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How to animate brain neurons?!

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by adrian-taylor09, Oct 15, 2019.

  1. adrian-taylor09

    adrian-taylor09

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    Hey guys,

    Looking for ideas on how to animate brain neurons similar to the gif attached:



    Assuming I have a 3d model of the structure, how would I go about animating the bright neurons traveling along the pathways?

    Caveat is that this is for mobile VR, so performance is critical.
     
  2. Kiwasi

    Kiwasi

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    Particle effect?
     
  3. Antypodish

    Antypodish

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    I would possibly go anything between procedural mesh, particles, to shaders.
    Depending on complexity of the network.
     
  4. Murgilod

    Murgilod

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    This looks like it's just particles on a path along with a displacement shader near the end. The neurons themselves just have a bit of a bumpy texture/normal applied to them and are using an inverted fresnel applied additively.
     
  5. Ryiah

    Ryiah

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    c0rado likes this.
  6. FMark92

    FMark92

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    It's all just artistic interpretation. Do whatever you want.
     
  7. Murgilod

    Murgilod

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    That really doesn't help when the op is literally asking how to accomplish a specific effect.
     
    Martin_H likes this.
  8. mgear

    mgear

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    just guessing:
    with a suitable UV mapping, maybe could use scrolling emission texture.
    (and then bloom from post processing to make it shiny enough to hide that its actually texture..)
     
  9. FMark92

    FMark92

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    >>/Graphics/
    >>/Animation/
     
  10. Murgilod

    Murgilod

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    Yes, that IS what an effect is in this context, very good!
     
  11. MadeFromPolygons

    MadeFromPolygons

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    This looks like a prime use case for VFX graph :) But you could also achieve this with a particle effect, however VFX graph will be capable of more.
     
  12. FMark92

    FMark92

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  13. adrian-taylor09

    adrian-taylor09

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    Thanks... this seems like a solution I could implement (with my limited skills!)
     
  14. adrian-taylor09

    adrian-taylor09

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    Thanks... I thought about doing this, but I can't really use post processing on the mobile VR hardware, at least not in the project this is intended for
     
  15. adrian-taylor09

    adrian-taylor09

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    Wow.. those are impressive. Don't think I can use VFX graph in this project unfortunately.. will definitely look into this though as the results look amazing
     
  16. Murgilod

    Murgilod

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    Yeah, I basically took the lowest performance cost interpretation. The texture of the neurons could probably be done if you just use a slightly edited voronoi based texture (there's usually an option for this in most advanced image editors) with a little noise applied, 512x512 or something like that for the bumpiness going on there. Doesn't have to be anything big.

    With the right tweaks, you could probably run this on a phone somebody slapped in google cardboard.
     
  17. hippocoder

    hippocoder

    Digital Ape

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    There's a few example for VFX graphs in Unity doing similar to this so might want to check that out on package manager. You will need to be using an SRP though.
     
  18. Ony

    Ony

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    nano-sized GoPro in the brain. Do it.
     
  19. Murgilod

    Murgilod

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    Invasive neurography? In THIS economy?
     
    neoshaman, Ony, Ryiah and 1 other person like this.
  20. Voronoi

    Voronoi

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    I've been surprised with the performance of VFX on mobile. At least on an iPhone 7+, that kind of stuff runs fine. You do have to use SRP of course.

    If you can export a spline that builds your mesh, I could see a particle system or VFX doing that sort of thing.