Progress on Procedural Animation

I am planning to use a procedural animation to make the Pop-up Book transition for the "festival of extroversion" in which the clymax and reaolution take place.

This is my latest project from 7104. It is a "Booknado". I do not plan to use the tornado form in the scene, but the procedural animation concepts will be used to make the book open and add to the cheerful/charming aesthetic I am looking to achieve for the intro to the scene.

Trying to figure out this procedural animation stuff... It is rough... Instead of just taking a simple cube or a sphere, and sculpting it into what you want, you have to manipulate things with nodes and code... e.g. the parameters of the books in the Booknado are manipulated with algorithms; the pages bulge out as the books opens, and it is adjustable and randomizable (in theory, it isn't working yet), and the formula that tells them how much to bulge is ((ch("../Rotation_Pivot/rz") /90) - 1 *-1) * (.6 - (0.06*(ch("../Stiffy/scale"))))

When I get it to work, each book will be different, with randomly assigned length, height, number of pages, the thickness of the pages (Stiffy in the above formula), color, thickness of the cover, and the speed of the flapping will be controlled by how fast it is going... In theory, but I cannot get the particle generator that is spitting out the points to assign a unique value to each book, so the random is not working.

2 Sided Page

I have been trying to fix a problem I had with the 2 sided texture of the page for turning animation; I have not had much success.
The texture on the front of the page needs to be different from the texture on the back.
The image has to match the connecting shot perfectly. the pages do not lay perfectly flat because if you adjust the nCloth dynamics so they have no resistance to bend or friction, they don't move like paper. The solution I used was to map the UV texture for the initial frame with a "camera map", animate the dynamics around the last frame to relax, and adjust the UVs for the last frame manually.

(Hypergraph of the 2 sided texture nodes)

It is passable for a page that is mostly white, but the manually perspective matched UV map, would not work with a detailed texture.

It occured to me that I might use a "use background" texture for one of the sides, and duplicate the geometry on another layer, with the "use background"texture applied to the other side, but I have run into the same problem I had initially. If you map a texture after you apply the nCloth, the texture is not going to be pinned to the material. I have not found a tutorial that shows you how to pin a texture after a deformation that is attached to the geometry in the state the geometry was in on the time-slider when it was applied.

Starting to Create the Interface in Adobe Animate

I have started to learn Adobe Edge Animate, which I plan to use to create the final book.
So far, everything looks like it is going to work except the record feature, which I do not see a way to do in any of the tutorials I have watched. I have a page that is online, the tough and swipe features work, and the video scales appropriately across the devices I have tried.
Right now, it is only compatible with tablets, phones, or another device that has a touch screen because the page turns are done with a swiping motion, and I don't want to add a mouse interface because I think it would ruin the experience.
It has a bit of a glitch with the "Goose-Tracks" prompt, and I was working on that last night, but it is a problem that I am confident I will resolve soon. Then it will be a matter of composing the story, creating the animations, and putting everything together.

Working on a Digital Pop-Up Book for an Establishing Shot

I am hoping the Procedural Animation Class I am taking will be useful to make a Digital Pop-Up book that I can use to make an establishing shot.

Cover

The cover is a box with a divide. The inside points are grouped and the size is increased with a transform. The height and width are controlled by the scaling of the pages [ch("../PageScale/sx")*1.01], but the y axis is another slider to independently adjust the thickness of the cover. Shere is an adjustment to the translation to compensate for the shear of the pages [((ch("../Rotation_Pivot/rz")/-90) *+0.0184) -.02] and a negative shear, that was intended to be a subtle deformation as the book opens, but it has not been developed yet.

Pages

The pages are a box with a shear a soft transform to curve the shear and a soft transform to swell the pages as the book opens.

The Shear distortion is a combination of shear with a strength manipulated bu the angle of the book [((ch("../Rotation_Pivot/rz")/-90) -1) *-0.4], and a soft transform translating on the roatation of the book [(ch("../Rotation_Pivot/rz") + 90) *-0.0005]

The bulge is controlled by a slider to simulate the stiffness of the pages and the angle of the book. Y axis translation of the soft transform used the following function: ((ch("../Rotation_Pivot/rz") /90) - 1 *-1) * (.6 - (0.06*(ch("../Stiffy/scale"))))

Bothe the cover and pages are mirrored on the YZ axis with a pivot at the top corner of the pages.

Spine

The spine has been a problem. I intended the number of pages to be adjustable, but the shear changes the X and Y coordinates of the edge of the cover that intersects the spine, and the value of this offset changes as the book gets thicker.  

The without the shear distortion the Y coordinate of the intersection is (cos( ch("../Rotation_Pivot/rz") and the X is (sin( ch("../Rotation_Pivot/rz"). I added a fit as a fudge factor [it(-ch("../Rotation_Pivot/rz"), 0, 90, -90, 0)], but the values change as the book gets thicker, and I have not figured out how to compensate for the variable. As a result, increasing the number of pages causes the spine to detatch from the edges.

Metafiction

Interacting with the audience might be the direction for the next act.

B. J. Novak’s ‘Book With No Pictures’ and More
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/09/books/review/b-j-novaks-book-with-no-pictures-and-more.html?_r=0


Metafiction is a literary device used self-consciously and systematically to draw attention to a work's status as an artifact. It poses questions about the relationship between fiction and reality, usually using irony and self-reflection. It can be compared to presentational theatre, which does not let the audience forget it is viewing a play; metafiction forces readers to be aware that they are reading a fictional work.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metafiction


Postmodern literature is literature characterized by reliance on narrative techniques such as fragmentation, paradox, and the unreliable narrator; and often is (though not exclusively) defined as a style or a trend which emerged in the post–World War II era. Postmodern works are seen as a response against dogmatic following of Enlightenment thinking and Modernist approaches to literature.^[1]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodern_literature

Latest Store Interior Shots

Interior for the Text World shot

One aisle for the interior of the Butcher Shop

Almost...

I spent a bit of time on it, but I will probably use it in this shot more than once. There is no texture because I am using this strictly for text projection.

Adding Aprons

Added some kitchen/BBQ utensils, cans, and boxes

14 Different Bottles