Maya 4.9 - More Clown Rig

Took a lot longer than I planned, but thats because more deadlines sneaked up on me so I had to concentrate on another work, and I been lazy to post on the blog all the time. Had few problems with this, especialy rigging the arms and making the controls follow the joints and not screw up movement. Everytime I used pole vector the IK wouldn't follow the main control for everything, but then I just added another controler for the IK and problem solved. Also had problem with main control, making everything follow it porperly, turned out I need to parent constraint the root joint to the body control. I think the rig is ready now and just need to texture the character, shouldn't take too long, I will use projections mostly, only the face will be painted nicely. Here is pic of the rig:

SWTOR

So I was working on my rigging when I got email I can download SWTOR for Beta Testing weeked, of course the game is more important than anything else on this planet so I had to pause and download it. When I saw this on my PC:

 

I thought I am going to cry from joy =D  I only wish I already had my new PC because I can see it now it wont run very well on this old one I have for now, but oh well, better than nothing! As soon as it finished downloading I am doing back to the rigging, only needs arms which I can do quickly and then it should be more or less finished.

Maya 4.8 - Clown Rig

Taking bit longer than planned at first but I am learning a lot about rigging and how to do it efficiently. So far I have finished controls and IKs/FKs for one leg and part of the spine, need to finish that one and arms. Once I have one side done the other side will be quick. I really want to get it done this week, I have lots of other stuff to work on.

MEL script 0.2 - Lab Work Grades

On Monday we got our labwork results, I managed to get 76.5 on it, which was highest from the whole class so I am was happy. Final deadline is getting closer too fast, but idea is to make like a forest generator, similar to city generator, but with trees, flowers, gravestones, etc. Something I can model quickly and make good code for.

Maya 4.7 - Clown Skeleton Test

So my quick rig test turned into few hours of learing how to rig all over again, I could remember some stuff but not enough of it, fortunately I found this really good tutorial on Youtube and it helped me to get my skeleton together and hopefuly also make controls and all that. I didn't have time to make the controls yet, I just finished the skeleton but did a quick Skin Bind test to see how the mesh deforms and I am quite happy. I do need to adjust how some of the joints affect the mesh but that was expected, though the areas I was worried about, eblow, knees and joints like that came out well enough, which suprised me. I think its because now I know better how the rig affects the mesh so I can prepare it. Here is picture of the skeleton and quick pose test of fat clown playing basketball!

Maya 4.6 - Clown model Progress

Today I did some progress on the clown model, tweaked some vertexes around as well as added hands and combined both halfs. I think last thing to do is to finish the face. I will try to do some rough rig and see how it will work, just in case it will need some changing. Then it will be off to texturing it, depending on how much time I'll feel I have I will either keep it simple or do draw texture for everything, so far I mainly plan the torso and face, other stuff can be simple colours. Once the rig is finished then its just the unicycle model and the scene and I can animate it.

Match Moving 0.3 - Manual and Automatic Tracking

Learning Matchmoving has been kind of slow process, I have to read a lot and didn't start actually working in the program will like a week ago. Still have a while to go and be better at it, but I think I am understaning the basics quite well and should be able to solve stuff. Things I am not sure about yet is about cameras and working with it in the anmation program (Maya in my case) but I will get to that soon. I have finally managed to get Matchmover to render image sequences so I can make videos out of them with my tracking markers to show. For now I have two vidoes, Manual Matchmove of Blue Screen and Automatic track of city pan. For now I personally preffer manual tracking, it might take longer but I feel it gives me greater control over the matchmove.

Maya 4.5 - Clown model

I should have started on this much much sooner, but today I have done most of the model, so I am happy. Need to finish the hands, face and some details, but then it should be ready for rigging. Not sure yet how I will do that, either myself or will try to look for some script or finished rig I could just apply, will see. I have to think about what all I want it to do, so I think I will just end up rigging it myself. I have done the model from scratch but followed a tutorial I found, it was useful but I was struggling with the head as it wasn't covered in the tutorial much, though I think it came out all right for now. Also the tutorial helped me to realize if I wont model from reference I can just model with closed eyes, it was really helpful. I did my reference picture by editing something I found on the net. Here are some images for the mesh and progress. Think week I have to finish the mesh, textures and rig it, maybe the rigging I will give extra week, but just wanna animate ASAP.

Maya 4.4 - Rocket Animation Final

Been a while since last update but I wasn't just wasting time, I have been actually doing some work, which wasn't easy but things are calming down at home. Anyway, I have finished the Rocket animation, didn't come out exactly as plannet because I didn't want to spend too much time on it, my fault for not working on it more often. Though since the topic was subtle emotions and movement I think it came out all right.