Tuesday, 31 August 2010

I have created the Rig for the Audrey Moth. The abdomen and wings are rigged up to be controlled on sliders and it has springs on the wings and antennae for added dynamics. Will skin it tomorrow and possibly do the UI tomorrow and Thursday.



Also some renders of Darren Elms animation test and Ian elms also

Saturday, 28 August 2010

After checking the second animation test of Ian Elm I have reedited some of the Visemes, so they flow better together, for example the tongue touches the teeth on the “TH” and therefore goes through the teeth on the next viseme. I have edited it so that it appears to touch the teeth still but is actually slightly behind so it wont intersect the teeth on the next viseme. Nothing major, just a few tweaks.

I also have finished rigging ,skinning and creating the UI for Darren Elm and currently rendering of a animation test, just a few movements and the Visemes, to test if they all work together and there is no bugs. Only problem I can see is the usage of the helmet, but I think I will play it by ear and rather than using a material to hide the helmet between moving it from the arm to the head, just re-link it and re-render from that point. It seems the less troublesome option.

Anyhow as with Ian Elm and George Elm, Darren Elm has muscle bones on the lats traps and pecks and on the inner elbow and inner knee for better deformation, and also the Achilles heel and top of the legs. Here’s a screenshot and I think that’s it for the Elmies, just the moth, two insects and two background characters to rig and I am a week ahead.

Wednesday, 25 August 2010

Firstly here is a render of Ian Elm from the brief animation test I created, again just the character going through a sequence and nothing major. The character seems to be working well except it had some strange popping in the render which was not in the scene. A bug I am hoping with that render and not a reoccurring problem (the part of the skin above the eyes twitched strangely)



I think to make sure its not reoccurring I will re render a short animation of the facial movement again to see if I can recreate the problem.
 
Anyway I have started the rig for Darren, and pretty much completed it except for the muscle bones and belly bone which I will add during skinning. Here is a screen shot




I thought I should now show what the rigs I have created for these series of characters can do since I am now on the last of the human characters. All of the characters have typical the same setup.

Firstly there is a foot role controlled by a Ui system




The foot can also be controlled by the UI on a refined set of sliders for the toes and lower foot, plus the toes of the Elmies are also controllable through the User Interface. The user interface as with all the latter rigs (the human factory characters for the feet used a normal attribute holder) are using Penns attribute holder, a plugin which is the same as the normal attribute holder except it can store poses that can be latter dialled back in (http://www.paulneale.com/scripts.htm) . I therefore also used the Penn attribute holder on the Facial UI for all the Visemes (will talk about that in a little blog).

The rig follows quite closely Pauls Neale’s tutorials on rigging with a few alterations to suit the characters. But the basics are from those great set of dvds.

Moving up the body this character as the rest have a stretchy bone system on the legs, this was done by using a script attached to the lower legs x position, enabling the bones to stretch without problems and bend with the HI Solver.




The main waist control is linked separately to the hands and the rest of the body, therefore enabling the hands to move in dependably.

The back is again using a stretchy bone system, and a series of stabilisers to enable the spine to move in much the same way as a human spine, using look at constraints, orientation constraints, positron constraints, and path constraints.



The deltoids of the arms are also scripted to stay in line with the clavicle while the bicep bends with the arm, therefore the skin can be weighted in-between with less problems and follows the movement on a typical arm in much the same way.



There is a Hi solver on the arms with a look at constraint at the back, a typical arm setup, but then a wrist constraint system is in place to enable the hand to rotate and the wrist follow in degrees, to give a fall off up to the elbow, as with a normal arm.

The hands are scripted as with all the human characters and similar to the feet so that I can move any of the fingers to a position using the star UI attached.



And finally the head as orientation constraints to give a fall off down from the head past the neck to the top of the spine, for better fluid control of the head movement.
After that each character also had muscle bones, and spring simulators where necessary. For Darren Elm he won’t have any bouncy fat so I won’t be using any sims but will be using muscle bones much the same was as the other Elmies.
Anyhow that’s a quick run down of the rigs.

Tuesday, 24 August 2010

I have created the Rig and facial UI for Ian Elm, skinned and I am just rendering the character in a number of poses to test the rig and to test the Visemes and facial controls. I added a number of spring effects to the belly, bum and pecks and added muscle bones on the lats traps and pecks with the pecks connected to the spring bones for added dynamics and spring effects. The skinning was fairly easy in comparison to George Elm, mainly due to Ian Elm not wearing any clothing, so the interactions I did not have to deal with and skin for. Anyhow here is a screen cap of the rig.

Sunday, 22 August 2010

Spent the night working on Ian Elms Rig. So far its pretty standard in comparison to the rest, but while skinning tomorrow/Monday I will add wobble/spring bones to the belly, chest and anywhere else it would suit. The Elm character reminds me of the blob from wolverine, so I will hopefully be able to get much of the flab wobbling in interesting ways when he moves.

The render tests of George Elm turned out fine. The mouth movements seem real enough and the skin shader looks pretty decent. Here’s a render.




I also had a quick play with depth of field in max and z depth for composition. In the end it is much quicker and gives me more control to use Z depth, and the experiment has eased my worries on some of the elements of composition.

Saturday, 21 August 2010

Finished off the Ui, morphs and Vismes for George Elm today. One thing I have learnt is that the Morphs work much better if more of the face moves, to show muscle deformation under the skin. As Georges initial Morphs were rather flat, George Elms seem a lot more real. Anyhow this is roughly the half way mark in rigging. I may jump straight into working on Ian Elm tomorrow to get a bit ahead. Currently I am rendering off a animation test of George Elm going through a range of motion and face movements, nothing fancy just set keys for each movement and a gap between, to make sure each expression seems believable and real enough for the animation. Not much else to say, so here’s a render.



The initial idea for the animation was a one wheeled robot. Last weekend I had some spare time so created it in 3D. So far it’s a high polygon model, just a clay render. But I am thinking of creating it low polygon and using it as another animated short. Perhaps it just moving along. Will see latter on.



And also created a render of the main characters on the line. It doesn’t look to bad them all together, hopefully in the actual factory everything will gel correctly.

Thursday, 19 August 2010

I think I put the top of the leg bones a little to far up, which caused some problems with the skinning. I could have altered the bone length however this would mean re-rigging the bones, and re-scripting the stretch system, so decided to just work around it.
I still had some problems with the cross legged position today, but I think its working enough for the piece now. Here is a render with the character cross legged.



I am a little unsure about the texture of the cowl, and may decide to change it in the next few days. Perhaps to a brighter leaf texture, or even a woven hey texture. Or maybe leave it as it is. I think I am working on it so much I am over analysing each section. In a way its good because I will try and get each asset looking as good as it can,. But in another way I can spend to long on one thing and ruin it.


I have rigged the jaw up and will rig the rest of the morph tomorrow until complete. Then render off another test animation of it going though the Visemes.



Here is a shot with all the muscle systems in place


And the cowl using a driver of the chest area of the body


And that’s it for the day. Oh I also changed the leg shader for the centipede to be the same as the colour of the body, so it blends rather than a sharp contrast. Its not as exact as a real centipede, but would look better in the moon light outside the cave sequence.

Oh and I also have rigged up a spring system to the belly of George Elm and beard for a little dynamics.

Thursday, 19 August 2010

I am pretty much half way through the skinning of George Elm. It’s a hard process, using paint weights more than individual vert weighting to keep the organic shape. With it being a denser mesh and unclothed it makes it more difficult to produce a good system of weighting. I have added muscle bones to the top of the legs, pecks, lats and traps which give a deformation of those areas, and also allow the character to sit crossed legged. The cowl I had some problems with (due to the density of the mesh it was near impossible to skin the same as the main character) but eventually realised I could create a copy of the base mesh skinned, delete the unwanted areas and use that as a driver for the cowl using skin wrap. Therefore the cowl follows the movements perfectly. I also skinned the jewellery, adding just one weighting corresponding to the top of the jewel, so it appears as though it is hanging down when moving. Its not perfect, for more realism perhaps a way of making the jewellery bang and bounce along across the chest would have been better, but with my limited knowledge it works just as well.

Anyhow no renders today its late on and it would just bore. .

Wednesday, 18 August 2010

I created the rig for George Elm today. The only real problem was needing to script a UI for the toes of the feet. Mainly practise for the Darren elm rig with the close up of the legs running. I created a nice foot roll incorporating the toes, however felt it would have been better if the toes rolled along side the heal roll to show pressure on the feet, rather than having to do this by hand. I will play with this more on the next rig, (Ian elm) but suspect it will come down to hand animating the feet, which is the other option. Anyhow here is a screen grab of the rig and the new foot rig. Tomorrow I will skin and add muscle bones and figure out what I will do with the cape, which I think will simply be a skinned over the top.

Friday, 13 August 2010

I have created the rig for Darren the central character over the last few days. Without any objects in pockets and the jacket being buttoned up it was very easy to rig and skin, with the only major decision where to put the hair bone for the flex of the hair at the front.

Rig




As with Ian I added muscle bones from the belly to the leg so it is easier for the character to sit and stand. And I also tested the character in a variety of posses to make sure the rig and skin was flexible enough for what is required in the production.

After rigging and skinning I used the same UI from the previous models and re set it up for this model with reactor manager. For the Visemes I again went off previous models and research so far and also developed the Visemes in more detail using the book Body language by Eric Allen and Kelly L Murdock. Currently I am in the process or rendering Darren off in a number of poses and facial motions to check if everything flows correctly.

Rig with morphs



The main problem with the rig for this character was the size of Darren’s eyes poking through the eyelids and side of head when turning the eyes. I resolved the issue with a quick fix of rescaling the width of the eye, and edited the morphs to suit when the eyes close and open. It may have been nice experimenting with a more detailed eye rig, so that the eyelids move with the eye as it rotates, but I am happy with the level of control of the UI as it stands for this animation.
 
Screen cap of render


I am going to have an early night tonight, and spend the weekend on tutorials and another model I am working on separate from On the Line, on hard surface modelling and texturing, and continue on on Monday with George Elm. A more difficult character since there are is a lot of objects attached to the body, such as the cowl and jewellery, which I will need to figure out some kind of interaction. I am reluctant to use cloth since I have had so many problem with it and could spend half the project messing with the cloth, so may use a spring system. However this may intersect the main mesh if not careful.
 
Final render

Tuesday, 10 August 2010

I spent today researching into different cgi techniques, some texturing some composition, some lighting, and began testing different lighting solutions for the characters. I used a florescent light to begin as the actual factory would have, however this with global illumination took far to long to render and didn’t give much drama to the lighting, so toyed with the settings and the resolution., I am hoping to render it out at a 1920 by 1080 at the most, but again it all depends on if the scene will render quick enough. Currently I have 3 months for render time for the 7 mins 11 of the piece plus another two minute for the boy on his bike during the credits. So say ten minutes all together. That would be at 24frames per second therefore 14400 frames to render if ten minutes. If its 3 months that would be 120960 minutes therefore I would need a render time less than 8.4 mins per frame yet I also would like to do an ambient occlusion pass if possible.

7min render – florescent with indirect illumination and final gather


2min 54 without final gather

51 seconds area omni with indirect illumination

I think for now I will leave worrying over the render times, and wait till all objects are in the scene. Also I need to be aware that only half the animation takes place in the factory with the Elmy world also needing to be timed for rendering and lighting and effects adjusted to suit. It may be interesting to have completely different lighting solutions for each scene, the factory and the plant.

I also went through some tutorials on texturing for the scene and produced a nice brick wall. Not very exciting yet this will help when producing the actual factory setting. With less tilling perhaps for it!!!

Monday, 09 August 2010 (100th post!!)

I have added the Ui, morphs and finished the rig today. It has a sim on the belly and chest for bounce which can be turned off while animating to speed things up, and some stretch bones around the legs. The main problem I had with this character was the jaw and where to position it for good movement of the mouth. In the end I settled on a area half way between the ears and mouth. However the character can’t really open its mouth far due to the chin already being so close to the chest. At the moment I am rendering of a test animation, just the Visemes in a sequence and a test of they eyes. Here is a render of the character plus the rig and a screen cap of the morphs.

Sunday, 08 August 2010

I created the Audrey rig today and last night. It is becoming a lot faster to rig each time. It’s all wired up and ready for the character to be skinned. No problems today. Here’s a render.

Friday, 06 August 2010

Created a really nice rig for the earphones, so Ian can interact with them, taking them off and on, and stretching them off one of his ears to listen to conversations. Also edited the characters for the piece so they are all ready for rigging. Back onto Ian the animation test of facial movements looked good. Perhaps a very slight popping of the inner moustache on one movement, but its so unnoticeable I wont bother with editing it. On the whole I am happy with how it has turned out. I have not uploaded it since its just a facial movement test. But here is a render of the mouth contorted and moustache following.



I also added the Visemes to the facial rig as presets as with George, so I can ramp it up or down to perform each facial movement easily. Going to relax the rest of the night and begin Audrey tomorrow.

Thursday, 05 August 2010

I worked on the rig Ui and morphs today and yesterday, with the main problem being Ian’s Moustache and how it would deform in various positions. It may have been simpler to have the moustache as a separate mesh however I would then lose the exact control over how it deforms over the lips. I am currently rendering a test animation of the facial UI, just some poses to test the morphs for any problem with the moustache. When rendering the main problem I noticed was the amount of Specular highlights coming from the tongue when in the mouth. I therefore adjusted the setting and will now add them to each other model, also editing each model to be ready for rigging. Latter after playing with the shader it came apparent that it was not the Specular that was the problem, but the reflection of the environment. Keeping it to only reflect environment, produced a grey sheen to the tongue, since the environment was grey, therefore un-ticking the only reflect environment and it would reflected the inner mouth. A far better, but more timely (on render times) solution.


After that the animation Ui test has rendered, I will add the mouth shapes for lip sync in the ui presets,

Tuesday, 03 August 2010

Wired all the fingers and added the inherit arm to the rig. However latter I noticed in a demonstration of a Rig from Paul Neale’s DVDs a second inherit arm ctrl band around the waits, a far simpler and more effective solution than I had developed. Therefore I have taken out the inherit arm and added the bands around the waist. One controlling the whole body without arms, the other the body with arms.

My main mistake so far rigging was not having the ctrl for the arms aligned correctly to the wrist and hands, since it was all rigged before I noticed. The simplest solution was to create another ctrl that the older ctrl would link to.

I am finding Ian’s rig a lot harder to create, with larger body mass, its more difficult to rig and skin. Also working with the belly, and how it would deform once the character sits was a challenge and the jacket that sits at the sides, to move it slightly out of the way when the character sits was a difficult thing to skin, in the end relying on a new control just for the jacket.
Anyhow I think that’s it for the night. His belly deforms well, even moving over the legs when turning his upper body if sitting. George was a fun character to rig, yet this character has been a lot more of a challenge.

Even though the character just sits throughout, I will add belly bounce to the movement as well, just a little bit more realism for when he talks. I am rather glad I avoided using cloth in the end for this animation since I think it would have taken far too long to get it functioning correctly.

Anyhow a quick screen cap of the rig.

Monday, 02 August 2010

I began working on Ian’s rig today. I checked the mesh again for consistency before continuing, so to avoid any future mistakes. The centre line of the mesh was slightly off, and I decide to stick to the mesh as is, rather than distorting the mesh further by bringing it into line. I also when working on the mesh figured out a way to use position constraints to add a local/world parent that can switch for the arms. Meaning the characters can hold onto things such as the table, while standing up, a problem I had with the first animation test where his arms would inherit the motion of his body when trying to stand holding onto the table.

Looking back so far it may have been wiser to do one mesh, then rig, then another mesh and so on, to learn where the mistakes were in the modelling and adapt as necessary. I have not had many problems with Ian as yet, except for the out of line symmetry problem, yet I think this may become more apparent when skinning.

I reused the scripts from the previous George rig with some little tweaks, such as the cup action of the hand a different percentage, so the finger cant tear into the hand, and wrote my own script for the inherit local/world. It was a very basic float , but it’s a start.

Anyhow I will wire the fingers tomorrow, finish the rig and begin skinning.