Dev Blog : FX in Martha Is Dead – Part 3 – Blood
Hello again folks, we took a little break from our Martha blogs last week in order to make room for our exciting release date announcement, which if you haven't caught up with yet - is now on February 24th!
Check out our teaser trailer announcing it!
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
All caught up? Wonderful - let's dive into the next of our dev blogs!
We're continuing to talk about the masterful VFX work included in the game - mainly because there's so many fascinating parts to EVERYTHING from the birds to the flesh flies, and as you're about to learn... It's even in the blood...
(Disclaimer for folks, this blog does contain screenshots of blood and rendered 'wounds' so proceed with caution if squeamish!)
Now we must talk about something I deal with a lot in the field of FX … the more "disgusting" areas - What is a horror without a little blood?
Generally for blood textures, decals are used to apply them where necessary. But our goal for Martha Is Dead, however, was to recreate copious amounts of animated blood!
In the early days of development, there were several options I could try but most of them turned out to be unsuccessful. At first we created a plan, made it to match our needs and animated it but it did not render the materials or animation well. Sometimes we can’t use animated textures for how we have optimized the UV of the models, so the best effect we could get was just a cache with Houdini.
When I started working on the blood, It was originally my first experience using Houdini (almost), so I initially had to familiarize myself with it and its many ‘quirks’. After several headaches I managed to export an animated cache of a fountain, it turned out to be an excellent result but not convincing in the form of blood. I was trying to emulate blood gushing from one of the characters mangled body, which has now been seen within the Demo.
It took me a while to find the right parameter setting to be able to create a convincing liquid. The whole system was based on emitters, which simply emits particles at different degrees of viscosity and scale that collide on the characters body.
The mesh had already passed a procedure of removing the “laminate mesh” (non-3D mesh
composed only by a plane), closing the holes that the model could present. Houdini does not react well to this type of mesh "flaw". In this way the fluid remained liquid but viscous enough to simulate blood. The cache with a material that included the Tither Temporal AA on the channel of the mask, perfectly fused the blood on the body of the victim.
Please see the example below but be warned!
Keeping this one vague to avoid spoilers … A similar task occurred later, in which I had to create more blood that was flow on the belly of a different character. The belly had a very particular deformation animation, deformation that proved to be a headache to create!
In the simulations the blood was splashed from all sides, as if the victim was alive and was butchered by a savage! Instead, the body in which I was focusing on was meant to be dead for days, so the blood had to reflect this. Therefore it had to be more dense and viscous than normal ‘alive’ blood.
The solution I found was to create an animated texture that can be applied to the surface of the belly. A texture that animates the emission of particles and forms the design of the blood flow. I set gravity to a minimum and simulated it with the animation of the texture. To match the blood cache with the belly animation I used a simple latex on Maya. By animating the vertices of the lattice, the simulation was able to follow the deformations of the body. This produce the exact result I was looking for, thick lifeless blood!
Well now you know more than you did an hour ago about designing blood to look ;just right', and yet again a perfect example of the attention to detail in the smallest of things that are going into the game.
If you want to catch more Martha content across the internet, then hit the links at the bottom of the blog! And as always, make sure Martha is on your wishlists - and tell your friends!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/515960/Martha_Is_Dead/
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Check out our teaser trailer announcing it!
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
All caught up? Wonderful - let's dive into the next of our dev blogs!
We're continuing to talk about the masterful VFX work included in the game - mainly because there's so many fascinating parts to EVERYTHING from the birds to the flesh flies, and as you're about to learn... It's even in the blood...
(Disclaimer for folks, this blog does contain screenshots of blood and rendered 'wounds' so proceed with caution if squeamish!)
Now we must talk about something I deal with a lot in the field of FX … the more "disgusting" areas - What is a horror without a little blood?
Generally for blood textures, decals are used to apply them where necessary. But our goal for Martha Is Dead, however, was to recreate copious amounts of animated blood!
In the early days of development, there were several options I could try but most of them turned out to be unsuccessful. At first we created a plan, made it to match our needs and animated it but it did not render the materials or animation well. Sometimes we can’t use animated textures for how we have optimized the UV of the models, so the best effect we could get was just a cache with Houdini.
When I started working on the blood, It was originally my first experience using Houdini (almost), so I initially had to familiarize myself with it and its many ‘quirks’. After several headaches I managed to export an animated cache of a fountain, it turned out to be an excellent result but not convincing in the form of blood. I was trying to emulate blood gushing from one of the characters mangled body, which has now been seen within the Demo.
It took me a while to find the right parameter setting to be able to create a convincing liquid. The whole system was based on emitters, which simply emits particles at different degrees of viscosity and scale that collide on the characters body.
The mesh had already passed a procedure of removing the “laminate mesh” (non-3D mesh
composed only by a plane), closing the holes that the model could present. Houdini does not react well to this type of mesh "flaw". In this way the fluid remained liquid but viscous enough to simulate blood. The cache with a material that included the Tither Temporal AA on the channel of the mask, perfectly fused the blood on the body of the victim.
Please see the example below but be warned!
Keeping this one vague to avoid spoilers … A similar task occurred later, in which I had to create more blood that was flow on the belly of a different character. The belly had a very particular deformation animation, deformation that proved to be a headache to create!
In the simulations the blood was splashed from all sides, as if the victim was alive and was butchered by a savage! Instead, the body in which I was focusing on was meant to be dead for days, so the blood had to reflect this. Therefore it had to be more dense and viscous than normal ‘alive’ blood.
The solution I found was to create an animated texture that can be applied to the surface of the belly. A texture that animates the emission of particles and forms the design of the blood flow. I set gravity to a minimum and simulated it with the animation of the texture. To match the blood cache with the belly animation I used a simple latex on Maya. By animating the vertices of the lattice, the simulation was able to follow the deformations of the body. This produce the exact result I was looking for, thick lifeless blood!
Well now you know more than you did an hour ago about designing blood to look ;just right', and yet again a perfect example of the attention to detail in the smallest of things that are going into the game.
If you want to catch more Martha content across the internet, then hit the links at the bottom of the blog! And as always, make sure Martha is on your wishlists - and tell your friends!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/515960/Martha_Is_Dead/
Wired Facebook | Wired Twitter | Wired Youtube | Wired Discord | Wired Instagram | Wired Twitch | Wired Reddit | Wired Imgur