Rig Demos

Wee demo of Sam's and the Kow's rigs. Excuse the water mark!

"Wee Monsters"

So, for my Honours year at DJCAD I've been directing a shot film called "Wee Monsters"

www.djcadmonsters.blogspot.com


Over the course of the first semester, I've been doing various jobs. 

Here's a final progress report- 


The room is starting to take shape, although the textures aren't finished.
Charlie Lodge is working on these, and assures me often that they are almost done.

The characters are modelled.

Girl model by Sarah Rettie

Boy model by Dan McCance

Dan also worked on texturing the little boy, and will be texturing the little Girl next semester.

At this point, the little boy and Girl are rigged. 

On beginning to animate them, I have noticed a few problems. The deformation of the shoulders, neck and bum aren't working correctly. Rather than over-complicate the rig (which will take up too much time on a schedule that is already quite far behind) I'm going to mess around with using blendshapes to add the necessary bulges/creases. 

The mouths are also causing me a bit of grief when trying to achieve some shapes for lip sync. I intend to look over those again this week and make some changes to the set-ups.

On the other side of the tracks, we have the monsters- 

Slava Lawson has been working on Monster 2 (affectionately renamed "Waddles")

The model seems pretty sound, and any rig tests I have tried on him so far have worked well. I plan on rigging the boss head, and using blendshapes to animate the others.

Monster 1 is still a work in progress.

At this point, over the Christmas break, I will be revising the film. After this semester it has become apparent that I have far less of a team than I need, and the current targets, while not impossible, will be a struggle to meet. I am hoping to cut the story down to around a minute and a half, so I can spend enough time learning what I need to learn to complete it to a good standard. 

Stupid Kow Rig

This semester, along with my own film, I have been working on Jamie Buchanan's "Stupid Kow".

I'm rigging the faces of the main characters, Kow and the Farmer.

Kow is done. 

After problems with the topology around the Kow's mouth, I decided to use blendshapes for his mouth. 

Inspiration!

So I went to see Hotel Transylvania last night, and I wasn't disappointed.

I won't ramble here, but if I wasn't convinced Genndy Tartakovsky was a hero before (which I was), then I would be now. I don't know how he's managed, but his style has come across so well in a 3D environment. The movements, the exaggeration, the silhouettes... everything. The story's a bit nyah but dear god it's told beautifully. New favourite film for a good while like!

Any ways, trawling the internets in a fan-girl style, I have found some inspiration. Here it is!

http://www.itsartmag.com/features/the-making-of-hotel-transylvania/#.UISQ9sXA-f7

The product of today's learning!

10/10/12

So today I decided to do some MEL practice, using a rigged model I got from The 11 Second Club (http://www.11secondclub.com/). 

("ElevenRig"- not mine! Very good rig to play around with though, highly recommend the 11 Second Club in general)

My aims for today were-

1. Set up shelf buttons which will select all head controls- for easy Keying when animating. 

2. Use PoseLibrary (created by myself with the help of Google and several sources) to save various preset expressions, using reference from "Wee Monsters" storyboard. 

3. Create shelf for use in Lip Sync- save various mouth shapes for quick animation. 

RESULTS-

1. 

After a bit of a struggle, I've come to the conclusion all the controls on Eleven's head can't be selected together easily, without several clashes happening.

So as a compromise, I've created 4 buttons- Head, Brows, Eyes and Mouth. 

(ignore the rest of the shelf- I really should have created a new one!)

The icon on these buttons is an image of a head I've taken from the internet (it does not belong to me, but I couldn't find a credit for it!)- I'll change these to icons better suited when I'm working on real projects. 

Now that these buttons are on the shelf, and working as they should, the Animator will can use them to quickly key multiple controls when animating. 

2.

So here's the blank Pose Library, created with the help of several websites, forums and books.

It was created using MEL script, and can be summoned simply by putting shPoseLib into the MEL script editor. 

Its simple interface is very self explanatory. With the required controls selected in the viewport, you simply select "Save Pose" and create a button, which can also be added to the Maya Shelf is you like.

Now any time this pose's button is clicked, the character will revert to the saved pose. (Only the controls specified will be changed- be careful to include all controls needed).

So to try it out, I created 4 basic poses (quickly- they're not perfect or well-referenced expressions!)

The first- Default face. The face in it's default pose.

And 3 expressions.

Sad- 

Shocked- 

Angry- 

Now that these poses have been created, they can be accessed at any time in the pose library. I'm not sure if there is a maximum amount of poses that can be saved, but they can be moved out to the shelf, so I don't imagine it would become a problem. 

Keep in mind that these poses are just a quick example.

Now when animating, these poses can be edited as much as required. They should be treated as a starting point when animating quickly. 

A good way to get a subtler version of these expressions would be-

Key in the default face (selecting the controls using the shelf buttons created earlier) and keying the extreme expression several frames later.

With the action splined between these key frames, you can then scrub through the timeline to find the inbetween frame that looks best, key that, and get rid of the two extremes.

2 examples of "in-between" expressions- 

3.

Using the PoseLibrary I have created 12 basic mouth shapes for use in lip sync. I then added these pose buttons to a new Shelf- "Lip Sync Shelf". 

To create the shapes, I used used the mouth controls to imitate the shapes from my reference material, starting at the Default Pose each time. Now all the poses are saved as buttons, I can easily click between them and key them using the first buttons I created today (the select controls buttons).

These shapes are probably too extreme for most dialogue- to soften them, I would use the method shown earlier (using in-between poses). 

 

Week 5

Okay, so this week is texturing week for the bedroom, and character modelling is ongoing. 

I'm attempting to cut the animatic, and choose 15 seconds for the Christmas hand in. I'm also doing some work for other films this week, so I'll be quite busy, but I'm here if anyone needs me!

Cheers,
El Capitano

Modelling

Okay, so on Friday I had to do some modelling for my film. I'm no good at modelling, but here's what I managed! (bed, clock, toybox, cup [+ pen, pencil + crayon], lego,  paper)

You've seen worse, surely!

Cheers!

Week 3

Week 3 is almost at an end, here's what it looked like...

Spent a lot of time going through the audio I had gathered from my kids actors (for the wee monsters film).

Other than that, I've been messing around with trial rigs for the kids and the kelpie. Getting back into the swing of things.

Watched a few Tutorials earlier in the week, mostly on DT, about facial rigging, and setting up buttons with pre-set poses for characters. That'll be particularly useful for expressions and lip syncing. 

I'm just about to go and rig my animatic children better, and try creating some pose buttons for them. Should keep me busy into the night, and if all goes swimmingly it'll make this 'animatic by Tuesday' thing a whole lot easier to achieve. And I'll be learning as I go. See, I'm so clever sometimes. 

Go have a wee look at djcadmonsters.blogspot.com to see any progress :)

4th Year. So it begins (continues?)

Week 2, day 2 and already my head is exploding. In a good way, I think. 

Starting from now, I think it's a good idea to stick my personal timetable on here. Production diary meets production blog kinda thing. Video blogs will begin when my new webcam arrives!

So far, it's gone like this- 

Week 1

Monday- Found out the brief had changed. Panicked a bit.

Tuesday- Thought long and hard about new brief. 

Wednesday- Group crit. Scavenged new team members from fallen films. 

Thursday- Made plans/schedules/panicked some more. 

Friday- Spoke to new team members about possible jobs. Pondered DATM.

Week 2

Monday- Tutorial with Sharon, good vibes

Tuesday- Worked on DATM. Joined JB's "Stupid Kow" project, doing some facial riggage/lip synching.

Wednesday- DATM meeting. Storyboard review/re-draft.

Thursday- Life drawing. Prepare animatic timing. 

Friday- Talking to 1st years. Chase up models.

So there it is.

From now on, I will blog more often. Please, contain your excitement!

Catch!

Semester over...

Time to start doing some work?

Peculiar, yes, but with the pressure of pre-production deadlines now fully behind me, I can  get stuck into things.

This week I have been re-teaching myself how to model, focusing on simple bi-pedal characters. Over the next week or so I hope to bash out the 1st version of the boy and girl characters, so I can learn how to rig faces sooner rather than later.

Since the aim is ultimately to have total control over the characters' faces, that's something I'd like to spend a lot of the summer working on.

Here's hoping the modelling goes, ahem, smoothly...


Until next time!

Okay, tricky blog time...

I feel as though it's time I posted a blog about what I do (rather, what I hope to do in the future) within animation.

Not for anyone in particular, just sick of people being all "Oh you're doing Animation, so you animate" / "You make cartoons" etc. 


Some of this may come off as patronising to anyone who knows what I'm talking about, and I apologise for that. Hopefully though, it could be quite useful to those who have no idea. 


Let me start out by saying that often, "Animation" is a general term used to cover any/all jobs within the animation production line. Of course, "animation" is also a stage inside this production line, which can make it pretty confusing. 

THE (3D!) ANIMATION PRODUCTION LINE.

Okay, so here we have (in its simplest form)- pre-production, production and post-production.
Pre-production is the first stage, and basically covers any work that has to be done before the actual "production" takes place. This includes research and development of ideas (I'll go into this further in a moment).
Production is the actual making of the visuals- including the actual "animation". 
Post-production is anything that is done after production- editing, effects, compositing etc.

PRE-PRODUCTION

"Development." The stage where the idea comes about, and is explored in as many ways as possible. During this stage, these (and often more) jobs are carried out.

Gathering of research, drafting of script, development/designing of characters and environments, concept art, storyboards. 

When making a CG/3D animated film, "modelling" and "rigging" often fall into the "pre-production" category (although it can be argued that these are "production").

MODELLING is the creation of a 3D character (or environment) within computer software packages. Think sculpting, but digitally. In this stage, the character (as designed in pre-production) is "built" in a rigid pose, ready to be handed over to the texture artists, before ending up with the "riggers".


Models look something like this-

(I googled 3D model and found this- no credit to me!)

TEXTURING- this is the adding of skin/hair/colours/materials to the model, making it look complete. 


Here's someone you might recognise, after being textured-

(same goes, no credit to me!)

RIGGING- This here is where I come in! (Yay, I'm a RIGGER). Now what we do, is we take the models that the modellers have created, and we essentially bring them to life. We do this by building them a virtual "skeleton" and a series of controls that enable the "animators" (next in line) to do their job. 


Looks a bit like this-

(found on google- not mine)

PRODUCTION 


ANIMATORS (me again, hiya guys!) then take these models, which having been rigged are now essentially digital puppets, and, well... animate them! This meaning, they move them (using the controls the riggers created) in accordance with the script/storyboards, acting out the story and essentially finalising the production process. 


LIGHTING. People are required to light the 3D environments so that they look convincing as real worlds. This is probably one of the most important stages in getting your animation to look believable. 


CAMERAS are also very important. Within the 3D software you must create "cameras", that essentially do the job that a real camera would, but from inside a virtual world, outputting visual "shots", that are then RENDERED, ready for editing. 


RENDERING is the process of getting shots out of the 3D software, ready to be edited.  




POST-PRODUCTION


And then comes the gruelling job of editing everything together- animation, sound, effects, eventually getting everything together into the final piece. 






WOO. So there you go. I consider myself a RIGGER and an ANIMATOR. That's my best effort (for now) at explaining what I do. I apologise that I haven't gone into much detail, especially about the areas I don't work in. Any questions though, I'll try my best to answer them, or I'll get someone who knows what they're talking about to answer. 


Let me say here that I also like to be involved in the creative process- coming up with stories, script-writing etc. Ideally one day I'll be a director, but you have to pay your dues first!


Any way, I hope all that makes at least some sense.

Cheers guys!
Nikki

Apologies,

for my recent lack of posts!

Sincerely sorry chaps, I am. I've just been the busiest of bees!

Working on the module (http://nz-designinthemarket.blogspot.com/) and the film (http://djcadmonsters.blogspot.com/) is a time-consuming effort!

So yeah, not filling this blog here with those ramblings, go have a spy at their separate blogs for that.

Personal work wise, not much to report I'm afraid. Trying to keep my head above water with my 3D learning, so I have spent a few hours on DT soaking up info like a sponge. Or trying to, at least. Also been working through some of the exercises that come with my How to Cheat in Maya book, IK/FK handled oot ma nut at this point.

Couple of the 4th year chaps were looking for people to work on their film for a bit, and I have offered up my services, so watch this space to see if anything comes of that.


Nothing else to report, I guess.

Cheers!
Nikki

Bake Sale!

So, yesterday our class had a Bake Sale at the front door to raise funds to buy ourselves a printer. It went very well and we sold many cakes. Overall success!