During the making of the film “Barnyard,” which happened to be around the time ICE was being first conceptualized and built, a number of effects were identified which were a challenge at the time. Some of those effects became some of the first demonstration compounds later, presumably Helge and others still had those challenges in mind… making footprints in mud, falling leaves, rain/snow interacting on characters etc.
One effect involved a bunch of hay getting dumped on a character. At the time Hans Payer completed the effect via some nice scripting and syflex tricks. Now in ICE it is pretty easy, so when a thread about a similar effect was mentioned on the softimage list, and so soon after I had done the post-sim tutorial, I gave it a quick go. They basically asked for a way to use strands with the “falling leaves” compound. Here’s the result… while the collisions are not accurate the way RBDs would be I hope it’s food for thought at least. :D
[vimeo]http://www.vimeo.com/56985570[/vimeo]
Caveat: like similar tricks using the post simulation tree, motion blur is a concern… this is the kind of “quickie” effect that can often get you by, but hero shots would take a lot more effort, for instance if you had to see clearly the fibers bend and react to collisions, collide with each other, accurate mb etc. That kind of difference in the details is why feature film effects can get so hairy – often you can’t get away with simple cheats like this one.
File: softimage 2013 .scn, 237 kb