24. A world of rendering

This is going to be a big update! Ive been rendering and skiddeling with Ndynamics for so many many hours  its easy to get lost in it all. Over all i think i am getting a lot closer to a continental feel. At first it was really hard to get generalized brushes of how the particles should act. This is all in an aim to get the look of the visuals to emulate something that is relate-able it needs to be a visual que that evokes something planetary and yet fluid enough to draw upon movement of lava in a lava lamp. The goal is to make something that will create a connection between the two objects revealing a commonality in how they are heated, how they move and cause the viewer to reflect on the fact that its all happening beneath their feet in slow motion.

the first few renders resembled rain drops in a blender but altering the conserve, blobby scale radius, incompressibility, mass, threshold and an array of other attributes in the particles and attraction / dispersion of the emitter, it started to look more continental and like mass covering a something spherical. 

I thought this is too compact, and too risen to be continents.

This iteration is more promising, I like the connections between the lumps and want to follow that though and see if I can get then even thinner or even more connected .

At this point i started to play with the self attract and getting the particles to draw towards each other creating a lot better looking masses, with the potential to animate the self attract pull to get them to move around like continents joining together and coming apart.

Playing some more with the settings I managed to get the particles to reflect a more lava type effect, i will compare this to other more solid results and see what is more visually conducive to the core ideas of flowing movement and viscosity

This is far more continental, I realy want to see if i can get the particles in this iteration to animate how i would like, though reality problem is that despite my laptop being very good, its struggling with some of the models and simulations im making. I am considering getting a new desktop to combat this as the uni computers are even worse. Especially since this is out-with any scenes or other assets and its just going to get more taxing.

More work on animating the particles that have an attraction to each other, they are very unruly and hard to get control of . One of the the issues that i have encountered is that the surface emitter means that the volume field effectors wont interact with the particles, meaning that i cant coheres them into shapes that i want using them. Just another hurdle to find a new way around, i am determined that they can be used for what i need, I think i am close, just need to keep experimenting and learning the system. I am thoroughly enjoying using the particles so far and think its a great new feather to my cap.

Here I started adding some planetary lighting to this iteration of the particles to see how they would look. its using a volume sphere that has white on one side of the colour shader and back in the other, then set it to Y gradient and rotate till it faces the right way. I Like it and think it gives more depth to the image, its another way that i could connect the abstract image to something more planetary ensuring the visual language is being clear as possible.

Jumping between the 3/4 different particle iterations i am leaning a lot and trying to combine them in to something that can embody or rather em-continent the world. I get a little closer each time but its such a slow process and I seem to lose hours to entering different values and sliding blobby scale radius bars etc to get there. 

I made a mood board to tr and convey what kind of feeling i want from the lighting and the 'atmosphere' surrounding the particles, this will again help enforce a context to the visuals enabling the viewer to better grasp the concept. Though the important bit would be that they take away from the imagery what they can glean, its an individual process that has merit within the true movement of particles yet is loose enough that it can allow for imagination and the real seed of learning. 

Above and below are some more of the planetary lighting tests that i have been doing, i really like the middle one as the blue tint to the effect makes it seem more like the blue haze if the atmosphere that encompass the planet .

For my personal development id say Ive learnt so much about dynamics since attending lynns Dynamics class, it may just be a small spectrum in the dynamics field but i now feel a lot more confident, and in the weeks ahead ill be looking into more interesting ways to see if i cant get these particles moving more like continents.