Procedural Jellyfish
This project was made for Debra Isaac and her work teaching science visualization at USC. The focus was to create a procedural set up that allowed for easy customization of the Jellyfish. This includes the shape and length but also its profile curve and motion.
The jellyfish also features a few layers of simulation, primarily with Vellum, to achieve a natural flowing look to its body.
A major part of this project was using a manually animated profile curve. This curve gets used to create the geometry for the bell of the jellyfish, but it also gets used to drive the motion in the simulations.
This is achieved by bringing the vertical position of the curve’s IK controller into CHOPs. Then the signal is processed to represent the part of the motion when the jellyfish would be propelled forward.
This is then exported to a particle simulation to modulate the velocity of the point, which is used later to move the main geometry during soft body simulation.
Later iterations of the project included usage of the CHOP signal to modulate emission textures in COPs for a more stylized look reminiscent of bio luminescence.
