Creeping WATER BLOB? CG/Live Action

[Titofer]

Hello there !!

I really need any help I can have. The main idea is this water blob creeping over a woman's body (back, arm, face). The woman is live action and THE BLOB is 3D.

I've been using Maya's particles(curve flow, blobby surfaces) and also trying with softbodies. Im getting pretty cool blobby effects but the problems:

1. It looks like THE WATER BLOB is floating and it is not creeping over her body like I would like it to.

2. Another problem is that it looks flat and 2D, like it is just placed over the image and it doesn't look 3D blobby, but i guess that would look better when I actually start lighting/texturing and playing around with the renders. But any help welcome !

Now im more concern with the animation of THE WATER BLOB.
The blob should creep and drag itself, and internally move like is breathing on the surface (that being the back of the woman, her belly, face, arm, etc).

PLEASE PLEASE

ANY help just throw it there.....
Maybe REalflow would work better....? I heard that in Houdini one can choose the particles, select the surface and there is an option call creeping and it does kind of what i want....but it is kind of in a rush and late to be learning Houdini at this time.

THANKS a lot for your help and time

TITOFER

[ShadowMaker SdR]

any chance of showing us what you have so far? It would help guide you in the right direction.

[Titofer]

Sure here is the first shot...

The blob should crawl on her back and then over to the shoulder, and then we cut to the next shot where the blob crawls down her arm.

thanks for your reply

[Aruna]

I can't help with your water animation, but I can give tips for your integration. Even though water is fairly clear, it will give some sort of shadow and displacement to what's underneath it. Look through a glass of water, and you'll see how it distorts what's behind it. Once you put in some shadows, you'll find that it starts to look better. Even better, try getting a clear grocery bag, filling it with water, and rolling it around on a surface to see how it interacts. While it's not perfect, it will give you some idea of what's missing with the interaction between the blob and your actor.

Another thing which I don't know if you've done, is to match the surface of the actor in your 3D scene, so the blob will actually flow around them.

[quikfx]

it looks flat because you don't have refeaction's.

[ShadowMaker SdR]

No reflections. Or refractions. Both of which are pretty necessary to create a good match.

[haz]

you can also bring your camera data from maya in shake to get a good track if your camera is moving in the shot...

just export your camera as a .ma file then load that into shakes multiplane....

tracking, reflections, refractions are all the basic important things you need in your shot right now.

keep us up to date with it

cheers

HaZ

[Titofer]

Thanks for your replies.....so it looks then that i need to worry about it more in the rendering ?



I really haven't played around with shadows, reflections and refractions that's why there is nothing of that in the render. I wanted to get the animation first....

So about having the blob crawl, creep on part of her body, where you actually see the blob dragging itself, leaving pieces of goo in her skin.....what do you guys recommend?



What I did is have a rough cube resembling her back and shoulder. Created a LIVE curve, then a softbody attached to the curve, making the particles collide with the cube and using a vortex. See image below.



1 . I would have thought that making particles collide with the surface and playing with the friction would make it crawl like but it still looks like it is floating....do you think that the shadows, reflections and refractions would do that ?



2. Anbother thing the footage im using now is just for reference, I actually haven't shot the real thing. When I shoot should she be wet or dry? I mean because ill ad the blob later in compositing....There is no camera movement just subtle movements of her. Tracking Points?

i have just started to play with realflow....don;'t know much about it....but maybe if you guys have any suggestions or outline the steps i would be able to do it.


Again thanks for your help and replies, I really appreciate them
thanks



titofer