As promised. Some R&D into a new piece. This piece is inspired by organic tree growth. Layers of bark growing and peeling, revealing new layers underneath. This R&D is still very rough. Needs more substeps for stability, etc. Lots of layers of vellum constraints here.

This is a GL preview, BTW, with a temp texture just for viewing texture distortion etc.

A little info on what’s shown. This is just sim data. High res geo will use this data as a deformer. Simulation is a lot of vellum layers, all co-dependent and pinned together. Lots of tweaking of constraint break thresholds and conditions.

I had some thoughts initially to constrain the vellum to rigid bodies, but that didn’t give me the stretchiness and plasticity I was looking for.

Update for some stability fixes. Instead of using no-volume vellum sheets, I added geo thickness and strut constraints to hold it together, changed my stitch constraints to welds (disabled collisions on the weld-seam points), and added layer id's. Only 2 substeps for now.

The goal is to build this into 6-10 layers of continual growth and shedding, then somehow loop back to the beginning. Haven't planned further ahead than that. Maybe inside there's a seed that becomes this tree? Or camera is zooming out the whole time revealing original tree?

For my process, I'll get a stable sim going, then start to work out the details of camera and loop. I don't need to know all the answers right away. Just play until the concept feel right.

Sooo much work to get something stable. Scaling up to 6 layers was impossible to iterate. So, I've decided to break it down into individually simulated layers. Went back to spring constraints between pieces, and created a custom erosion setup to control when pieces would detach.

I'm ok with it looking rubbery. That's intentional. Not trying to make a literal tree growth, just inspired by it. I like the pieces flopping over each other.

Little update. Starting to show the general flow. Each layer that is revealed will have a different texture. Maybe something wild or patterns thrown in there. Lots to play with. Total loop time may end up being around 1 minute.

I'm liking documenting this progress, for anyone out there that thinks we just press a magic button and cool work comes out. It's a lot of work to make a digital simulated piece.

Uggg... so, even though the sim looks good, getting it to deform the high res geo was a big fail, due to little islands that show in pieces that should be one continuous piece. I'm working on a solve... :(

Progress. I decided to just make everything granular sheets, but keeping a lot of my constraints, etc. from before. Now looking very high res. Need to finesse keyframes between layers, but that's detail work.

this is what 1 layer of the granular sim looks like. ~1 million particles.

Damnit. I’m going to change techniques again. Still not happy with this.

Being a perfectionist is awful. Things get 80% there, and then you throw it all away because it just isn’t right. Next one is it. I feel it in my bones.

Did it! This is stable and sufficiently good with edge detail and without the triangulated look. Also looks a little more brittle, which I like. Ended up cleaning the high res geo and simulating it, and adjusted some solver settings to help with stability. Texture dev next.

the couple little scale pulses you may see in there are places where the keyframes need adjusting. (minor detail work). Will start building more layers of this and working it into a full loop. but, texture work first.

small test of materials and color story. Animation is messed up at the end, and it needs to be much much longer, and loop, too. This material is inspired by a jacket my daughter owns. I think of watching her grow, and wanting to be inspired by it in some small way for my art.

Still need to address some issues with the geo normals, but that is a minor thing.

Each layer is reading from a gradient ramp, so as I add more layers, the colors will automatically adapt to the new range.

Layers now controlled procedurally in a for-each loop to auto-generate. And added debris particles. Now, need to make it loop and then resolve some of the issue with the geometry normals. I'll probably cycle my gradient faster so there is more contrast between layers, too.

It loops now (may glitch on Twitter) and the geometry normals are now fixed. May render at high res/clean samples and call the visuals done...?