A great deal went into this animation, too much to break down in chronological order, so what I will be doing in this blog post is breakdown the main challenges and processes and how these were tackled. I will also attempt to show rather than tell with screen recorded process videos.
Straight off the bat, I knew I wanted to have some gold liquid simulation as I was very inspired by the Daredevil title sequence. However, given that my idea consisted of Greek and Roman marble statues, I wanted to have very realistic visuals that accompanied it. After some research I arrived to the conclusion that the best way to do this was to utilize Redshift within C4D and Insydium's Xparticles.
The Gold Liquid Simulation
The following video is a timelapse of how I utilized the Xparticles emitters to create the shape of the model that can then be used to simulate liquid by creating incubating and infecting particles. Although the model below wasn't included in the final video, this was where I experimented and finalized the routine I would take moving forward.
The following photographs are screenshots of the X particles in action. The screenshot on the right is how the OpenVDmesher looks before tweaking the way it will behave.
The following video is how I applied and edited noise pattern to the emittors which would dictate how the VDmesh (the liquid) would behave. Essentially, the lighter parts would mean the particles would move faster whilst the darker bits mean it would fall slower.
The photo to the left is the result I got when I didn't extend the particle lifespan beyond the frames present. This meant that the particles would start to disperse. Although it looks interesting, it isn't what I planned so I fixed this.
The photo below is the noise pattern I settled on for this specific model.
The Marble Subsurface Scattering
This following is a rendering of a marble material used in C4d natively and a crafted sss (subsurface scattering) material made with Redshift. Creating a material that utilizes subsurface scattering makes the world of a difference. It looks somewhat translucent as light doesn't stop at the surface but diffuses within the object. This is what gives it a very alabaster/ ceramic/ highly polished marble feel.
The only issue is that it lengthens the rendering time to more than triple the usual rendering time.
The video above is a timelapse of the process I took to create the marble material. The following are additional screenshots of the process - including incorporating a mixed font so that the greek symbols are not overpowering and final settings I settled on for the subsequent scattering.