Dakota Williams Capstone Blog

Animating Car, Blender Kit Cars & Lighting This is the final week of my capstone project where I did some final touch-ups in terms of animating the car with the built-in keyboard controls of the RBC Addon. I used the Blenderkit addon plugin to add low poly cars as it seemed fitting for the scene's atmosphere. I used a night HDRI file from Poly Haven and added a dim lighting area in the street lamps with a low-emission light. I also colour-graded the image sequence in Davinci Resolve due to the low light in the whole scene since wanted a dark-toned aesthetic.

Cell Fracture Wall Simulation I made a rigid body simulation where I had to assign each broken fragment to a rigid body object and specify its characteristics, including mass, friction, and bounciness. I added a mesh plane ground to react and then configured it to be a rigid, passive body. This ground will interact with the broken fragments to mimic the gravitational pull. I then baked the simulation to compute the physics before rendering the animation. The fragmented pieces will react realistically. This also gave me keyframes so I could play the simulation later on in the final render. 

Houdini FX RBD Fracture Simulation The process of RBD (Rigid Body Dynamics) fracture in Houdini is an intriguing and visually impressive technique often used to simulate the destruction of objects. However, users of Houdini Apprentice, the free version of Houdini, may encounter limitations when it comes to rendering such simulations. I followed my lectures Hossein's previous tutorial that he recorded on teams which I found to be very insightful. 

City Scene Creation - Blender Asset Pack It was fun to start building a Blender city scene with low-poly objects. Throughout this procedure, a carefully constructed cityscape with a range of structures that each add to the urban environment's overall feel was developed. I started by carefully choosing and downloading low-poly elements that fit the style I had in mind for my city in order to create the scene. City scenes benefit greatly from the use of low-poly objects since they render quickly and effectively. The intricate arrangement of these resources allowed for the creation of a captivating and realistic city feel. I carefully considered where to put each building to make sure there was a variety of sizes, styles, and purposes for each one.