space.

The pills will be given a variety of colors and shaders using the MulitID silm node.

MulitID Slim Coding.

Here I have duplicated 10 different pills, numbering from 1 to 10

Multi Id will identify with those numbers and give it its color.

 

Here is a test showing that the Multi Id slim node is working.

At first the particle instance was only chosing one pill and instancing them on all the particles.

Not allowing me to have a variation.

So the only way was to write a mel expression.

 

Here shows the mel expression that I use to give different numbers to each particle.

This would assign random numbers to each particle and

I also have to link my particle ID to Mass.

Over here i am just linking a slim mix color node that I have created for the pill

to do a test.

MixPillcolor is the shader name, and it just mix color in t direction.

giving two colors to the pills.

I have to work on it still to control the smoothstep.

More shaders have to be created too inorder to make this pills look

awesome. :)

Here is a result render of the slim network from above.

Well A LONG WAY TO GO. 2 more weeks to due date.

The mix is not working too well. I have to control the smoothstep

Adding a reflection will be cool.

 

In this section I want to explain further on the Particles.

On the side is a network showing the forces in the world that is affecting the particles.

Giving it a floaty motion as if in space.

 

Here I am showing that I have 10 different Pills having numbers from 1 to 10 acting as instances for the particles.

Multi ID will indentify with those numbers and assign a color value.

The mass expression chooses which pill it wants on each particle according to the random number generated.

 

This is a simple slim node that i created, having 2 colors to mix and giving a smooth cut

between the 2 colors.

Slim coding - simple mix pill color

 

A slightly more complicated on with a sine function directed in a radial manner.

with a smooth cut.

I have this cuts because a pill always has 2 colors on them.

Slim coding - radial sine wave mixpill color.

 

Here shows something more interesting with the blending of the colors

just by controling the sliders available.

 

When I look at the pills I have, they also have this intresting outline thats cast by reflection

from the environment light, so i went on to create a fresnel slim node.

After creating it I realize there was a fresnel node already available by default.

However I learnt something important in the process.

Surface shader and Slim are totally different. Though the coding looks the same but I cannot put them together.

Slim node basically works solely on functions and gives a return result to a color or a float.

Surface shader is a shader that contains many functions and results to a layered compilation of those results.

Slim coding -fresnel

 

 

Functions

---------------------------------------------

Surface shader

calling back in the functions

doing all the calculations here.

--------------------------------------------

Surface Output

 

 

I took alot of time trying to figure out how this two works and how they are integrated.

Here is an example in executing a fresnel function in a surface shader.

Functions are usually placed above the surface sections of codes.

Surface Shader Coding. - fresnel on the pills.

Well here is just a reflection slim node and again, slim has its default.

Slim Coding - reflection.

 

So here are test reults of the 10 pills.

Fresnel is giving some nice each rim light to the pills.

And the color mixing are working better.

 

Here I am creating a simple animation test .

 

Here I am doing a reflection test which is giving some subtle results.

 

Here I am giving some opacity to one side of the pill. I am doing it at 100 % opac and not on each side.

Well it seems to work fine.

Now I doing those more final tweaks to the level of opacity and colors. Making it more

pleasent looking.

 

Over here is the slim network that I have work on so far which gave me some beautiful paterns and colors on my dancing pills.

 

Wala here is the results.

Here is the current result.

Here is a more developed slim network I work on.

In here I turned on the cycles in the particles instance.

This is showing that its cycling through the various meshes.

 

Over here is a still image of the final render, hope its clear enough to see

some of the detail patterns.

Here is my final render, however, I forgot to place in some depth by blurring the back pills.

Well I can do that by setting up the depth of field in the camera attributes.

The number of pills have been reduce a whole bunch due to artistic direction as it was getting too clutered and messy

which breaks the mood that I am trying to achieve.

 

Finally the final of final render. I have rendered so many times due to particle problems.

There were always problems with the movement whenever I reopen my file, even if I have cache or recorded the movement of the particles.

Anyhow, I am satisfied with this final render. It looks pretty and calm, with subtle movements within the shaders.

I have explored thoroughly into the workings of slim network and have understood the connections in RSL and in SLIM.

I feel I am ready to move on to more complicated and customize shader in future with more understanding of some mathematics which will help a whole

lot.

 

 

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