FITC 2005 Presentations - Digital Creatures

Digital Creatures

Liquid Journey - [www.liquidjourney.com]

FITC 2005

-> Mathematical Motion

2 components
1. Value you have going towards target value
2. Moving one value towards another

-> Motion :: Chase

A = A + (B - A) / Constant
Dynamically creates target values randomly around the core value

-> Motion :: Flex

Includes dampening
Bungee effect
More fluid effect
Still can use same target effect

-> Targets & Motion

Moving the targets frequently is just as important as the motion itself

-> Constants

Change constants
Add a sine value to a constant

-> MCs

Physical presence
Limited to approximately 16,000 clips on the stage

-> Movie Clip Chains

Elements as part of a hierarchy
Lead element and mcs in the chain
Adding rotation to create spiral effect

-> Objects

MCs without the baggage
Require no physical presence on the stage
Have no inherent physical props

-> Object chains

Hierarchy of interconnected elements
Chase their target
They can all be drawn into one mc

-> Trig

Angles & Magnitudes
New_x = Point_x + Magnitude * Cosine (Angle);

-> Creating Volume

Create a radial of relative positions
Animate core points and the radial points give the appearance of depth

-> Add sine motion

Value from -1 to 1
Multiply magnitude you can control level of sine motion

-> Wireframes and Fills

-> Give them emotive values

Can be value from 0 - 100

-> Polygon Bitmap Tiles

Use masks and bitmaps to simulate texture
MC holder with a mask and a bitmap
Can use curveTo to create pretty extensive and realistic tiles
Build it from back to front to control stacking
Proximity checking not hitTtest

-> Controls tiles like you would any other mc add effects or whatever

-> Recursive functions

Feed it a var and it will manipulate the var then call itself with the new var passed in
Create a loop limit
Use a combo on onEnterFrame to control recursion and not have it iterate in one frame (iterate over time)

-> Flash is a 2d space

Creating 3d environments in Flash
Creature will pull through itself in 3d space

-> 3d Flash specific issues

Choosing a depth
Hard to create an average depth from 3 or 4 points
MCs cannot intersect another so every MC must exist on it's own depth
And of the creatures points can travel through it's body
POV & Camera Position
Use a camera to calculate

-> Use the spokes of the wireframe to texture

Local Global rotations
Build the 3d world at perpendicular angles
Simulates a top down perspective

-> Include an offset

-> Cotangent to find angle

-> Uses "Motion Capture" data

Keyframed animation to pumped out x y values
Converted x y data to x z data and added y

-> Add delay to create natural swarm and motion effects

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Presentation Files