Hesa Hoblin

Woo! I managed to get Trax working with IK handles, something I didn't think was possible. This saves a heck of alot of time and is kinda annoying considering i just spent the morning trying to do it manually (and failing miserably.) The primary movement is there now i just need to get stuck in and tweak it all, which i think im gonna try doing in the graph editor cause then i can clean it up at the same time.

Now for the list of things not working. In creating the trax the weights on the stomach have gone stupid so im gonna have to clean them up, the IK on the left leg insists on trying to escape the mesh, a vertex on the right wrist insists on moving with the neck despite the fact theres no influence and all the textures have lost their bump maps so im gonna have to do them again...But i'm gonna finish this tonight! I need to start on the dialogue sequence i have planned so i cant afford to spend much more time on this.

Righty

Felt the need to post something seeing as i haven't posted a progress report in a while. The body is rigged... Ive setup set driven keys on the feet and individual set drive keys on all fingers on the fingers on the hands, anything that these don't cover will just have to be done individually. Theres IK handles in the legs, I originally wasn't going to have IK in the arms but because im doing a walk cycle like a gorilla he really needed them, so i now have two models one with and IK in the arms and one with an FK for when im animating a scene, having the two models is so much quicker and easier than having to have made an IK/FK switch. Once this was done it was onto painting weights... ive did it as best i can in the T-pose and then started a walk cycle with him and ive been cleaning up the weights as ive been going on.

Cleaning the weights is taking AGGGEESSS but i wanna get it done properly cause otherwise its going to look really bad, especially on the belly where there going to be quite alot of follow through. I have been having quite alot of trouble with random verts deciding their going to react to a completely different part of the body despite the fact they have no influence at all making them do this, ive checked in the weights and the components editor there is no reason for them to be doing this, so the only way i see round this is manually animating them back to the body, this isnt too much of a problem tis just a pain.

Edit: It looks like he has a cloud on his chest.

Somebody Call an Ambulance!

Gorilla down we have a gorilla down!!

Yes, I am still alive.

Okay the first thing you're probably gonna notice is that ive got myself a timer! I got it because i wanted to see how much time we had left and it is a heck of alot less than i thought it was going to be, and ive just left it there to help me distribute my time better (and to scare classmates MUHAHAHAHAHA!!!) But it may well vanish as we near the end of the project and really starts bothering me.

Ive had to rework my schedule a bit due to wishful thinking on my part (blendshapes in a day - yeh right) So the plan is-

Blendshapes - finshed by Monday
Rigging + Painting weights - finshed by Weds eve.

And so far im on schedule.

Excuse the crappy cheesy animation, twas only a quick test to see if all the blendshapes are working together which they seem to be (if anyone sees any errors let me know). Its been a pretty steep learning curve over the past couple of days, luckily i only had to restart the blendshapes once. And incase anyone wondering its 9 mouth controls, 4 eyebrow controls a nose and two eyes. And I didnt want to spend time configuring the controls to float off to the side of his head so i knocked together some quick outline heads and applyed to controls to that, it just means that i'll have to have another window open with this view in it.

Now onto an entirely new set of problems...rigging.

Success within Failure!!!

Its been an up and down day. Firstly as far as i can tell my modelings all done (YAY) I'm really pleased with the way its turned out and am now living in constant fear that its all gonna go horribly wrong in rigging or animation.

I decided the modelling was done about just before luchtime so started adding texture to the model, this is all where its gone kinda tits up. After about a hour shifting UVs around in the texture editor i concluded that the process i have been using (photos of plasticine) isnt going to work.
The process works fine and is a definate way of achieving the look of plasticine in
3D but to get it working well on the complete body would take alot of time and effort, and time isnt something i really have on my side right now.
So what ive done is designate 2 block colours dark brown for fur, peachy for chest, face, hands and feet. I then UV mapped these onto the model and then added a burn where i think its necessary on the model. I then added a brownian bump map ontop to make it look like its been sculpted (personally i prefer it without the bump but it doesn't look as plastciny). Im im really pleased with the outcome. I still need to do the eyes and interiot mouth.

And just for shits and giggles here it is without the bump...
I also spent a couple of hours trying to get the maya sun and sky working but it just seemed to make the image really overexposed and hazy, in the end i got fed up and managed to achieve this lighting with a couple of directional lights.

Animation Vids

To keep up with goings on within the industry i keep an eye on several blogs from different animators, these are good for finding out how different animators work and for getting tips on how to improve your animation. But they also show loads of stuff that interests them, videos photos etc just thought i'd do a quick blog for people showing some vids i've been shown - not necessarily useful in the current project but very relevant to animation as a subject.

Righty the first is a music video for "Her morning elegance" by Oren Lavie. I think this is an amazing video, i think it really shows how humans can be used for stop motion and how effective this can be when done properly.



The second is a puppet show performed by the jonas brothers. Ive seen this video posted on a couple of blogs. This is amazingly simple but really proves the point of how inperitive character and motivation are to bringing somethig to life.



Finally, this is a documentry made a couple of years ago and hosted by Rowan Atkinson. The documentry is laid out in a very amusing way (the first time i saw it i didnt take it too seriously) but if you break it down into the basics of what is being said its all very relevant stuff about visual comedy, and its good for a laugh.

Part1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9fsn6lQBV4
Part2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7JGaLgF8HM&feature=related
Part3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9k9lWYwrBY&feature=related
Part4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJcpm31yYqY&feature=related
Part5: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYrK0VhMjyI&feature=related

Thats all for the time being.

Wow busy day for blogging!

Sorry couldn't pass up the oppotunity to make a liar out of Sarah (tut tut naughty Sarah) i DID save the test rig we did together (though ive only just found it)

We were following a tutorial on how to make an IK FK switch with the rig and i think we did pretty well up till abut half way through the tutorial when we realized we had about anothr 3 hours work ahead of us, to be honest we wernt certain whether we were going to use this process (or in my case whether im gonna us IK's at all) and it seemed alot of work for something that we might not use, so we decided to call it a night and egt on with something more practical at home.

I did gather one pretty major thing out of doing this though, its possible to parent nurbs curves to Fks without any of the rig dissapearing, the only problem is its a MEL script and even more importantly its a MEL script that i didnt write down at the time - please excuse me whilst i go headbutt a wall.