Avalanche and Meteor Destruction
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The document describes a 3D simulation project created using Blender software that includes simulations of an avalanche and a meteor destroying a building. The avalanche simulation models snowy mountains, trees, a house, falling snow, and the avalanche itself using Blender's modeling, particle simulation, and smoke simulation tools. The meteor simulation similarly models glass buildings and animates a meteor impact. Other works created with Blender as part of the project include a 3D car game made with Unity. The document provides details on how the avalanche simulation was modeled, textured, lit, and rendered to look realistic.
Avalanche and Meteor Destruction
- 1. Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology Thiruvananthapuram Department of Avionics AV487: Virtual Reality Project Report on Disaster Simulations (Avalanche & Destruction by Meteor) Devireddy Pramod Reddy Bharat Devasani
- 2. Acknowledgement First of all, we would like to thank Deepak Mishra sir, for his encouragement to study about 3D graphics and virtual reality which is one of the major trending area. We are sure that the study made in these topics will be of definite help in our future. Next we would like to thank Rahul Waghmare for his patience to wait for us in VR lab until midnight. Finally we would like to thank all our family members and friends for their support and appreciation which helped us to move forward and complete the work.
- 3. Abstract of Report Our project includes 3D disaster simulations like Avalanche and Destruction of building by a meteor which are made using Blender software. A 3D interactive car game and Face Detection was also made as part of the project. The game was created using Unity and Blender. Face detection was done using Convolutional Neural Networks in python. The Avalanche simulation includes 3D scene of snowy mountains, snow fall, trees and wooden house. And the simulation, Destruction of Building by a meteor includes 3D view of glass buildings, meteor with fire and smashing a part of glass building by the meteor realistically. In this report we describe how all the above details are created using Blender.
- 4. Contents 1. Introduction 2. Avalanche 3. Meteor Destruction 4. Other works using Blender
- 5. 1. Introduction A graphic is a visual representation of an object or a scene. Computer graphics (CG) are simply images or videos displayed on a computer screen. CG can be either 2D or 3D. Early computers only supported 2D monochrome graphics, meaning they were black and white. Eventually, computers began to support color images. While the first machines only supported up to 256 colors, but now most computers support millions of colors. 3D graphics started to become popular in the 1990s, along with 3D rendering software such as CAD and 3D animation programs. By the year 2000, many video games had begun incorporating 3D graphics, since computers had enough processing power to support them. Now most computers come with a 3D graphics card that handles all the 3D processing. This allows even basic home systems to support advanced 3D games and applications. There are many 3D softwares available in market, some of the famous are Autodesk Maya, 3ds Max, Softimage, Cinema 4D, Houdini, Lightwave, Blender, Unity etc. Blender and Unity are some of the famous free softwares. The 3D simulations Avalanche and Meteor destruction are done using Blender and the car game was made using Unity. Blender: Blender is a free professional and open-source 3D computer graphics software used for creating 3D models, animations, visual effects, video games and interactive 3D applications. It features include 3D modeling, UV unwrapping, texturing, rigging, smoke simulation, particle simulation, sculpting, animating, camera tracking, rendering, video editing, compositing etc. Along these features it also includes game engine used to make real-time interactive content. The game engine was written from scratch in C++ as a mostly independent component, and includes support for features such as Python scripting.
- 6. 3D modeling: The process of developing a 3D surface for any object. UV unwrapping: The 3D modeling process of making a 2D image representation of a 3D model’s surface. Texture mapping: Method for adding detail, surface texture or color to a computer- generated graphic or 3D model. Rigging: It is a technique in computer animation in which a character is represented in two parts: a surface representation used to draw the character and a hierarchical set of interconnected bones (called skeleton or rig) used to animate the mesh. Smoke simulation: It is used to simulate the fluid movement of air and generate animated voxel textures representing the density, heat and velocity of other fluids or suspended particles (i.e. smoke) which can be used for rendering. Particle simulation: It is technique in computer graphics that uses a large number of very small sprites, 3D models or other graphic objects to simulate certain kind of fuzzy phenomenon, which are otherwise hard to reproduce with conventional techniques - usually natural phenomena, or processes caused by chemical reactions. Sculpting: It offers tools to push, pull, smooth grab, pinch or otherwise manipulate a digital object as if it were made of a real-life substance such as clay. Rendering: It is the process of generating an image from a 2D or 3D model by means of computer programs which considers geometry, viewpoint, texture, lighting, shading and all possible details. Compositing: It is the combining of visual elements from separate sources into single images, often to create the illusion that all those elements are parts of the same scene.
- 7. 2. Avalanche An avalanche, also called as snowslide or snowslip is a rapid flow of snow down a sloping surface. Avalanches are typically triggered in astarting zone from a mechanical failure in the snowpack when the forces on the snow exceed its strength but sometimes only with gradually widening (loose snow avalanche). After initiation, avalanches usually accelerate rapidly and grow in mass and volume as they entrain more snow. Avalanche disaster simulation was created using blender. As part of the simulation we created snowy mountain, trees, wooden house, snow fall, avalanche and sky etc. All are textured so that we get a real experience of the avalanche. The following are the processes followed to get the final required simulation. Modeling 1. Landscape:- created directly from inbuilt add-on present in blender. As the inbuilt landscape is not in perfect shape for avalanche, we edited the landscape mesh according to our need by making high peak for avalanche start-point. 2. Snow-fall:- we created snow fall by adding a plane above the mountains and giving it a particle system so that it emits particles. And we made a small sphere of size of snow particle. Then we linked the particle system with this snow particle so that all the particles emitted will be of this shape and size.
- 8. (Small particles are the snow particles and the plane above is the particle system that emits snow) 3. Trees:- trees are also created from the inbuilt blender add-on. But we need to model it according to our requirement and then texture it. As we need more trees we can made two types of trees and then duplicated to make more trees. These duplicated trees are again scaled down for obtaining different heights. Finally all the trees are placed randomly at the foot of the mountains. 4. Wooden House:- a house is created separately in blender and is textured with the images of wood so that it looks like a wooden house by UV unwrapping. Whole house is built from a single plane. All the structures are made by extruding the same plane in different directions. Finally the created house is copied into the avalanche scene.
- 9. 5. Sky:- A sky image is taken and added as an environment texture in world settings. Finally making avalanche... 6. Avalanche:- Avalanche is snow falling from peak of the mountain, and making it is complex. There is no inbuilt option for snow. So, we have to make it from what are existing in blender. Blender has inbuilt smoke simulation system and particle system. We can think of avalanche as dense white smoke falling from the mountain. So we need little physics for it. When snow hits the surface it should make some collisions but smoke will not make any collisions. So make a particle system, give it collision property and we link the smoke to the particle system. Therefore the smoke will follow the particles. But it is not that simple. We started as follows: Making of Avalanche:- 1. As smoke has to start from the surface of peak, we selected a part of mesh from the peak surface and made it a particle system. So that it emits particles from the surface which collides with the mountain surface and can have some bouncy property. Single plane
- 10. 2. Then we added a smoke simulation system and gave it a high density as we can consider the snow as dense white smoke. But the smoke is rising up so, a negative temperature is given to reverse the direction. (object mode) (render mode) 3. After setting all these, we have to refine the setting values like density, no. of particles, temp. difference, etc. for fine making it as real as possible. (This is the hard part). Texturing & Coloring After modeling we have to give color and texture to all the above models which is the essential part for making it realistic. 1. Initially the landscape is given a bluish white color for making it to appear like snow filled mountains. 2. The trees are given a grey color. 3. The snow particles are also given bluish white. 4. The house is already textured (with wood images), so no need to do it again. 5. The smoke is given white color for the snow like look.
- 11. Lighting & Shading Lighting plays major role in shadow effects. The shadow is varied with the type of light source used. In our simulation we have used sun source which emits light in almost all directions. The shadow position depends upon the position of the light source. As we vary the position of sun source the shadows moves correspondingly. The strength of light source is also factor to be considered as more strength is given for a scene in afternoon and comparatively less during evening and morning. Camera The camera position is one of the factor that plays major role in viewing the scene realistically. We can observe that when we view any scene far away we don’t experience much of the effect. But when the same is observed close, the scene looks so realistic. Even the angle of camera will help to make it look like a 3D scene. If the camera is moving then it will be much more close to reality. In our simulation we kept the camera as close as possible to the avalanche and also tried to fit every detail of what we have done in the camera view. So, while rendered we can see the final video footage with every object in it. Rendering The final step is rendering. Blender has three modes of render: blender render, cycles render and blender game. We used cycles render which use ray tracing approach for rendering. It gives best graphic output. The output rendered video or image is dependent on the settings we give before rendering like resolution, frame rate, output format, sampling frequency, volume sampling etc. Among all these we have to take care about volume sampling. Because, as we have used smoke in our simulation, the light rays which fall on smoke will reflect on falling on the surface. If we keep volume sampling as zero, then the color of smoke is found to be still grey. This is because when the light rays fall on the smoke it simply reflects the light out so all smoke particles may not be seen and we get a grey effect. To overcome this, volume sampling is given a little high value so that there will be multiple reflections inside the smoke and we can observe white dense smoke which exactly looks like snow.
- 12. Avalanche scenes
- 13. 3. Meteor Destruction In this simulation, we created a realistic glass building and destroyed a part of it by colliding with the meteor. All the scene details are made as realistic as possible. The meteor is also made realistic by adding a fire tail to it. Modeling Glass building:- A building is generally symmetric so we use the same concept here. At first we make a window and add a mirror modifier to it which creates a mirror object of the same object and whatever changes are done in real window will apply for its mirror. Next we add an array modifier for duplicating the windows in horizontal direction and then another array modifier in vertical direction. Thus a symmetric building with multiple floors can be created. Designing is according to wish. Making a city with buildings:- To create a city we need many buildings. As we have already made a building, with this same building we can make different kinds of buildings just by scaling it in X, Y and Z directions. By scaling we can get buildings of large width and small height, tall and lean buildings etc. Make some of the buildings and then select all and duplicate to get a lot of buildings of similar kind. Then we can position buildings randomly or along the streets. The city was built just for the final realistic view.
- 14. Meteor:- The meteor is built from a simple cube. The cube is added with a modifier called subsurf which can shape the object to another form by increasing the subdivisions of the surface. After adding this modifier and by changing subdivision settings we can end up to a sphere. Then add displace modifier which completely changes the spherical shape to some random shape. Later we can add some texture to it for realistic view. The reason for adding subsurf modifier is because of easy editing of meteor structure which on edit mode will have only eight vertices (cube-8). And to change shape of the meteor we can simply edit these vertices. Meteor with fire tail:- To add fire tail to meteor duplicate the meteor and scale it down then add fire + smoke simulation system to it. But the fire and smoke will be rising up and for having a tail look we need to add a wind force field and give it an angle in the direction of tail so that the fire will start from meteor and becomes thin along the force field. The meteor is duplicated because when we give an object, smoke effect the rigid body changes to a transparent mesh like structure. Hence we scale down the duplicate and keep it inside the original meteor and we parent the duplicate meteor to the original so that meteor with fire and smoke moves along with the original.
- 15. (Texture mode) (Render mode) Building collision:- When the meteor collides with the building then there should be collision and this can be done by initially observing the area of impact and select that area and subdivide it to make it into small pieces. The total impact area has to separated out from the building then add collision property to the shards by assigning the shards, particle system and explode modifier. Animating the meteor:- The meteor was animated using keyframes. At the starting frame a Keyframe is inserted at the desired location and similarly at the last frame. So now as time goes on the meteor moves from initial location to final destination. Texturing and coloring Glass:- As the whole building is mostly made of glasses we need to make the glass as realistic as possible so that the whole building can be realistic. For this purpose we use a mixed shader of both glass and transparent BSDF. And the color assigned is sky blue. As we have added glass BSDF, we can see the image of sky on the glasses and transparent BSDF makes us to view the inside objects. These properties can be changed by changing roughness of surface. Walls:- Basically the walls are made of concrete hence the color will be grey. So similar to glasses we use different BSDFs for this purpose like diffuse and glossy. And the color assigned is grey.
- 16. Meteor:- The meteor can be textured with the help of an image and directly use UV unwrap to apply the whole image to the meteor. Meteor with fire:- Even the fire have to be given color and as we observe fire, it will have bright yellow at start and becomes red at tail. So, to make this kind of color combination a color ramp setting has to be applied to the fire + smoke system. Camera The camera position is set similar to that of avalanche simulation. In meteor destruction simulation the camera was given constraint such that it tracks the meteor throughout the time. The camera tracking helps us to view the disaster more realistically. The camera is set at a particular location and as the meteor coming from
- 17. a far distance, the meteor appears as a small object and as it approaches the building the meteor size increases as we can observe in reality. Rendering The destruction of building by meteor simulation is also rendered by cycles render which uses ray tracing approach. As we have added many systems like particle, fire + smoke and added a lot of modifiers the rendering takes lot of time to complete. Hence we avoided fire + smoke effect for meteor and performed rendering for meteor without any fire tail. Rendered Scenes
- 18. As the device is not effectively supporting a good resolution fire+ smoke system, sample low resolution image is rendered. (low resolution rendered image)
- 19. 4. Other works using Blender Hostel Room:
- 20. Spring Behavior:
- 21. Rocket: