Tornado

[pihms]

A while back, Victor had demonstrated with an example of an ocean wave with particles that follow along a path, beautiful example. I was able to take that example and roll it in to a circle to create a tunnel effect with particles. I was than able to angle that tunnel so that it was vertical in a cylinder format. My question is how would you narrow the bottom of that cylinder, like that of a tornado? I haven’t tried it yet, and need to, would the mesh and pin bones help in this case? I’m looking at a narrowing of the bottom portion and a wobble to off set the cylinder.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

[synthsin75]

A reminder of where to find Victor's ocean wave demo, or your tunnel particle file would go a long way toward helping you.

[slowtiger]

Tiny reminder that you don't need to achieve a certain effect in one go, in one rig, in one file. Study your storyboard, dissect the scene into manageable parts, decide which problem you're going to tackle with which tool in which sequence.

(The first tornado FX in film history was done by Buster Keaton, they used a nylon stocking in a model landscape then, still quite convincing.)

[Greenlaw]

I've done tons of tornado fx but they always had sharks swimming in them. Of course, that was for 'realistic' tornados. (Ha, ha.)

Some ideas for 2D cartoon tornados: I would just make a tornado shaped mask with soft edges and slide a 'wind lines' texture through it; if you want something more complex, run two textures at different speeds and semi-transparency. I would also apply a mesh on top the give the 'wind lines' a slight arc (arc upward if the tornado is being viewed from below, arc downward if being viewed from above.)

If you want more detail, use a particle emitter to twirl some bits inside the shape. Place a card with a semi-transparent gradient, roughly the same shape as the tornado, so the edges fade and gradually reveal the bits in as they come around the sides and become more visible as they near the camera. (You don't really want to see the bits moving in the opposite direction on the other side of the tornado, not very much anyway.)

I don't have an example to show, but maybe I can do a tutorial for this idea some day.

I did make 'simple' tornado for a couple of Thighsander Plunderhorse shots in All Hail King Julien a few years ago. They're very short but you can see a couple of stages on my 2017 demo reel at around 2:00. From what I recall, it was just a bunch of stacked discs with circular brush strokes mapped on them. The interior was a vaguely tornado shaped painting that was probably deformed using procedural displacement or some kind of mesh warping, or maybe just a bone chain. (Sorry, it's been a while, but any of these or a combination of them would work fine.)

Here's a still from it...



And what SlowTiger said about not having to do this in 'one go' is absolutely true. When elements of an effect are broken out into separate layers or passes, it's easier and faster to dial in the exact look you want, especially when the layers are already 'pre-rendered'. (At this point, I'm talking about using a compositing program like Fusion or After Effects to dial in a look. I guess you can do this with Moho too, but it's more efficient to do this in a dedicated compositing program.)

Just try not to get too hung up on details...less can be more in many situations, especially in a 2D cartoon.

Hope this helps.

[slowtiger]

Love your tornado design! It's so nicely old-fashioned, like something from the Flintstones.

[pihms]

A reminder of where to find Victor's ocean wave demo, or your tunnel particle file would go a long way toward helping you.

Here is the file Victor had posted:https://www.dropbox.com/s/9g9ne5f43h52b ... .moho?dl=0

And a link to that post:http://www.lostmarble.com/forum/viewtop ... 56#p172756

Thank you for the help and suggestions! They all sound like the best way to go. I'll work on those and build me a twister.

BTW your tornado example is inspiring!

[Greenlaw]

Love your tornado design! It's so nicely old-fashioned, like something from the Flintstones.

Thanks! The design part was the DWA art department, but I had to figure out how to make it move like a tornado in the animation.

A little more from what I remember about the setup: I probably did this in After Effects or LightWave but the same idea should translate to Moho. The discs were each parented to a null object in a chain of nulls, and turning the root null (at the top,) spins all of the discs at a constant rate. Then each bone down the chain had a slight rotation added so by the time we get to the base of the tornado, the lowest disc is spinning much faster than the top disc. I might have added an expression to increasingly multiply the spin rate so I wouldn't have to keyframe each null. (Or, maybe I just keyframed it. If I was really pressed for time, I probably just keyframed it and called it 'done'.)

Not that you can ever tell that's going on with the example on my demo reel. It's a very short animation, made even shorter on the reel because I probably sped up the footage to cut with the music better. But if the tornado is going to be on-screen for longer, details like this can help make the scale more believable.

Now that I'm thinking about it, I've probably used a similar setup to spin stacked clusters of points (particles) to create realistic tornado VFX. (Some of the Asylum stuff was almost certainly done that way.) In my experience, this is much easier and more predictable than trying to wrangle dynamics to behave the way you want. (My motto: When the budget and time is tight, cheat like crazy!)

[pihms]

Tiny reminder that you don't need to achieve a certain effect in one go, in one rig, in one file. Study your storyboard, dissect the scene into manageable parts, decide which problem you're going to tackle with which tool in which sequence.

(The first tornado FX in film history was done by Buster Keaton, they used a nylon stocking in a model landscape then, still quite convincing.)

I'll have to watch the Keaton version. I always liked the innovative and skill of Keaton films.

[synthsin75]

http://www.filedropper.com/tornado_1

[pihms]

Greenlaw, you examples helped tremendously! On top of that, the example from the demo reel demonstrated exactly what I was looking at.

Synthsin75, what a great example! Helps to see the "Proof-in-the-Pudding".

Great to see the support Moho has!

[Greenlaw]

For old school tornado fx, also watch the Wizard of Oz...very convincing and all practical. Like the Keaton example described earlier, this too was a spinning cone shaped sock.

[SimplSam]

I have no immediate need for the Surf wave nor the Tornado, but I will be keeping them both in my war chest for study or re-use. It sometimes amazes me what is achievable with Moho, some lateral thinking and a creative mind or two. Well done.

[jahnocli]

Ace twister!

[SuperSGL]

Another of Victor's (don't remember where it is or what it's called) but he used a mesh with pin bones and the particles use this as a smart warp. It was genius. His example was in the shape of an hour glass but you could probably shape it to a tornadoe and animate the bones for movement.