Wednesday, 28 July 2010

Pretty much finished the animation test for George. I had some trouble matching the mouth movements to the sound file, but this was due to lack of experience rather than any problem with the UI or morphs. The only problem I had with the rig was the use of cloth on the earphone wire,. No matter what I tried I couldn’t get it to compute therefore opted for some controllers linked to the wire at different lengths using linked xform, to move them wire slightly where necessary. It doesn’t have that dynamic I wanted, but the effect is not worth the amount of time it would take and problems caused with the cloth modifier. The renders will take another 16 hours, for the 30 seconds, which is not that bad time wise. This experience has given me more confidence on working on the On the Line Animation and Lip Sync, and am quite happy with the progress. Comet Cartoons 3d help on animation (a case study) and his lip sync tutorial greatly guided me through this first animation test. There were some tweaks in the process also, such as making the inner sleeve ends black rather than the same texture as the jacket. But apart from that the morphs seem to work well, and I am happy with the degree of emotion the character reflects. Anyways here’s a render from the scene.

Sunday, 25 July 2010

I Began working on the short animation test for George today, using sound from the movie Death at a funeral, currently I have just finishedished the blocking out of the animation and added some follow through and anticipation on the arm and head movements. Not much to show and will leave rendering the scene till its finished.

Saturday, 24 July 2010

I finished the Ui today. And found a fault when rigging the eye lids. Inside the eye lids the mesh is not welded and polygons float around the eye lid. I cant go back now and redo the mesh since its far to far along, and this must have been a bug in max some where down the line, since I always check my meshes (stl check) when they are ready. Anyhow I don’t think the problem could become worse, and therefore am plodding onward. I just hope the mesh doesn’t explode or something latter down the line because of this bug. I guess I should have triple checked the model before rigging. Anyhow here’s a shot of the Model with morphs and UI, and the final Ui. The UI began as a tutorial from Paul Neales Dvds on rigging, and latter I added some more components from the stop staring book, so I had a good range of morph targets to rely upon.

I have decide to spend a week animating the character next. It will make me a few days behind, but its best to test the rig and UI for any issues before building the rigs for the other characters.

Friday, 23 July 2010

Rigged up the jaw of George and after animating a small sequence of jaw movements I tested the idea of using cloth drivers on the mesh for the beard and earphone wire. However after tests I feel it is not producing the results I am after, and therefore have decided to try a spring system with a bone of the jaw for the beard. However im rather stuck with the earphone wire, since it is connected in two places, with one end going into a pocket… The only way I can see of being able to produce decent results is to animate by hand the end to the wire, and create a cloth simulation for the sequence. Since I can’t see a way of connecting the wire to the vertex of the pocket of the character with the correct weighting to follow the pocket as it deforms.
I ran a number of simulations using a cloth and skin wrap to the wire with mixed results but in the end decided it worked well enough to use. The earphones are only used by George and Ian, with Ian taking of his earphones, which will be quite difficult, but I am confident I can run the simulation, and set states for the earphone wire, and if worst comes to worst I could always replace the sim with a morph.
I also rigged the jaw up to one UI. I am a little worried about how tying all the UI items together will work well enough to perform lip sync believably, but I can always add in UI elements latter if necessary after further testing.

Thursday, 22 July 2010

I have finished skinning the character George now and added the eye controls. Next step is the morphs and UI, a first for me so I am reading up as much as I can on the subject. The book stop staring, although in Maya is a great help in the decision to go for a blend facial UI as well as Paul Neale’s rigging dvds.

The skiing went ok, there were a few problems with the belly area deforming when the character was put in a sitting position. I tried using a morph deformer in skin, however since the bones were linked to helpers rather than other bones it would not accept it as a valid joint (I think) any way I fixed the issue by using stretchy bones from the thigh to the belly.




Here is a few test renders with the eyes rigged up and eye dilation, bellow that is a shot of the character in a pose, just showing deformations. I am unsure as yet if to create the morphs first and UI and add the beard cloth driver last, or the beard cloth driver before the Morphs. I think I will adding everything else before the cloth beard and see how that goes,. Therefore if it does not work as I had hoped I can add either a spring bone to the beard or another morph target for some sway.

Wednesday, 21 July 2010

Today I finished of the rig as much as I could before the skinning. I again am following Paul Neale’s DVD’s on rigging in max and am learning as I go. I created in the past two rigs, one for a female character, which I made from scratch without help, and although it was functional really lacked a full range of motion. The second for a tooth fairy character that again had a few faults, and this the third, seems to be quite smooth in its movement. After I have created the UI and skinned George I may record him in a variety of poses with different lighting, so I can test various lighting solutions with the skin shader and test the movement and flexibility of the rig and any problems with the skinning.

Anyhow today there were a few little problems with the rig, a bit of scripting went wrong and took some time to find the faults, but I am learning and new to scripting as well as rigging. If only everything could be done with wiring! Anyhow I am of, here is a screen cap of the rig so far. Tomorrow I will be skinning! Oh I also hit on a problem with the character George and Ian with the rig for the earphones and earphone wire, in which the wire would move dynamically with physics. I originally intended to do this by hand, but after re-rigging a older character with a skin wrapped cloth driver I think this will work much better, leaving less work to me, yet more work for the computer.

Monday, 19 July 2010

Sometimes its really great to have a few days away from it all, and come back not feeling that my work is completely terrible. Anyhow rigging! I had planned to have a complete George rig done by today and I am only half way through,. Had a major problem with mirroring bones to the opposite leg, and adding the same parameters, such as stretchy legs. They just wouldn’t stretched. In the end after a few hour of mussing and mirroring and redoing, I realised in the first instance I had added the parameters to the x rotation not position, and before that the mirroring was not flipped. Ah well, just getting tired and doing the wrong things. Anyhow I redid the stretchy legs on both legs at the same time, I figured if it failed I could just leave it out, but it worked!!! I will update more in another hour, going to try and get the new spine and arms done by tonight.

Well spines done but arms are for tomorrow, then skinning. I don’t really see much point taking a screen shot for the rig as yet, but I suppose it shows more development. For now im using Paul Neale’s Dvd on rigging, and some internet tutorials when I am stuck, or the user reference of Max, but I am hoping by the end of the 10th rig i should be quite appt without having to use tutorials