Wednesday, 19 November 2014

COP3 Research: Northern Lights Test

I then wanted to do a test into how to create the Northern lights and there were a couple of ways that I could have done it. The first being purely using particle effects in Unity but when I tried looking at this it just wasn't quite working right and I wasn't getting the correct effects of the lines, just the blobs of particles moving across the screen. So I moved onto Maya and decided to use a curved plane and then key framing it to be able to move in a pattern across the scene so I decided to go with this idea and below is the process that I took to create it.

I started with a plane that had a joint chain running through it. I thought about just using a joint chain but when I tested it and moved the pieces I had some weird bending issues that didn't quite look right. So I decided to put a CV curve though the joint chain and attached it with an IK handle instead. I then selected 2 vertex points at a time and clustered them together so that I was able to key frame the movement.



I then created a simple texture in photoshop using the Alpha Channels and ensured that the background behind the colour was black so that when brought into Unity it would come up transparent. I first made this very quick texture to check that it worked and it looked nice in Unity. I added a particle addiction shader so that it was self illuminating and then went back into Photoshop to touch it up.

I then went back into Maya and created my animation for the test. I wanted to make 3 separate animations at this stage so that I could get a feel for the movement and how it would react in the sky. I wanted to animate this first to get an idea of how it was going to move before perfecting it so that I could still get a general idea of the final look.

I then went back into photoshop and edited the look of the northern lights further so that I didn't have any areas that looked strange and I edited this a few times to test the look of it, before I was happy with one of them that would suit the test that I was doing today.





This is then the final look of the test for now when the moving plane is taken from Maya and the final texture added and layered onto it. I am definitely happy with the result but want to play with it further to get it looking more like the Northern Lights and less jagged. The effect I am wanting to achieve is very similar to this and I want a nice slow movement in the end. 

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