Chris started The Anatomical Deer by sculpting the full anatomy model. To achieve the highest level of detail while maintaining a modest and practical timeline, he tactfully chose to merge smaller muscle clusters together. This strategy shaved off critical simulation time by reducing the number of necessary attachments and minimizing the overall scene complexity. Simplifying anatomical models is a great way to balance time and realism. Throughout the process, Chris turned to the Ziva Community for support, feedback, and more speed tips.
Chris then simulated three different anatomy layers; the muscles, the fat, and an added skin layer for increased winkles. According the Chris, the actual muscle setup was very straight forward. He was able to adjust his integrators to achieve varying muscle mass effects and relied on Ziva Sub-Tissues to help stabilize the Deer's thinner muscles. Ziva Mesh Checks were run throughout this process to ensure the topology was all smooth and intersection-free, at all times.
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According to Chris, the fat pass was the most challenging element of the simulation. The procedural nature of anatomical simulations required a level of harmony between the model and the final rig that Chris had not encountered before. As such, he needed to make minor adjustments to his initial fat model. He then made use of a number of Ziva parameters, including collisionPointSpacing, contactStiffness and inertialDamping to get the exact results he envisioned. In the end, however, the fat and skin passes ended up producing Chris' favourite results. The extra time spent perfecting the passes was significantly less than the time normally spent making corrective shapes and the results entirely exceeded Chris' expectations.
