Scientists observe what seems to be a giant metal sphere traversing a worn structure built into an industrial room - interesting!
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The dynamic machines challenge organized by Clinton Jones motivated me to try out simulations and rendering in blender.
Had many ideas, but had to cut a lot during the process since I am still figuring out this physics things.
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Experimented with Cycles rendering, but chose to render the animation with Eevee in the end. Probably could have baked the lighting and AO into textures to achieve a better result (or bake with cycles in the very end).
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Some other things I found exciting during this experiment:
- Drivers in Materials to switch on lights by Z-Positon of sphere, scrolling of UVs and mask around sphere (for dust).
- Used Instances whenever possible (slide segments/fixtures), created variation by offsetting UVs by object random value.
- Array meshes using curves with hook-modifiers to constraints for chains
- Project UV modifier proved very handy when modifying meshes without having to worry about topology/UVs (broken floor tiles)
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Scene could still be improved a lot, but time is up and I have to move on. Looking forward to use physics simulations in future experiments. And I want to do more renders.