Done!

So yesterday, I gave my presentation and... that's it! 4th year all wrapped up! Madness.

I'm hoping my presentation and the work I handed in do me justice. I really am terrible at documenting my learning, it all goes in my head and blogging/sketchbooking after a hard day of Maya isn't something I often remember to do. I wish we had interviews along with our hand ins, but alas. It's hard to see the effort that goes into learning the technical side of things. I think my presentation went pretty well, I can never tell. I rambled a lot, but I always do when I'm giving a presentation! I'm actually rambling now, haha.

I really have worked myself dead this year, here's hoping it pays off. I know I've let myself down with the lack of drawing I've managed this year, but I really did just get caught up in the 3D world. Working in Maya is draining! My technical skills have benefited though, and over the summer I will re-acquaint myself with the good old pencil and paper!

This week, I'll be tying up the loose ends, and compiling a showreel that I can hopefully include in the Degree Show. Then it's onwards and upwards! Got a couple of classmates keen to keep working with me, so hopefully something'll come of that. The last 4 years were great, but the degree was just the beginning. I've wanted to be an animator since I was about 5, and I'm not stopping here!

Dundee, I hardly knew ye!

Animation!

This year, my sub-specialism has been "Character Animation". I was able to do some animation for Stupid Kow at the start of the year (I animated the Farmer character). Towards the end of the year, however, with the way things have gone for myself and for a lot of the films I have worked on, my hands have been full with other things taking priority due to time constraints. Fortunately though, over the last few weeks I have been able to get back into animation, and work on a couple of new projects- mine and Rob's project "iR" and Dan's film "Wet Paint".

For Stupid Kow, I did the full animation of the Farmer, which consisted of a walk cycle, an arm gesture, and some lip-sync. I worked closely with director Jamie Buchanan to get what he wanted from the shots, and I am pretty happy with how it turned out. It was nice to be on the other side of my own rig as well! 

For Wet Paint, I was given the character shaking his can, spray-painting a little, then walking towards the camera and doing some expressions and arm gestures once he was there. I'm happy with my effort, except for the walk. It took me a while to get to grips with a 3d walk cycle, and being pressed for time it did end up a bit rushed. As I was trying to do a cautious walk, I was falling into the trap of making his upper body look too stiff. At this point, the walk is still pretty stiff, but I am going to continue to work on it in my own time, just for my own learning's sake really. Although I'm disappointed, I'm taking it as a learning curve- I know I can do better, and I will!

Some reason Blogger wont let me stick that video in here, so here's a link- WP

For iR, I animated the first 15 seconds. I really enjoyed animating such a simple character, and the style was one that I really love. Without giving too much away, here's a test or 2!

EDIT: I forgot to mention that I did some "animation" for Fearg na Mara. After their animator had posed the kelpie, it was sent back to me with "weight paint problems", which I was happy to fix... turned out the problems were due to the rig being used incorrectly. After a talk with the director, we sat and re-posed the kelpie ourselves, sorting out the deformations and generally improving the original poses. Here are a few examples, I worked on 10 in total.revieved reference/pose-

my improvements-

 2.

2.

3.

Rigging Summary

Over the last couple of days, I have created some "summary blogs" so that a basic idea of the rigs are easy to find.

This year, I have really developed a passion for rigging. My classmates have produced some beautiful models, and bringing them to life has been very enjoyable.

I have found that amongst students, rigging is often considered a very technical specialism which doesn't allow for much creativity, but my experience has been opposite to this.

Of course, there is a lot of technical learning involved- I have watched countless tutorials and read various books over the course of the year to aid my learning. The creative side of rigging comes from what you do with your learning.
Tutorials are brilliant resources, but you have to remember that often the way things are done in step-by-step tutorials isn't the ONLY way. There are many exceptions to this, and often there will be cases where the way you are taught is the correct way, and there's no point messing with it, and that's fine. But, there is no harm in trying things out.
Mixing things you have learned from all over the place, trying to think of new, better, quicker ways that things might work. This is what I have been striving to do with my rigs, and I have come up with various creative solutions to little problems that popped up. I look forward to continuing my learning after graduation, and hope that my rigs until now have been everything the animators needed them to be!

At this point, I am very comfortable with the basics of rigging, and I have begun to branch out into more advanced learning. I am confident with joint placement/set up, I am familiar with the use of IK and FK functionality, and becoming confident using splines. I am confident creating and linking controls. I am confident in animator-proofing controls. I am confident in my skills with weight painting, and look forward to moving on to explore Maya's features for creating advanced muscle deformations. I know a good handful of mel, and am continuing to learn about scripting. I have also used expressions successfully.

I have a good knowledge in biped rigs, including foot rolls, forearm twists, the functionality of shoulders, clavicle bones and various spine set-ups. I am also confident rigging hands and faces.

I have a basic knowledge of rigging quads, which I am continuing to develop. I have become very familiar with various aspects on animal anatomy, and this knowledge has been and will continue to be invaluable.

Although my interest lies with character rigging, I will be looking into other aspects of rigging, including props and environments.

iR rig

The iR rig was a lot of fun- nice an simple!

As he has no limbs, rigging his body took minutes- the controls are basically only there to make sure no one touches the geometry. The character can be rotated and dragged all over the place very easily, the only thing I really had to work with was where each object's pivot should be, and whether anything should be parented to anything else.

His hands were good fun. He has a sort of thumb/1 big finger thing going on, and these are made up of geometric shapes. Myself and Rob decided the individual sections of his finger should bend a little, although he's a robot, as this added a humanistic quality, and gave him a bit more life.

His eye was where I had the fun! I created a control pad so that it could be moved around, morphed and blinked easily. It's very simple, but I'm really happy with it, and more happy that I was able to whip it up so quickly! The way the eye/mesh around his eye moves has the same "humanistic" quality that we went for with the fingers. Although he's a robot, there is something lifelike and relate-able, and we felt this added a lot to the character's performance.

Krokodi Rig

I was pretty excited to have been asked to create a rig for the Kroc Dee character in the Krokodi project. As the character is a sort of biped/quad hybrid, I was able to take a creative approach to mixing the things I had learned previously about rigging different kinds of characters. 

Here is the rig- 

Kroc

• Foot controls with Foot Roll
• IK legs with knee aim control
• hip control
• COG control
• spine controls
• head control
• movable jaw
• rigged head
• moveable eyes
• closeable eyelids
• rigged tongue
• rigged tail

I was able to implement some smaller "control pads" into this rig for the animators as well. The eyes and eyelids have additional curves, to make moving both sides simultaneously a bit easier. The tail also has a hide-able control pad, allowing the animator to quickly curl the tail. 

Fearg Na Mara Rigs

For Fearg Na Mara, I created 2 rigs- the Kelpie rig, and a Murdo rig. The kelpie would be posed for stills, and the Murdo rig would be used with the 3d water/boat scene, and finally drawn over.

The Kelpie was my only Quadraped rig, and I was happy to have the chance to try rigging quads. I learned a lot about horse anatomy too, haha!

Here is the kelpie rig-

Kelpie 

• Foot controls (with foot roll)
• IK legs with aim knees
• shoulder controls
• COG control
• hips control
• torso controls
• chest control (with attribute for moving neck)
• neck controls
• head control
• moving jaw 
• moving eyes
• closing eyelids
• ear controls

His spine uses a spline IK, which was very tricky to get working, but makes such a difference in the movement of the spine.

I had a few problems with topology on the Kelpie model, most notable around his front legs. This was a bit of a pain, as the modeller was convinced it could be fixed with weightpaints... but eventually, it was changed and all was well!

Murdo

Murdo was a simple rig. The director just wanted a dummy which could be posed and drawn over, so I whipped this up


.

Stupid Kow Rigs

For Stupid Kow, I created 2 facial rig setups. 

The rigs changed several times as my skills progressed, below are demonstrations of the final rigs. 

The faces are controlled by joints, which are made controllable to the animator through the selection of various nurbs curves. The animator has the choice of using the curves directly on the character's face, or using the "control pad" I have created, which appears to the side of the character's head (control pad can be hidden to avoid a messy scene). In a bid to make the interface as user-friendly as possible, the control pads for these rigs are set out to resemble each character's face. The animator simply translates the curve which resembles the part of the face they've like to move, and the change can be seen on the model in real-time.

The farmer

• head control
• Jaw control
• "puffable" cheeks
• rigged mouth
• moving eyes
• eyebrows
• closeable eyelids

 Kow

• head control
• ear controls
• moving eyes
• eyelids
• blendshape-based mouth
• movable teeth
• additional teeth off/on ctrl
• "chest" ctrl

For the Kow, I had to adapt my original plan for his mouth. As the topology wasn't ideal for rigging his mouth, and the modeller wouldn't adjust it, I had to think of an alternative way. After speaking with the director, we decided to use blendshapes.

The blendshapes worked fine, but there were some issues. Firstly, the a few of the blendshapes would clash with the body mesh when in use- something that rigging and good weight-painting avoids. To work around this, I created additional weighted controls for parts of the body- the chest in particular- which meant they could be pulled in when a clash was visable.

Another thing I was unhappy with, was that the animator was having to use the blendshape menu for animating the face. I decided to build an additional control panel, which would activate the blendshapes instead. Using these controls, I could also link-up the controls I had added to fix clashes, so that the clean transformations could be achieved using only 1 control. I was also able to link the "additional teeth" so that they would automatically show with the correct blendshapes.

Overall I am very happy with these rigs- they were an opportunity to try something different, and to problem solve. No one had any trouble animating with them either, which was great! 

Wee Monsters Rigs

For the Wee Monsters project, I created 4 rigs- 3 of which I finished, one I am still working on in hopes of including it in my showreel by the Degree Show.

The Boy (Sam)
The Girl (Ellie)
Monster 1 (Grumbles)
Monster 2 (Waddles) unfinished
Sam and Ellie's rigs are almost identical, with the exception of Ellie's hair being movable. These were the first rigs I created, and while they took a big effort and a long time at the start of the year, they are my simplest most straight-forward rigs.

They use a typical joint set-up, and have fully rigged faces. The animator is able to pose them using nurbs curves controllers, and the faces have the option of a "control panel", and additional interface I have created to make facial-animation more straight forward.

Sam/Ellie

• Foot ctrl with foot roll
• IK legs with knee aim control
• hip control (with additional attributes)
• Center of Gravity Control
• Spine controls
• Chest Control
• Shoulder controls
• IK arms with elbow aim control
• hand control (with "fist" and "spread" attributes)
• individual finger controls
• Neck control
• head control
• move-able jaw
• rigged mouth
• rigged eyebrows
• moveable eyes
• closseable eyelids
• Facial Control Pad

A feature I am particularly happy with on these rigs in their spine- it is a typical FK spine, but one of the controls gives the animator a few attributes which make moving the spine quick and easy. 

Monster 1 (Grumbles)

Monster 1 has been rigged several times as my skills have progressed, below is a demonstration of his final set-up.

Grumbles

• Foot controls
• Toe controls
• IK leg controls with aim knee control
• hip control
• COG control
• spine controls
• FK arm controls with elbow aim control
• "flex" controls
• hand controls
• "forearm twist" expression.
• finger controls
• neck ctrl
• head ctrl
• fully rigged face 
• eyebrow controls
• moving eyes
• closing eyelids
• moving jaw
• mouth controls

Grumbles was particularly tricky, because of the fact he has 6 arms, and the  way in which these are laid out. Each arm has an additional upper-arm section, which meant I had to adapt the usual methods used on a typical arm. 

After struggling for a while I got an IK set-up working, but in order to have the arm move correctly, it had to be animated using 1 particular procedure- start at the top of the arm and work down. This was because unlike a typical arm, I was using 2 IK handles, basically treating the additional section as an extra shoulder. Although it worked, I was unhappy with its "animator-friendliness", so I ditched the idea and set up FK arms- which actually gave way to much easier animation. 

Another point of note on his arms is his bicep muscles. I had initially resigned to the fact I would have no time to learn how to create realistic muscle deformations, learning Maya Muscle etc, but after a brainstorm I decided to try something out. 

I added an extra joint in the middle of his bicep (on it's own, not part of a chain) and make it influence the top of his bicep. After adding a control to this joint, the animator was able to pull the bicep upwards, creating a "bulge". When I was happy with how this worked, I then linked this control to the elbow, so that when his elbow bent in, the bulge would move out, creating a flexing muscle. I am very happy with the results! 

The rest of his body is pretty typical. Rather than using a foot-roll, his feet have an additional control for positioning the toes- just something I wanted to try out, and it worked fine.

Below is a video of myself painting his skin weights. 

iR

New project!

With 2 weeks to go, Rob asked me if I wanted to start a new project... of course I did!

So here he is, wee iR, rigged and ready to go!

KROKODI

Today's progress so far-

• Finished the skeleton
• rigged the arms
• rigged the legs
• rigged the hands
• rigged the feet 

...and I am now half way through rigging the tail. 

Right now, the rig looks like this-

Home for dinner and a wee sleep, then back to work!

FEARG NA MARA

The Kelpie rig is done!

I finished the rig a few nights ago, but I have been putting off writing a blog. So here it is!

I'm not gonna lie- the kelpie's rig has been largely based on the DigitalTutors "rigging quadrupeds" tutorial. Something that really annoys me about resources like DT, is seeing countless versions of the exact same rig. Our studio is a fine example of this- with not many people specialising in rigging, and no one really teaching us anything, DT is the first stop for creating rigs. I fully understand this, but it saddens me that people are generally copying these tutorials step for step, rather than learning from them and attempting to put their own creative spin on things.

I have tried, where possible in this rig, to use a collection of my learning. For the majority of the time, I would watch a bunch of DT videos without working along, and then I would take a break. I would then open up the Kelpie file, and start building from what I had learned. Anything I didn't know how to do, things which I hadn't really "learned" from the videos, I would then use google and my own rigging books to try to find the answers. I have found this method a good way to understand what I'm actually doing, rather than re-hashing someone else's work.

ANYWAY

The kelpie 

The controls are pretty typical. The controls displayed as Box Curves affect the area they encompass- this can be seen in the video at the top of the post. 

The hip control is displayed as a H, and the Joint Control Curves are used to direct the knees and the neck. The star shape is the Global Control.

Many of the controls on this rig have Custom Attributes.

LEGS. The foot controls, for example, contain a foot roll.

SPINE. The controls along the horses spine, and the controls on his neck, contain a 'broken hierarchy' option, displayed as a "Lock" attribute.

This allows the control directly down the chain to either follow or move independently.

Another set of Custom Attributes shown on the Thoracic Control allows for quick and easy animation of the upper body. The kelpie can Sway, Twist and Curl with this control. 

HEAD. The kelpie's head works as a typical control curve, but also contains a custom attribute- Show Facial Controls. When this value is set to 1, controls for use on the Kelpie's eyes, ears and jaw become visible. The ear controls work using attributes, too.

KROKODI

After ceasing production on my own film "Wee Monsters" for various reasons, I have been well received by other production teams who were looking for some help. One of those teams was Krokodi.

The film blog can be found here- http://krokodi.blogspot.co.uk/

For this project I will be rigging the Crocodile character.

I've only been working on this project for a few hours (over the last week), but it now has my full attention. Tonight I built the main skeleton, and I just have a couple of things to work out-

- how to position the clavicle to get most functionality
- how should I rig the spine

- how should I rig the forearm

- how to create "bulge" in chest, for when Croc eats hunter


As the character is a sort of biped/quadruped hybrid, I am having to solve these problems rather creatively. Rather than being "problems" per say, I am enjoying learning through rigging this model. 

Here is the skeleton I have so far- 

I see no reason why anything shouldn't work so far, although I'm sure I'll come across some problems soon enough! So far, everything's going swimmingly and I'm thoroughly enjoying being able to combine elements from my previous rigs.

To do list for tomorrow-

• Rig arms (inc. add forearms)
• Rig spine [have decided to use Pat Imrie's tail tutorial- I'll post a link tomorrow!]
• Rig hands
• Rig foot (inc. foot roll)
• Create controls.

To do list Thursday- 

•  Bind Skin
• Paint skin weights
• Rig face- eyes/lips/eyebrows/cheeks

All going well, I should have this rig back with the Krokodi bosses by the weekend!

Fearg Na Mara

Another film I have been rigging for is Fearg Na Mara, directed by classmate Freya Allan. The piece is mainly 2D, with 3D elements. You can follow it's progress on the blog-  http://kelpiefilmdoj.blogspot.co.uk/

For this project, I am rigging the Kelpie character. The kelpie was designed by Kirsteen Mullay and modelled by Erin Thomson. 

Rigging Mr Kelpie

Keeping up with the good tradition of any model I try to rig, the kelpie has had a few topology problems! The main problem is at the underneaths of his forelegs, where they meet with his torso. Lack of topology at the joint is allowing for limited moveability, with any overstretch of his arm causing a sharp edge of stretchy under-arm skin. 

There's talk of the model being edited and me re-doing the rig, so I've stopped in my tracks for now. Here's what I have!- 

Below are some useful resources I have been using. 

Stupid Kow

During my final year, I have been working on the short animation "Stupid Kow", directed by the one and only Jamie Buchanan.

http://stupidkow.blogspot.co.uk/

For this film, I have been rigging and animating, with my main focus on character performance and facial animation.

The characters I was working with are-


Kow- 



Farmer Dingwall- 

The characters's were designed by Jamie Buchanan.
They were modelled by Karla Zero and Slava Lawson.
Their bodies were rigged by classmate Ben Rogers, and were then passed on to me to rig the faces.

The facial rigs went through several versions as I continued to develop my skills, and as I encountered various difficulties with the models along the way.


Kow

Before beginning Kow's rig, the director pointed me in the direction of his various influences, and we discussed the style of animation he was hoping to create. As the character is very stylised, research into real life cows was very minimal. I looked firstly at other characters who are "humanised" in the way that Kow is. Characters I looked at included-
Looney tunes, Family Guy, Tom and Jerry, Roger Rabbit etc

       

The director had also suggested that he would like the piece to be reminiscent of claymation, so I considered this. I particularly looked at Aardman.

Here are a few blog posts from Jamie which also show useful influences- 

http://stupidkow.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/cow-reference-images.html

http://stupidkow.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/family-guy-cows.html

http://stupidkow.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/barnyard-trailer.html

I worked with the director closely throughout, as he planned out the ways in which Kow would move. We worked hard to realise his intentions in a 3D form, which is a medium he was initially unfamiliar with. 

Rigging. 

When rigging Kow's face, I experienced difficulty with the model. The Kow's face topology wasn't set up in a way which allowed for a good, easy to manipulate skin bind. When these issues were raised with the modeller, I was told there was no time to correct them, so I had to figure out a way to proceed. As the skin around the mouth was buckling and showing hard edges whichever way I attempted to rig it, I hesitantly decided to work with blendshapes on the character's snout. I discussed this with the director, and we agreed that this would be the easiest way to try to create exaggerated expressions as close as possible to what he was looking for. 

Kow's topology.

examples of good topology- human and snouted

**(the two above images do not belong to me and were found using Google image search)

I am of the opinion that the character's range of expressions suffered because of these issues with the model, and the possibilities with a rigged snout with good topology would have been much greater. In this respect, I feel that my own work and what I was able to do was hindered.


Kow rig- mk1

The first rig used CV curves to control a basic joint/cluster set-up in the character's face, and an over-complicated bone structure within the head. The jaw bones were later discarded, as they were unable to work when implementing blendshapes on the snout.

I also designed a custom Control Pad with CV curves (seen on the right of top image), to enable the animator to control the face without touching the initial control curves. 

Kow Rig- mk2

The second rig used a much simpler joint set-up, and worked purely with skin influenced by joints (no clusters, IKs). I wanted to keep it simple as possible, to allow it to be efficient and unbreakable. 

The blend shapes were also set up. 

Kow Rig - Final. 

The final rig was more of an update than a re-do. Controls were added to the Control Pad to control the blendshapes.

These blendshape controls not only control the blendshapes on the snout, but also the "teeth" mesh and the "chest" control. For example, when "Ah" shape is turned on, the "chest" control pulls the geometry on the chest back, to avoid clipping. When the "N" and "Sh" shapes are turned on, teeth appear inside Kow's mouth.