How to make random water particles? 13.5

[lazyroll]

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/831477149978288193/ how to achieve this water particles effect going all over the place (preferably random, inside a specific shape in the scene (masking), for example custom oval aquarium)? More or less exact sizes (some of them a little smaller than others), some of them being more blurry than others as well.

I'm using Moho 13.5

[Hoptoad]

I did something like that once. I didn't use particles.

I made a layer and created a tiny circle shape with a soft edge. I copied the circle several times into different locations. Then I animated each circle moving.

Then I made a new layer and created a smaller circle. I gave it some transparency and copied it into several locations. Then I animated those circles.

I have no idea how to make particles do that, though. Good luck.

I recall a video tutorial Victor made about creating particles in a sunbeam. If you can find that video, it might be helpful.

[slowtiger]

Assuming you're talking about those little white specks: no, that's not possible in Moho's particle engine, because they accelerate and decelerate, but Moho can do only one of this in any given particle layer.

Since it looks like pickles in jello anyway, I'd create a handfull specks in one layer, make them move back and forth a bit with a mesh, and then move the whole layer in the direction of the water. Repeat with 2 or 3 more layers.

[Greenlaw]

Oh, I do that sort of thing all the time! Mostly in my VFX work, but in some 2D animations too. Throughout my career, I've worked on so many underwater 'epics' (mostly b-movies like Sharknado 2,) that it's almost embarrassing...and floating particulates come with the territory!

If you're using a 3D animation or composting program, it's just a point cloud with some turbulent displacement pushing the points around. You can use a particle emitter to create the point cloud, but it's really just a static object being deformed, and there are many ways to create a point cloud. For added realism, you can attach instances of simple geometry to the points to give them irregular shapes. For a little more realism, add a little 'wind' to push the points in a specific direction. Most of the time, just moving the whole object is good enough, no need for a wind effector.

Creating a gigantic, miles-deep point cloud is unnecessary because the points are only visible in front of the camera and up to a certain distance before they get too small or fade out. When the camera is moving out of the cloud, just place a duplicate cloud ahead of the camera's path. You can do this as an 'off-camera' gag or have them fade in so you don't see it pop on.

As for the 'blurriness', that's a real-world lens effect called depth-of-field. Basically, you set the focal range for your camera, and anything that moves out of range will go blurry. In your jellyfish example, the focal range is where the jellyfish is, so any particulates near the jellyfish or on the same focal plane will be in focus. Particulates behind or in front of the jellyfish fall outside the focal range and become blurry. Almost any animation or compositing program with a 3D environment supports this feature.

Is this relevant to Moho, though? Yes, because Moho has a particle system and a 3D environment. That said, doing this effect in another program is probably much easier.

One example is the Sea Majors musical number I animated for Fast & Furious: Spy Racers a few years ago (S5,E3.) All of the characters were animated using Moho, but I composited the scenes in After Effects and used a plugin called Trapcode Particular to generate my point cloud. The emitter literally barfed out all the points I needed by frame 1 and then stopped emitting. From there, it was just turbulent displacement pushing the points around. Easy-peasey.

Based on my experience with Moho, this is technically possible in Moho because it has the necessary ingredients:

1. a particle system
2. a 3D environment
3. a 3D camera with DOF settings

I never tried this creating this effect in Moho because I had other tried-and-true ways to create the effect, but if anyone here wants to try for themselves, let us know how it goes.

[synthsin75]

Sure, just animate one of more individual particles, with the varying turbulence, and then randomize the particle playback with the acceleration disabled.

[Greenlaw]

A really good cheat that's also 2D-friendly (no particle system necessary) is to draw your particulates on a large layer (use the Scatter brush) and stack multiple copies of the layer at different depths. Then, add some 'drift' by sliding the layers, and use displacement to animate the particulates 'individually'.

You'll want to reposition, rotate, and flip the layers so you don't notice a repeatable pattern. Don't scale the layers because that will defeat the purpose of placing them at different depth levels.

You can use real DOF to blur the particulates, but it's probably easier and less CPU/GPU intensive to just blur the layers to appropriate levels as they fall farther away from your main subject's layer (i.e., the item the camera is supposed to be 'focused' on.)

[Greenlaw]

That last idea got me curious, so I made a quick-and-dirty test. Here's the result...



This is done without particles or any form of dynamics. It's all basic Moho.

Yes, I know it's 'ugly,' but I didn't want to spend too much time on a proof-of-concept test. What's important is that this demonstrates that creating particulates with a DOF effect is fairly easy in Moho.

Here's the project file if anyone wants to look...

DofParticulatesTest.moho




This is a Moho 14 file, and I'm not sure the file is compatible with 13.5.5 and earlier (Update: it's compatible; see post below,) but I'm not using any features unique to Moho 14 other than the improved display quality. If anyone really needs it, I can export a Moho 12.5 version, which should also be compatible with 13.5.5.

Explanation follows...

The project has four unique layers:

• particulates - this is a layer with a bunch of dots drawn on it. I used the Scatter tool to draw the dots.
• sample - this is the dot art used by the Scatter tool.
• fish - the fish
• backdrop - the deep backdrop art

To give the particulates depth, I made five reference layers. I made references because I wanted to add animation to my master particulates layer later, and I only wanted to do this once. Then I moved the layers in space in front of and behind the fish layer. Layers 3 and 4 are closest to the fish, and layers 1 and 6 are farthest from the fish. In orbit view, the project looks like this...



Depth of Field is enabled in the Project Settings, which is why you see a purple box in the center. The center of the box is where the focal point is, and the length of the box shows the focal range relative to the camera over on the left side. Anything inside this range remains in focus (i.e., the fish and layers 3 and 4,) and anything outside of the range will get gradually blurry. Here are the settings I used...



Play around with the settings: Increasing Focus distance moves the focal plane, which is the spot with the clearest focus. Increasing the Focus Range will make the box get longer, illustrating the region where items remain in focus. Increasing Max Blur will make the images outside the range look more blurry.

After positioning your layers, you'll want to flip and offset the layers so you don't see a repeating pattern. For example, here's what the project looked like before I offset the layers...



It's trippy but probably not what you want.

You'll notice that I grouped the near and far particles in separate FG and BG groups. This was so I could slide them in two places instead of six...much easier to animate. Because of the depth, we get a nice parallax effect without even moving the camera.

Finally, I wanted to give the individual particulates some life but didn't want to spend much time animating them. To do this, I selected my master (i.e., original) particulates layer, set the current frame to 120, and then randomly pushed some individual particulates around using the Manget tool. Once I was done, I made sure the two keyframes were set to Linear. This process for animating individual particulates for all of the layers literally took less than two minutes to do.

And that was it! I still think it's easier to add this effect in a compositing program like Fusion or After Effects, but it's certainly doable in Moho too.

The one quirky issue I ran into was that the fish got blurry in the workspace when it wasn't selected. Like this...



Not a problem, though. First, this is a display issue, not a rendering issue, so the fish is in focus when I render the project. I can check this using Ctrl-R. Second, the display issue is easy to fix: Just disable GPU Cache from the Display list in the corner...



So, that's one way to do this effect in Moho.

[Greenlaw]

I tried opening the project in Moho 13.5.5, and it's fine.

In 13.5.5, I see the same display issue with the blurry fish when it's not selected, but disabling GPU Acceleration in the Display Quality options fixes this.

[Greenlaw]

Oh, this just occurred to me: My original description mentioned applying blur directly to the layers, but in the above project, I used Moho's DOF effect. I could have just as well disabled DOF and applied different blur levels to each layer.

If you want to have more control over the look, you might want to apply blur to the layers instead of fiddling with the DOF settings. This might be more efficient to render and also solve the blurry fish display problem when the GPU Cache is enabled. It's up to you...use whichever method is easiest and gives you the result you want.

Have fun!

[lazyroll]

Thanks for all of the suggestions! I will try to come up with something. It doesn't have to be as perfect as to the original, I just need it as close as possible, I can sacrifice some of the things here and there.

[SuperSGL]

You may even be able to take one of the layers of dots and add a bone set up on it with some wind. The strength would probably have to be way down other wise you would get too much of a jerky motion. You might even try rendering out at or over 60 fps and use a video editor to slow it down. Never tried anything like that myself so not sure that would even work (but in theory it sounds like it could )

[hayasidist]

this was done with particles for the bubbles and the lighting. (Done in 14, but only using 13.5 functionality)

The "bubble" particle layers move around -- there are 3 of them, all based on the same structure:
particle
> bubble
> source

two follow a very wiggly curve (Layer - Follow Path) and one just crawls around the edge of the render area,

[mmmaarten]

this was done with particles for the bubbles and the lighting. (Done in 14, but only using 13.5 functionality)

Looks nice!

[SuperSGL]

That looks excellent!! Awesome job!

[hayasidist]

thanks for kind words.

here's the file (13.5 version) for anyone who wants it https://www.mediafire.com/file/yxgivcyf ... .moho/file