Sinisthesia

First Glimpse

2012-01-19T14:27:00.000-08:00

Click to see movie

Here's the first glimpse of a lighting test for The Ballad of Sinister. The project's style bible calls for a silhouette look, partially inspiredby ancient storytelling traditions such as Wayang (Javanese shadow puppets),and partly in homage to Lotte Reiniger's Prince Achmed. I fooled with the ideaof doing the entire film in pure high-contrast black-and-white, which certainlywould fulfill the requirement for a stylized look. I even did some concept artto this end long before JasperMorello made it famous. I ran several tests with toon-shading in Maya and MentalRay looking for a method of flattening shapes into areas of tone. In the end,though, I decided the cut-out look would be too limiting, as there was so muchI wanted to do with fluids and volume effects to get the misty Bavarian forestlook necessary to evoke the fairytale tradition.

This test, then, is a compromise between a cg look and acut-out look. I decided I would let 3d animation do what it does best (showvolume), while simultaneously flattening forms into silhouette to suggest atwilight storytelling mood. I would do this by approaching the task the way alive-action director would; through careful framing of the action in front ofthe light source wherever possible. Since ninety percent of my shots areexterior shots, and most take place at night or twilight, this should workperfectly; just let the sky be the main light source. In the case of this test,the only light source in the scene is the IBL light of the gradient sky. All ofthe 3d forms are described by indirect illumination a la final gather in MentalRay. This gives just enough texture description to the internal forms, while essentiallystill flattening them so the focus remains on the overall silhouette.

Aspen

2011-11-09T13:57:00.000-08:00

Just for fun. Testing some free rigs out there.
MooM is a great rig for "broad" style animation. Alice is well suited for more subtle animation. I tried to pick an audio clip (from Dumb and Dumber) that suited their implicit characters.

Advice for Young Artists

2011-10-28T21:12:00.000-07:00

The latest issue of Artistik Magazine features an interview I conducted with Kamal Siegel, who teaches at my school as well as teaching at Digipen and running his own business, Digital Double (see the previous post). Since the magazine only ran about half our interview, I present it here in its full form. I believe it's great advice for today's animation students and those considering entrepreneurship.

Interview with Kamal Siegel - May 5th 2011

Kamal answers questions about how he started hisbusiness, Digital Double and how he developed his musical style among manyother interesting things about his personal journey as an artist and businessperson. For more about Kamal & Digital Double visit:

www.kamalsiegel.com

www.digitaldouble.com

How do you keep motivated as an artist?

The biggest source of inspiration to me is mysurroundings. I love people and nature. I love seeing the cars drive by and thebuildings being built. I love watching the gardeners mowing outside and thesweet smell of freshly cut grass. I love looking at people at the coffee shopand trying to capture them in drawings. If you keep your eyes open you’ll findno shortage of inspiration.

On a more technical side, however, it’s very importantfor me to complete things that I start. If I don’t, those unfinished projectsweigh on me like an anchor and keep me from moving forward. And while I derivesome motivation from completed projects, the times I REALLY get pumped are whenI’ve completed something I’m proud of. It’s rare, but when it happens, it’svery energizing.

How did you come to run your own 3D graphics business?

There’s a story about a dream that inspired me to startthe business that you can read up on artoven.com.

But in essence, I took it one step at a time. I learnedabout running a business, did the paperwork, opened a bank account, did mystate and federal taxes, etc., and managed to survive while operating at a lossfor the first three years. It wasn’t easy and it took an enormous amount oftime, effort and sacrifice. And it still does.

When I first started running the business I had apart-time job which helped financially. During that time I gradually grew thebusiness from home until I eventually got laid off a year later. The feeling?Imagine a baby bird that’s never flown being booted out of its nest with twochoices: Fly or die! I managed to flap my wings hard enough to crash land withsome small injuries and survive. Soon after, thankfully, what was then a sidebusiness picked up enough to sustain me and my wife with a little one on the wayfollowed by a second child and I’m happy to say that the business has beenkeeping a roof over our heads and food on the table for seven years now.

What are the pros and cons of entrepreneurship in thisindustry?

The biggest advantage of being independent is creativefreedom. Much like the difference between being a captain of a ship and being amember of the crew is that the captain gets to pick the destination and theroute. The crew is there to help meet that goal but often has very little to nosay in that decision. That independence and responsibility is thrilling.

The flip side of that is that if the ship ever sinks, sodoes the captain. The crew can escape on one of those little row boats, but thecaptain sinks at the helm. So it’s a huge risk you take when going intobusiness for yourself. For example, Uncle Sam won’t be sending you anunemployment check when you lose your business- he’ll just ask you to pay yourdues and wave goodbye as you sink.

Another obvious “con” is that you are constantly lookingfor work. Projects come and go. Some weekly, some monthly and some that you’veinvested a lot of time and money in never even get off the ground with no checkawaiting you on the other end or even a thank you. People think that running yourown business will free you up, but the honest truth is, you will be consumed byit. Weekends become no different than any other weekday as you’ll be workingthrough them just as hard as you do during the week.

Is it difficult to survive as a small business owner intoday’s economic climate?

Yes, very difficult but the economy has very little to dowith it and I would say medium sized businesses struggle as well. Therecession, if anything, has helped our business. The real difficulty is theunfair competitive landscape that the global market has created. There isnothing wrong with competition of course, but what has happened is the rulesare different from one nation to another, making for an unfair playingfield.

We hear a lot about foreign competition threatening thelivelihood of domestic 3d graphic artists. What is the best way to leverageyourself against such competition?

Keep learning! Outsmart the competition. Be lean and mean(keep your overhead low and invest in your people). Find creative new ways ofdoing things that allow you to crank out better quality work at a faster paceso you can keep the same rates you did before while shortening your turn aroundtime.

Clients are willing to pay more if you can make a casefor the value added you bring to the table. And most important of all, upholdthe highest standards for quality and professionalism. Be the best in yourbusiness. The industry has no tolerance for mediocrity and sloppy behavior.

With all the administrative duties of running a business,how do you still make time to develop your art skills?

It’s going to seem trivial but I made a consciousdecision a long time ago to not have a TV in the house. My wife and I bothagreed it was waste of time. You wouldn’t believe how much time that freed upand how surprisingly fast I was able to fill that time up with more importantthings to do.

But that wasn’t enough. So I made another decision toalways carry my sketchbook with me wherever I went depending on the occasion,some large, some small. This way I could draw from life or from my imaginationany time. Later I invested in a laptop, specifically a tablet pc that allowedme to draw directly on the monitor. I still use it today. It’s an HP Pavilliontx 2500. The beauty of it is that the tablet technology it includes is by Wacomso it has pressure sensitivity and I can draw directly into Photoshop. So Icould use it as a digital sketchbook and on top of that do a lot of my personal3D work as well.

Recently I decided to get an iPad for my digitalsketching, which, while not pressure sensitive, made it easier to carry aroundand a lot more convenient. So I use it regularly to keep sketching and drawingfrom life. And I’ve realized pressure sensitivity is actually somewhat overrated.You can see some of my iPad paintings onhttp://www.kamalsiegel.com

In essence, the more mobile you can make your creativity,the easier it will be for you to continue honing your skills. All it takes is apocket sized sketchbook and turning off the TV

You are also a musician. Tell us how you came to developyour musical style.

I play the guitar, so I started with the first string andplucked at it with my index finger. As I plucked that first string with myindex finger I discovered that there were certain note sequences that workedwell together. I later found out that what I had discovered was called a“scale”. No joke. And it was that slow process of discovery that I used tolearn how to play.

So I’m self taught, but I learned a lot by listening toother musicians I admired and my close friends. It’s possible the style ispartially influenced by growing up in Chile (where I was born and raised), andpartly by the music I enjoyed listening to at the time (Michael Hedges &Will Ackerman).

In short, I literally did it one finger and string at atime and spent about an hour or two each day (seven days a week) practicing.I’ve been playing the guitar for fourteen years now and I keep discovering newthings. Last year this happened to me: While playing the piano I discoveredsomething new and I got all excited and told a friend about it: “hey check itout, if I start a piece of music at a different part of the scale, it soundslike a totally different piece of music even though it’s the same scale, and ina nonchalant kind of way he said “um… yeah, that’s called a mode, Kamal”.

Who are your heroes?

For me they are among my friends and family; myco-workers, clients and people I work for are amazing people. When I seegenerosity, leadership, happiness, optimism, creativity, collaboration,honesty, excellence in others, I’m inspired by them and I become an instantfan.

People that take chances, people that go outside of theircomfort zone to create something new, people that give the world their all and don’task for anything in return, people that follow through with their commitments;these are people I look up to and I’m thankful to be surrounded by every day.Look around you. You don’t need to read about someone in a book, or watch amovie about them to find a hero. They are among us every day. Seek them out,learn from them and be with them. It’ll rub off on you.

What would be one word of advice you’d like to share withall aspiring artists?

It’s taken me 24,485 drawings to get where I’m at todayas an artist and I’ve produced thousands of 3D models and textures in the last12 years of my career. So my advice to you is: make art and make a lot of it.You will only get better through practice.

Don’t waste your time doing the bare minimum each time.Do the best possible work you can do. And scope your projects so that you canfinish them. You’ll be really pumped when you see the cool stuff you can createand will pour that inspiration into something even cooler next timearound.

Carry a sketchbook around with you and use it. Draw,draw, draw! I’ve done 7,886 sketchbook pages, and counting. Try to catch upwhile you’re still in school. You have no idea how much more time you have nowthan you will later. Take advantage of it. Turn off your cell, turn off the TV,turn off the video games, no more parties, and tell your friends you’re toobusy unless you’re getting together to collaborate on projects.

That said; (and this is very important) always rememberto take a break and prioritize your time accordingly. Spend time with yoursignificant other and your kids if you have them. Take time to be with family,even if they’re out of town. There is more to life than just work, and it’s inthese areas where you will derive your inspiration so it’s extremely importantfor your own creativity that you take the time to enjoy all these other aspectsof life. Maybe take on a sport, hobby, art or craft that’s really different.You’ll learn something from it, it will inform your work and you’ll be a betterartist for it.

Digital Double

2011-10-28T02:30:00.000-07:00

Being a college professor means you occasionally get to do something fun. Here's some footage from a field trip to the motion capture studio at Digital Double in Redmond, owned by Kamal Siegel, a professor in my department. This is me doing my best Andy Serkis impression. Just monkeyin' around. What you see is raw unwrangled data, so the arm pops and knee buckles are par for the course. Digital Double uses an optical system, BioStage by Organic Motion, a system that uses 14 cameras positioned around a set draped in highly reflective material, such that the nonreflective subject is isolated as a 3D silhouette and the skeleton is drawn as bones down the center of said silhouette. For this reason, bunching up the limbs near the trunk can sometimes result in the data becoming garbled (explaining the momentary arm pops when they linger too near the torso for too long). The myth is that motion capture saves time: in fact, motion capture animation takes twice as long to wrangle as keyframe data created from scratch. Where motion capture really shines is as reference footage in 3D. As an animation student, you can learn more from analyzing mocap data than any other form of reference.

Sisters

2011-10-20T01:01:00.001-07:00

The Amazing Mr. Bickford

2011-10-08T18:54:00.000-07:00

Today I visited one of my all-time animation heroes, legendary animator Bruce Bickford. Turns out, he lives about 5 miles away. His house is exactly as I envisioned it would be: a sedimentation of years and years of obsessive creation manifested in teetering piles of works past and future.

If you are familiar with the auteur, he specializes in a unique variation of surrealist animation, made famous in the Frank Zappa films Baby Snakes, The Dub Room Special and The Amazing Mr.Bickford. After breaking with Zappa, Bruce went on to create his magnum opus, Prometheus' Garden, and then dissolved into obscurity, feverishly working in solitude for some 25 years on perpetually evolving personal projects. He was the subject of the award-winning documentary Monster Road, which I have yet to see. Gazing in awe at the vastness of his unseen work, I can't help but wonder if the majority of it might never see the light of day. He seems more interested in creating than finding an audience, which flies in the face of everything I previously surmised about the artistic impulse. Here was one that seemingly enjoyed the act of creating, more than the result or the accolades of his achievement. Either that, or it's simply compulsion.

Far from being the antisocial recluse I expected, I found Mr. Bickford to be charming and sociable, more than willing to share anything and everything about his process with me. The pictures adorning this blog post were not only permitted, but encouraged; he even invited me back to take more on a day "when the light is better."

Bruce showing his model of the Double-R diner he made for a "Twin Peaks" art show. (Twin Peaks was filmed around here and you still meet the occasional "Peaker" - tourist obsessed with the show.)

Inside the Double-R, a clay recreation of the diner interior.

When I arrived, Bruce was hard at work on an upcoming graphic novel to be published by Fantagraphics. I asked if a publication date was set. He laughed and said that at some point he just had to stop, and that would be when it was finished. I get the feeling he's been noodling with this for far too long.

The madman's desk

He's currently inspired by viking ship prows.

We discussed the possibility of building these hallucinatory images in CG

Bruce went on to show me boxes of files, all overflowing with story ideas waiting to be brought to life. Most of his stories from the past couple decades dealt with the eccentric inhabitants of a fictitious village in the woods above his house. He has an intern from my school doing wire armatures for the village rooftops he's laboriously piecing together, clay tile by clay tile.

Explaining one of his myriad stories

The intricate clay tile rooftops for his village

Bruce will talk with a calm, measured demeanor about a story of a boy that morphs into some kind of demon-monster and eats himself. I realized that much of his seemingly stream-of-conscious work is deliberate and meticulously planned - a trait he picked up from his collaborator Zappa?

I asked Bruce why he started animating. He said he's always wanted to make movies. I asked if he watches many movies. He said the only movie he saw this year was "Drive," which left him disappointed. He said he saw it because he likes cars and expected more action.

Bruce's famous downshooter

The dining room. Every space is completely overtaken by his work. The sticks glued to the carboard are the skeletons of his soon-to-be clay village.

He has boxes of these delicately carved leaves.

Some of the castles you see sitting around are another of his obsessions: he held one up and remarked that a variation on this same castle has been in every one of his major works since the beginning.

Bruce may be notoriously lackadaisical about getting his work out there, but make no mistake; he's been incessantly building a vast library of work for himself outside of the public eye. He seems to have no qualms about exposing it, he's simply waiting for someone to show an interest. If you are someone with the resources to assist Bruce in getting some of his stories out there for public consumption, please message me so I can put you in contact with him. He's a one-of-a-kind, and when he's gone there will never be another Bruce Bickford. It was a great inspiration to spend an afternoon with him.

If you'd like to get a taste of Bruce's extraordinary work, YouTube has many teaser snippets, such as this and this and this.

Immovable

2011-10-05T00:45:00.000-07:00

Demonstration of pantomime for my animation students. Uses The Goon rig by Sean Burgoon.

Here it is after the initial blocking phase. You'll see I animated on one's or two's for the fast motion parts, and just hit the extremes and storytelling poses for the regular-speed parts.

And here is the same sequence, with stepped tangents switched to Maya2012's new "Auto" tangent type. As you can see, not bad right out of the box. Much more intelligent than splines. Great time saver!

Finally, after several polishing passes, you get the result embedded at the top. This is a playblast using Maya's new Viewport 2.0. Screenspace ambient occlusion in realtime! Great for contact positions. Maya's improvements in the last couple of versions has been kind to animators.

By the way, for my animation classes I use How to Cheat in Maya 2012 - awesome reference for beginning Maya animators - as well as Uncle Richard's Almanack (Animation Survival Kit).

Botbuilding 101

2011-09-17T17:02:00.000-07:00

I began this study when I assigned my modeling class a "Mech" project. I figured it was a more interesting way to approach "hard-body" modeling than, say, modeling from blueprints of a car or existing product. Students were asked to come up with their own concepts. This way, I could ensure that they were exercising their conceptual facilities, not just their technical modeling skills (nothing against technical modelers, but these days that skill is so easily outsourced). Since my approach to teaching involves participating in every assignment --teachers should always do the assignments so they know what the students are dealing with-- I developed my own bot. First, a doodle on a piece of paper:

As you can see, my first instinct was the old "big-guns-as-hands" approach. I changed them to hand-like clamps with the first ink sketch, simply because I thought they would make a nicer silhouette. I decided early on that this was going to be all about design, not realism or backstory. This freed me up to exaggerate design elements without concern about how "practical" they were.

For my second draft, I sought to emphasize the rhythmic quality with repeating forms.

This was developed into a front and side image plane to bring into Maya:

And a low-poly cage was developed using an image plane:

Sometimes it was easier to add it as a projected texture to a plane that I could rotate to build the offset parts:

And the resulting low-poly mesh:

Laboriously, I laid out UV coordinates for all 50+ parts, then added a procedural bump texture in Maya to see how it looked:

In Mudbox, I put down the first base layer of rust.

Back in Maya I could see all the texture stretching due to the smoothing of the subdivision levels. After refining many UVs and model parts, I returned to Mudbox for the next layer of diffuse texture:

After a couple more round trips to Mudbox, here it is rendered in Maya with Spec, Normal and Diffuse maps:

I'm all botted out for now, but to really make this production-quality would require another layer of texture for asymmetry (currently, most parts reference the same texture on the left and right sides, so this wouldn't hold up to cinematic scrutiny). There are lots of places you could go with this, rigging-wise, but this makes for a good base mesh to work from. He's game-ready at the lowest LOD, and since all his parts are swappable I just might get around to adding some big guns back in. Some day.

Jeannie

2011-09-04T15:25:00.000-07:00

From renders

Mudbox Video

A game-ready character based on this got3d model. Started as a classroom demo for the Modeling II class I was teaching. I was testing the Mudbox-to-Maya workflow for a game pipeline. The polygonal hair will be replaced by sim hair for the hi-res version, and eyelashes will be polygons instead of cards.

Here she is back in Maya at little over 13k triangles:

Summer 2011 Figure Drawings

2011-08-21T12:12:00.000-07:00

From Summer 2011 Figure Drawings

Character Development Workshop, Part 3: Skinning and Facial Setup

2011-07-19T02:09:00.000-07:00

Skinning

When we last met Generikat he was rig-ready and geometry-ready, but the geometry was not yet bound to the rig. Let’s do that now.

Select the root-bone and shift-select the geometry and Skin→Bind Skin→Interactive Skin Bind – I used the default options.

Now a capsule appears around the root bone of your character. You should see “root” highlighted under the “influences” section of the tool settings window. The capsule gives you a visual representation of the influence envelop around each joint. Successively click through the influence list, selecting each bone and adjusting the capsules size so that they more tightly fit around each joint. Select the different parts of the capsule manipulator to resize in different ways, using the SHIFT key to constrain in different ways.

Note: with Reflection turned on you only need to adjust capsules for one side of the rig.

After you adjust the capsules, test the rig by moving various controls. Also, select the nose and the head joint and Skin→Bind Skin→Smooth Bind (options): Change Bind To to Selected Joints and bind.

To further refine the skin, select the geometry, make sure you are in Shading→Smooth Shade All mode and Renderer→Default Quality Rendering and go to Skin→Edit Smooth Skin→Paint Skin Weights Tool. Select joints on the influence list and paint the geometry to adjust the area of influence. For quick results, paint areas of influence with Paint Operation: Replace and a value of 1 (a pressure-sensitive tablet will vary the value) and then go back though with Paint Operation: Smooth to even out the falloff. Paint one half of the body, and then use Skin→Edit Smooth Skin→Mirror Skin Weights to copy the edits to the other half.

Tips: Click on a joint with MMB and use MMB to rotate the joints to test while using the paint skin weights tool. Click with LMB to switch back to the brush. Alternatively, set keyframes for various callisthenic poses throughout your timeline and paint on different frames to view the skin under different deformation conditions. There’s also a handy RMB-menu to use over joints while using the paint skin weights tool. The icons in the Paint Skin Weights tool settings window enable you to smooth selected vertex weights (weight hammer), copy and paste weights from vertex to vertex, and transfer vertices from influence to influence, all without leaving the tool! As a result of these updates to the tool, you will find less need to go into the Component Editor to adjust weights than in previous versions of Maya.

Now go into the attribute editor for the skinCluster node and under Smooth Skin Attributes change Skinning Method to Weight Blended. This will allow you to use the paint skin weights tool to paint in areas of dual quaternion (DQ) skinning. Basically dual quaternion holds volume around joints better, so you will paint the shoulders, elbows and knees with dual quaternion. By leaving the other areas alone we default to the classic linear skinning method (which most skinning artists find has more predictable results in non-joint areas). Go back into the Paint Skin Weights tool and switch Weight Type to DQ Blend Weight and then paint the elbows, shoulders and knees white (DQ) while leaving all else black (classic linear). Note: as of Maya2011 Mirror Weights does not yet mirror blend weights, so your best bet is to do it manually to both sides.

Continue refining the skin envelope, being careful to test every deformation as you go.

To clean up your skinning, finalize by going to Skin→Edit Smooth Skin→Prune Small Weights and then Skin→Edit Smooth Skin→Remove Unused Influences.

Basic Face Blendshapes, Method 1: using Maya

This is the “old” method, still the preferred method if you don’t have Mudbox.

First we’ll duplicate the entire character mesh for facial blendshapes. We will create facial sculpts that will act as morph targets for the character’s facial expressions.
Notes on head extraction: Because this is a seamless mesh, we’ll copy the entire character. Only vertices that move will be evaluated in a blendshape, so duplicating the entire body mesh won’t create too big a performance hit (although it will increase scene size). If you’d like to separate the head you can perform an extract operation, duplicate that for blendshapes and then combine the second mesh back to the body; however, this method will leave you with a mesh that you cannot delete history on, nor adjust skin weighting, so it is not recommended. The third option would be to download the popular detatchSeparate script from creative crash: http://www.creativecrash.com/maya/downloads/scripts-plugins/polygon/c/detachseparate-mel/download_page which will allow you to extract the head with no history, leaving the body untouched. However, the head will have to be reskinned afterwards. Best practices is always to design characters with heads modeled as a separate mesh to begin with, if you know you will be doing blendshapes for facial animation.

● If you haven’t already, group all your meshes into a group called geoGRP.

● Duplicate the geoGRP group and move new one to the side (CTRL+D)
(By duplicating the group, we are copying the eyes as reference so we can create eyelid blendshapes properly)

● Shift+D to duplicate with transform 5 more times

● Select those six, duplicate them and move them up to be a second row (12 in all). The top six will be the upper face blends, the bottom six the lower face blends.

● Create the BlendShapes (see below) by using the move tool with soft select and reflection turned on. Name each copied group the name you want the blendshape to be (browsUp, browsDown, etc). Be careful not to move any vertices but the ones in the local area of the particular blendshape. For example, brow shapes should only move vertices around the brow.

The Upper Face Shapes:

● Brows down – brows uniformly down and slightly forward over eyes

● Brows up – "surprise" brows, pushed up and back along forehead

● Sad – inner brows raised, outer brows lowered

● Angry – outer brows raised, inner brows lowered

● Closed – eyelids closed as in a blink

The Lower face shapes:

● Narrow – lips pursed or puckered as if blowing or saying "oooo"

● Wide - lips long and thin, corners pulled back around the contours of the face

● FV – lower lip curled inward at the top, to fit under the upper teeth in a closed position (as in saying "f" or "v")

● Frown – ends of mouth pulled slightly downward

● Disgust – a snear: upper lip slightly curled outward and nasal folds lifted higher around nose

● Smile – ends of mouth pulled upward slightly

Reference:

http://face-and-emotion.com

http://www.artnatomia.net/

By making blendshapes very local they are as modular as possible; that is, meant to be used in combination to create the widest variety of possible shapes. Notice we didn't make mouth open / mouth closed shapes; that's because we weighted the jaw area to be driven by a jaw bone, which we will animate for open/closed mouth action.

Note: to dial in facial asymmetry (so important!) you’ll additionally have to break out each face shape to right/left side only versions. This can be time consuming - you can't just mirror geometry in Maya or you'll reverse the vertex order which blendshapes depend on. Because of this, the use of Mudbox (see below) is highly recommended for blendshapes.

● Select all the mesh copies, shift+select the original (base) model and perform Create Deformers→Blend shape (options)

● On the basic tab, give it a name under BlendShape node: faceblends
On the Advanced tab, change Deformation Order to Front of Chain (the blendshape deformer will evaluate before the skincluster)

● Open Window→Animation Editors→Blend Shape to access sliders for these new blends, or use the channel box (with base shape selected).

● You can now delete or hide all the target blend heads (you can change the targets to update the base head, so you may wish to keep them around on a hidden layer).

Basic Face Blendshapes, Method 2: Using Mudbox

If you have Mudbox, this is the preferred method, as it makes the breaking out into left and right side shapes much easier.

Select your skinned character mesh and File→Export Selected to Mudbox… (Maya2011) or File→Send to Mudbox→Send as New Scene (Maya2012). (In Mudbox2012 there is a bug that may cause errors importing a skinned character ... in this case, duplicate the mesh first and send the duplicate.)

In Mudbox, immediately create a sculpt layer. Name it Brows Down.

Using the grab tool, grab the vertices in the vicinity of the brows and pull them down (hit W to see the wireframe) to sculpt a brows down shape. Turn on Mirror: X under tool properties (click the tool icon and look in the Properties palette) so that you can sculpt with symmetry.

Under the layers palette menu, Duplicate Selected twice. Hide all sculpt layers except the current one while you sculpt. Do this by clicking the bullet under the eyeball column in the layers palette.

The first duplicate rename Left Brow Down. With this layer current, select the Erase tool (under the Sculpt tools palette) and erase away all changes made to the right side. Toggle the layer’s visibility on and off and look for any vertices popping on the right side to make sure you got them all. (May have to turn off Mirror in the erase tool properties.)

Do this for the other duplicate layer, naming it Right Brow Down, and erasing all changes made to the left side.

Repeat this basic process for all the blend shapes.

Upper face:

Brows Down
Left Brow Down
Right Brow Down
Brows Up
Left Brow Up
Right Brow Up
Sad
Left Sad
Right Sad
Angry
Left Angry
Right Angry
Closed
Left Eye Closed
Right Eye Closed
possibly others, such as Squint ...

Lower Face:

Narrow
Wide
FV
Frown
Left Frown
Right Frown
Smile
Left Smile
Right Smile
Snear
Left Snear
Right Snear

· possibly others, such as Cheek Puff or Lip Curl In/Lip Curl out

Note: Best not to subdivide the mesh after you start working on blendshapes – sculpt layers are tied to the particular subdivision level you edit them on.

Return the current layer to the base mesh (all other layers visibility turned off) and go to File→Send to Maya. (In Mudbox2012 you can Update Current Scene.) In the Send options, change If there are sculpt layers: to Export sculpt layers on current mesh level as Maya blendshapes. (In Mudbox2012 this is under File→Send to Maya→Preferences ...)

If you sent the character back to Maya as a new scene, Maya will prompt you to save and start a new scene. Your mesh comes in, complete with blendshapes. Test them out.

Save this temporary file and then reopen your character file. Import the version of your model with the blendshapes on it – it should be in the same position as your skinned model. Select the skinned model, shift-select the blendshapes model, and Skin→Edit Smooth Skin→Substitute Geometry. You now have a skinned model with blendshapes.

Setting Up Animation Control Objects for Facial Animation

Next we’ll create a control object that animators can use to manipulate the jawbone and the faceblends. By doing one control object, you’ll be able to see how this process works.

Using the EP curve tool set to linear, create a square on the grid in the front camera. Modify→Center Pivot. Move and scale this into place next to your character and freeze transformations. Name it mouthControlBox.

Create→Locator and point constrain it (maintain offset turned off) to the NURBS square, then delete the constraint. This is to place the locator in the dead center of the square. Freeze transformations on the locator. Name it mouthControl. Parent it under the mouthControlBox. In the attribute editor for mouthControlBoxShape node, under Object display, turn on Template so the box itself can't be selected. You can turn this back off if you ever need to move the whole control.

Now select the locator and move it in x to the edge of the square, taking note of what value you reach in the channel box. In my case, I created a 5x5 unit square, so the locator travels 2.5 units to reach the sides. This is where we will set the limits on the locator.

Go to the Attribute Editor for the locator and under Transform Attributes→Limit Information turn on limits for Trans limit X and Y, setting min and Max to -2.5 and 2.5 (or your numbers noted in the previous step). Lock and hide translate z, scale and visibility attributes. You now have a locator constrained within the limits of the NURBS square. Try it out.

Now we'll use Set Driven Key to drive four blend shapes from one control object, simplifying the control system for the animator by consolidating several channels into one keyframeable object.

Animate→Set Driven Key→Set...

With the mouthControl locator still selected, hit Load Driver. Select the mesh and in the channel box select the lowerFace blend node. Hit Load Driven.

The translateX of the mouthControl will be used to drive the narrow and wide blend shapes. Select TranslateX in the upper field and both Narrow and Wide in the lower field to set a default key at a value of 0. Hit the Key button.

Now select mouthControl in the SDK window to bring its attributes into the channel box. Set translateX to the maximum: 2.5. Select lowerFace in the SDK window to bring its attributes into the channel box and set the value for Wide to its maximum: 1. Hit Key.

Now change the mouthControl.translateX value to its minimum: -2.5 and the lowerface.narrow shape to its maximum:1 and hit Key. Test your slider by moving the mouthControl's translateX between its minimum and maximum to see it slide between the Narrow and Wide shapes.

Now set a default 0 key on mouthControl's translateY and lowerFace's Frown and Smile shapes.

Set a Key with mouthControl.translateY set to its maximum: 2.5 and lowerFace.smile set to its maximum:1.

Now set a key with mouthControl.translateY at its minimum: -2.5 and lowerface.frown at its maximum: 1.

Now select the locator in your window and test your fully funtional control slider. Pulling it to the top of the box invokes a smile, toward the bottom for a frown, to the right for wide shapes and to the left for narrow shapes. The corners blend between harmonious shapes (narrow smile, widefrown, etc) but the overall setup prohibits the simultaneous invoking of shapes that are in opposition to each other. For example, simultaneously invoking both narrow and wide shapes would produce strange results, since the vertices are moving in opposite directions, so you would never use these incompatible shapes simultaneously. This setup prohibits such awkward distortions and makes the blendshape system easy for the animator to control and key.

You can use the Create→Text to create a label for the control, positioning it over the control box and templating it.

With this procedure, you can create the rest of the facial setup in the same way. One interesting case study is Package Man, downloadable at http://www.rigging101.com/.

His facial setup includes a slider that controls the rotation of the jawbone, linear sliders controlling the eyelids and eyebrows, and a slider controlling bend/squash blendshapes on a lattice deformer around the head for cartoon squash 'n' stretch. You can set up sliders to drive nonlinear deformers the same way (Create Deformers→Nonlinear→...). If you broke out your blendshapes into left and right shapes, you'll want to have separate sliders for the left and rights sides, or you can get fancy and use utility nodes such as the Condition node to create a box controller that slides between the left and right versions of a shape. In short, this same procedure can be used to drive just about any attribute value on a character rig! Here's a screen shot of the Package Man setup:

When you are done setting up your facial rig, group the whole thing and parent it under the head control. It is best to add an attribute to the head control (or root control) that drives the visibility of the facial rig group, so you can turn it on when doing facial animation, and turn it off otherwise to avoid screen clutter.

Wrap-Up

Now we've followed the development cycle of Generikat from a line drawing to a fully rigged, animatable character. This set of tutorials was meant to demonstrate the most common practices in character modeling and setup using a simple test case. Characters of higher complexity can be set up by utilizing the same procedures demonstrated here.

Character Development Workshop, Part 2: Rigging

2011-06-24T01:58:00.000-07:00

When we last met our friend Generikat he had morphed into sort of a teddy bear. (This same “cat” toon template can be used for bears, bunnies, any anthropomorphized cuddly critter.) We took it to the end of the modeling phase in Tutorial 1, which can be found here.

Cleanup & UVs

Before we start rigging there’s some preparatory work to be done. First, delete the instanced half and duplicate it over again, this time changing the duplicate special options to “copy” rather than “instance.” (Still scale -1 in x). For the new half, Modify→Freeze Transformations and then Normals→Reverse. Then select both halves and Mesh→Combine and Edit Mesh→Merge (Options): Set threshold to as low as possible (.0001). This should merge only verts directly on top of each other, which should be just the centerline. Finally Edit→Delete all by Type→History.

I also gave him a little tail:

As a model check, run Mesh→Cleanup … Use the settings shown here:

If anything comes up selected, you know you have some problem geometry to deal with.

After all mesh issues are dealt with, we need to get some UVs laid out.

If you are lucky enough to have Bonus Tools installed, just go to “Assign Texture Shader.” Otherwise, create a new lambert texture and map a checker texture to its color swatch. This will help you visualize the uniformity of the UVs.

Start the UV process by getting some … any … UVs on there. Create UVs→Planar Mapping. You’ll get one big shell. Check Window→UV Texture Editor.

Now before we slice these UVs into islands, make a selection set of all the UV border edges. By shift-selecting edges, select all of the edges that will make good seams for your character. Think ahead to how it will unwrap and put in enough edges to minimize distortion, all the while trying to keep the number of UV islands low and placing seams where they are least likely to be noticed (occluded areas, areas of low texture detail or "natural" borders between different textures). When you have all of your edges selected, Create→Sets→Quick Select Set so that you can return to this selection if need be. The following images show where I put mine.

Then go to the UV editor and Polygons→Cut UV Edges. Use the Tool→Move UV Shell Tool to move the shells apart.

With every piece selected, do a Polygons→Unfold and then a Polygons→Layout to get results similar to below. I selected the top and bottom center UV on the face shell (highlighted in the screencap below) before I did a second Unfold on it, with options set to Pin Selected UVs, coaxing it to unfold symmetrically.

Since this is not a UVs tutorial, we'll stop there - the bare minimum you should do is have every piece non-overlapping, as we do. For a real project you should take it further to maximize texel space by carefully arranging and manipulating shells. I highly recommend Headus UVLayout as a tool to quickly achieve good results.

We do most of our UV work before rigging, simply because it tends to create history on our model. Once we get into skinning, we normally don't want to delete history any more, so doing things in this order makes the most sense. Delete history now. At this point I'll create a temporary "animation texture" – it may not get its final texture until after rigging and animating, depending on the project. Final texture mapping is most conveniently done as part of the lighting and rendering phase of production, so there's no rush on the final texture in most character pipelines. It helps the animators to have at least some surface information, though, so you can do some 3d paint in Maya or Mudbox at this point if you choose. I just plopped some colored materials on him:

At this point, make sure all your geometry and material nodes are named per your naming convention, maybe grouping all geometry to keep it away from the rigging clutter you're about to make. Now may be a good time to run File→Optimize Scene Size to delete any junk nodes left over from modeling.

Rigging the Legs

Remember the point of rigging is to anticipate all of the articulation and range of motion in animation. The best riggers continuously visualize the extremes of movement the character will eventually exhibit throughout the rigging process, and even refer to animation motion reference before beginning. YouTube and Vimeo have lots of reference for human and animal locomotion. Take time to plan before you begin.

Put on your geometry on a template layer for now. You will only need it as a reference while you lay out the joints for your rig.

Switch to the side view and the animation menu set. Choose Skeleton→Joint Tool and click to place 5 joints, as below. Middle mouse moves last joint placed. Enter to complete tool.

Name the joints hip, knee, ankle, ball, toe. Then shift-select them all in the Outliner and Modify→Prefix Hierarchy Names with left_

In the front view, position the joint chain to fit inside the left leg geometry.

Go to Skeleton>IK Spline Handle Tool (set to ikRPsolver, sticky) and click the hip bone and then the ankle bone. Name this new IK handle left_ankleIK.

Now go back into the IK Handle tool but change the solver to ikSCsolver. Create an IK handle from the ankle to the ball joint, and one from the ball to the toe joint. Name these left_ballIK and left_toeIK.

Select the top bone in the hierarchy, go to Skeleton→Mirror Joint (Options) and mirror across YZ with function set to Behavior. Also, under replacement names, search for left_ and replace with right_.

This will duplicate your leg system across to the right side.

Now we'll set up the feet with a simple reverse-foot setup. Starting at the character's heel, place a joint in the side view and then hold v (point-snap) to place joints at the toe, then ball, then ankle going in the reverse direction from your original chain. Name these joints revHeel, revToe, revBall, revAnkle. (Tip: to accurately place the first joint, you can point-snap it to the ball joint and then middle-mouse-drag it behind to the heel).

Prefix hierarchy names with left_ and then mirror joint on this reverse chain, replacing left_ with right_. Now parent the leg's IK handles under the corresponding joint in the reverse foot (select the handle, than CTRL-select the joint in the reverse foot and hit p to parent) – ankleIK to revAnkle, ballIK to revBall, toeIK to revToe. You can test this setup by lifting and rotating the revHeel bone. Undo after testing to reset foot position. Remember to do this for both feet.

Create a foot control object: character setup involves creating a set of easy-to-select manipulators for animators to set keys on, thereby animating parts of the underlying rig. We will try to make all of our control objects out of NURBS curves, because they don't render by default. Create→NURBS primitives→Circle and with the move tool, v+MMB click on the ball joint to snap the center of the circle around the ball (v=point snap). Scale it to fit around the templated foot geometry.

Switch to control vertex mode (F8 or RMB over the curve to select cv mode) and fashion the cvs of the curve to a shape more approximating the foot.

Name this control object left_footControl. Duplicate a copy flipped negative in scaleX, and then add a negative to the translateX value to pop it over to the right side. Rename this copy right_footControl. Freeze transformations and delete history on both, and then move the pivot points to their respective heel joints (hold d and v while MMB-snapping the pivot point to the heel bone).

Parent each heel joint under its respective footControl (select heel joint, shift-select footControl, hit p). Now you can move the feet around by their footControl nodes.

Shift-select both footControl objects, then add some custom attributes to help drive the animation. Modify→Add attribute... and in the dialog, set Attribute Name to heelRotX, data type to Float, then click Add. Add all of these attributes before closing the window:

heelRotX
heelRotY
heelRotZ
ballRotZ
toeRotX
toeRotY
toeRotZ

Open Window→General Editors→Connection Editor. Select one of the footControl objects and click the Reload Left button, then select the revHeel joint and hit Reload Right. In the left column, select the Heel Rot X attribute and in the right column, open the Rotate section and select the Rotate X attribute. This creates a direct connection between the two attributes.

Make the following connections:

Heel Rot X to revHeel Rotate X
Heel Rot Y to revHeel Rotate Y
Heel Rot Z to revHeel Rotate Z
Ball Rot Z to revBall Rotate Z
Toe Rot X to revToe Rotate X
Toe Rot Y to revToe Rotate Y
Toe Rot Z to revToe Rotate Z

Now test all the custom attributes on each footControl. If you want to add limits to each control, you can do so by selecting a footControl and Modify→Edit Attribute and turning on Has Minimum or Has Maximum and typing in a value based on your testing (optional).

Select both footControls again and Modify→Add Attribute... create a new attribute, ikFkBlend, Date Type Float, Minimum 0, Maximum 1, Default 1. Connect each ikFkBlend attribute to the IK Blend attributes of all three IK handles on the respective leg.

Now you can use the Ik Fk Blend attributes on the footControls to disable all IK when you want to animate the legs with FK (for example, when the character is hanging from something with legs swaying).

To clean up each footControl, select Scale X, Y, Z and Visibility in the channel box and RMB in the channel box to Lock and Hide Selected.

Now we'll create Pole Vector manipulators to control the direction of the knees. Text curves make good manipulators for this. Create→Text(options): enter Text: K, Font: Arial, and hit Apply.

Modify→Center Pivot and then scale the "K" icon to a good size. Snap it to the knee joint and then pull it forward in Z so that it is in front of the leg at knee level. Ctrl+D to duplicate it and snap the new one to the other knee and pull forward. Name them left_kneeControl and right_kneeControl. Freeze transformations.

Select left_kneeControl, shift-select left_ankleIK and Constrain→Pole Vector. Do the same for the other leg. Test by moving the kneeControls and witness the knees rotating. Lock and Hide all attributes except for translate on the kneeControls.

Rigging the arms

Go to the top view and place joints for the arm according to the picture below. Place the first joint halfway between the neck and shoulder – name it clavicle; next one in the center of the shoulder – name it shoulder; third one elbow, fourth one wrist. Switch to the front view to lift the chain off the grid and place the bones inside the arm geometry. Continue to create a joint in the middle of the palm (hand) and then do the fingers (pinky1, pinky2, pinky3, index1, index2, index3, middle1, middle2, middle3, thumb1, thumb2, thumb3). Note that we are leaving out the third knuckle on each finger to keep with the cartoon-hand convention – a realistic character would have another joint in each finger. Tip: In the input field of the status line there’s a drop-down that switches it to rename mode – you can use this to rename multiple objects at once and they will automatically be given index numbers.

Tips: To continue placing joints from an existing joint, just click on the joint first with the joint tool before adding new ones. To navigate up/down the hierarchy while placing joints, use arrow keys. Backspace while placing joints deletes most recently placed joint. Insert key with the move tool moves a joint without moving its children. Always move joints into place (rather than rotating or scaling) for best practices – by keeping rotational values clean you can always “zero out” a joint later to return it to its default position, and it allows you to auto-correct rotation axes with Skeleton→Orient Joint).

Use the Skeleton→Insert Joint Tool to create a forearm joint between elbow and wrist. (This ensures it is in a straight line with the other bones). Select the clavicle and Prefix hierarchy names with _left.

Create left_armIK from the left_shoulder and the left_forearm. Set the solver to ikRPsolver in the IK Handle tool settings, and set Stickiness to off.

Go to the outliner and find the end effector under the forearm joint; select it and, with the move tool, hit insert to snap the end effector pivot to the wrist joint. Then toggle off pivot mode (insert). Go into the attribute editor for the IK handle and under IK Handle Attributes, set Stickiness to sticky. (The reason we create a forearm joint is to divide the rotation of the forearm between two joints to minimize distortion of the skin. We’ll create a utility node to handle this, below.)

Create→NURBS Primitives→Circle and hold v to snap it to the wrist bone. Rotate in 90 in Z and scale it so it fits outside the surface of the character’s wrist. Name it left_armControl.

Freeze transformations and delete history on the armControl. Select left_armIK and shift-select left_armControl and hit p to parent the IK under the control. Select armControl and shift-select the wrist joint, then Constrain→Orient(Options), make sure Maintain Offset is checked, and hit Add. Now the armControl both moves the hand in IK and rotates it in FK. Lock and hide its scale and visibility attributes.

Create→Text(Options) and create the letter E in an Arial font. Snap this to the elbow and pull back in Z so that it is behind the character’s elbow. Freeze transformations and rename it left_elbowControl. Select it, shift-select the arm IK, and Constrain→Pole Vector. Lock and hide its rotation, scale, and visibility.

Select the top of the hierarchy and mirror joint, remembering to set the options to search and replace prefixes. You also need to create right_armIK since IK only mirrors if it's attached to the root joint you're mirroring (which ours is not). Don’t forget to move the end effector.

Set up armControls and elbowControls for the right side as well.

Now to create clavicle controls. Create→EP Curve Tool(Options) and set Curve Degree to Linear. In the front view, hold x to snap to grid to draw the following arrow:

Name it left_clavicleControl and Modify→Center Pivot. Move and scale it so it is above the left shoulder. Snap its pivot to the clavicle joint. Parent it to the clavicle bone, and then group it (name it left_clavicleGRP) and unparent the group. Freeze transforms on the clavicleControl. This causes the clavicleControl to inherit the local rotation axis of the shoulder. Now select the clavicleControl, shift-select the clavicle joint, and Constrain→Parent(Options). Set Maintain offset to On and constrain. Lock and hide its translate, scale, visibility.

Select the armControl and Modify→Add attribute...

Name: ikFkBlend
Data type: Float
Minimum: 0
Maximum: 1
Default: 1

Use the connection editor to connect this new attribute to the IK Blend of the IK Handle. In the Attribute editor, turn on IK FK Control under the IK Solver Attributes. Also connect the IKFK blend attribute to the armControlWO attribute in the left_wrist_orientConstraint1 node (look under the wrist joint in the Outliner) – this will enable and disable the orient constraint when switching to FK mode so you may manually rotate the hand. Now you can select the IK handle and set its visibility to off to keep it from being accidentally selected.

To automate the roll bone in the forearm, create a Multiply Divide node in the Hypershade, then go to the Connection Editor and load it on the right side. Select the armControl and load it on the left. Connect the Rotate X attribute of armControl to the Input1 X attribute of the utility node. Open the Attribute Editor for the utility node and set Input2 X to 0.5. In the Connection Editor, load the utility node in the left side and the forearm joint on the right. Connect the Output X attribute of the utility node with the Rotate X attribute of the forearm joint. Now half of the x rotation of the wrist will go to the roll bone.

Rigging the Hands

NURBS circles get boring when overused for control objects, and they can get confusing when they all look the same. To mix things up, I suggest a shelf of handmade control objects of various shapes, or you can download a free generator, such as Sin’s rig controllers.

For the hands, I recommend putting finger FK controls on a separate object, since the IK object will be left behind in FK mode. I just doodled an outline of a hand in the top viewport for mine:

Scale it down to not be so big, place it just above or behind the hand, center the pivot, parent it to the hand joint, freeze transforms, delete history and name it left_handControl. Lock and hide all attributes.

Modify→Add Attribute …

Name: indexCurl
Make Attribute Keyable: On
Data Type: Float
Min Value: 0
Max Value: 10
Default Value: 0

Also add:

middleCurl
pinkyCurl
thumbCurl

Then set Min, Max and Default values to -10, 10, 0 for:

thumbRotX
thumbRotY
thumbRotZ
fingerSpread

Now we'll use Set Driven Keys (SDK) to control the fingers.

Animate→Set Driven Key→Set...

Select handControl and click Load Driver. Select both the index finger joints and click Load Driven. Highlight Index Curl under driver and Rotate Z under driven (with both joints highlighted). Click on Key to set the initial keyframe.

In the SDK window, select left_handControl and in the channel box set indexCurl to 10. Rotate all the index joints until the tip of the finger touches the palm. Press Key.

Test the driven key by selecting the handControl and in the Channel Box, highlight the Index curl attribute and MMB+drag in the viewport to invoke the virtual slider. After testing, return the value to 0.

Tip: You can see the animation curve in Window→Animation Editors→Graph Editor with one of the driven joints selected. Sliding one of these keys vertically (hold shift) will change the value.

Repeat this process for the other fingers. Also move the fingers farther apart for fingerSpread=10 and closer together for fingerSpread=-10. Before setting SDK on the thumb, go into component mode and look at Local Rotation Axes (RMB over the question mark icon in the status bar's component selection area and choose Local Rotation Axes to view and manipulate them. You can use the rotate tool to line them up so that rotating the joints on the Z axis folds them inwards naturalistically.

Set keys on the two lower thumb joints for thumbCurl (thumb2, thumb3)

Set SDK on the first thumb joint for Thumb Rot X, Thumb Rot Y, Thumb Rot Z

Don’t forget to set up the right arm as well!

Create the Spine and Head Joints

To setup the spine we’ll introduce deformers for the first time, so now might be your last chance to easily Edit→Delete All by Type→History and File→Optimize Scene Size.

In the side view, start by placing a root joint just above the hip joints of the legs.

From there, draw an s-curve of spine joints up the back, as in the picture below. Try for even spacing and follow the contour of the back near the top. 5 of 6 joints should do.

Name the first joint root, then spine1, spine2, spine3, etc.

Use the joint to click directly on the last spine bone to continue the chain up the neck. Two or three neck joints should do. Name them neck1, neck2, etc.

Then do head – right in the center of the head – and skull – right at the top.

Hit the up arrow to start at head again, and then do jaw and chin – jaw should be placed on a realistic human character right where the mandible meets the maxilla – the origination of the jaw rotation. For our cartoon character, somewhere behind the corner of the mouth will work. These two joints allow us to rig the jaw opening and closing.

Now we’ll create joints to drive the eye rotation. These have to be in the exact center of the eye geometry. Start by creating a joint anywhere and then zeroing out all its translation values in the channel box. You should find it sitting at the world origin. Untemplate the character’s eye geometry so you can select it. Select the joint, then the eye geometry, and invoke Modify→Snap Align Objects→Align Objects (Options) and set it to Mid, World x,y,z and Last Selected object. The joint should pop to the center of the eyeball. (Note: Align objects only works with joints if they are zeroed out first.)

Name these joints left_eye and right_eye and parent them to head.

Spine setup

Now check the local rotation axes in the spine. Switch to component mode and right-click the question mark on the status line to be in local rotation axis mode. Ideally, all of the secondary axes (Y) should be facing the same way – we see that half of them are flipped.

Select any spine joint rotation axes that are facing the wrong way and type the following in the MEL command line:
rotate -r -os 180 0 0;
This command will rotate 180 degrees in X in relative (-r) object space (-os) mode. You can MMB-drag this command from the script editor to the shelf to make a handy button to execute this. Line up all the Y axes in the same direction. Then leave component mode.

Skeleton > IK Spline Handle Tool (Options). Turn off Auto parent curve. Click on first spine joint (the one above the root) and then click on the last (or second to last) spine joint to set an IK spline handle. This IK creates a NURBS curve running down the center of the joint chain which you can manipulate to shape the joint chain. (Note: we will be creating clusters out of the curve control vertices which we will parent to animation control objects, so we didn’t want to Auto parent curve or this would result in double transformations when the character rig is translated. We could have also kept ON Auto parent curve and later turned on Relative in the cluster attributes to compensate.)

Select the back curve – find it at the bottom of the outliner called curve1 – rename it back-curve and go into CV mode. The curve should have four CVs- one at the bottom, one at the top, and two in the middle. Select the bottom two CVs and Create Deformers→Cluster. Do this for the top two CVs as well. Rotate and translate the “c” icons to test your IK back rig.

The bottom cluster won’t be animated, so parent it to the root bone. You can also turn off its visibility and lock and hide all its attributes. Next make another IK spline handle from the base to the top of the neck. Don’t start on the same bone your spine IK ended on or you’ll be sorry. Instead, start at the next bone up. Create clusters from the top two CVs and bottom two CVs again. Again, parent the lower cluster to the bone below the IK handle (spine6 or 7) and hide it. Name all of your new nodes in the Outliner (neckIK, spineIK, neck_upper_cluster, etc).

Create a polygon cube and then go to Create→EP Curve Tool (Options). Set it to linear. Hold v and snap a curve to every vertex of the cube, making sure to get a curve along every edge. Then delete the poly cube and you are left with a NURBS curve cube you can use as a control object.

Move and scale this to surround the upper torso, then CTRL+D to duplicate and create one to fit around the hips. Name the upper spineControl and the lower rootControl.

Now create two NURBS circles and position them around the neck and the waist at the root bone. Name them neckControl and hipsControl. Freeze transformations and delete history on all new control objects.

Now to rig 'em up. Select spineControl with the move tool and hold d to temporarily invoke pivot point mode, and also hold v to MMB-snap its pivot to the spine cluster. Then select the cluster, shift-select the spineControl and hit p to parent. Test by moving and rotating the spineControl to move the spine. Lock and hide scale and visibility attributes.

Modify→Add Attribute and add twist and ikFkBlend. Set min, max, and default values of ikFkBlend to 0,1,1. Open connection editor and load spineControl on the left side, spineIK on the right. Connect twist with twist, ikFkBlend with ikBlend. Test these attributes by selecting the spineControl object and using twist to rotate the spine and ikBlend to turn off the IK for direct manipulation of the spine bones.

Follow the same procedure for the neck: snap neckControl pivot to the neckcluster, parent the cluster to the neckControl, add attributes for twist and IKblend and wire them from the neckIK.

In the side view, select the joint tool and click on the root joint to highlight it. Then place a single joint just below it, centered between the hip joints. Call this pelvis.

Select both hip joints and then the pelvis and hit p to parent.

Select hipsControl and snap its pivot to the pelvis joint. Select the control and then the joint and Constrain→Orient.

Select rootControl and snap its pivot to the root joint. Select the control and then the joint and Constrain→Parent.

Lock and hide translate, scale, visibility from hipsControl. Lock and hide scale and visibility from rootControl.

Creating the Master Node and bringing it all together

From the top view, draw a four point arrow like this:

Center pivot and snap it to the world origin:

Freeze its transformations. Rename it to masterControl. Lock and hide scale and visibility.

Select left_footControl, right_footControl, rootControl and finally masterControl and hit p to parent them.

Select hipsControl and parent to rootControl.

Select right_kneeControl and left_kneeControl and parent to rootControl.

Select spineControl and parent it to rootControl.

Select left_clavicle and right_clavicle and parent them to the joint above the spineIK (spine6?).

Select left_clavicleControl, right_clavicleControl, neckControl and then parent them to the joint above the spinkIK (spine6?). Note:

Select spineControl, then the joint above the spine IK and Constrain→Orient.

Select left_armControl, left_elbowControl, right_armControl and right_elbowControl and parent to masterControl.

Head and Eyes Setup

Create a NURBS object and snap its pivot to the joint that starts at the base of the head (in my case neck2). I made a little pyramid and placed it over his head:

Name it headControl. Freeze transforms and then orient constrain the same joint (neck2) to the headControl (remember to Maintain Offset in the options). Parent the headControl to the neckControl. Lock and hide translate, scale, visibility.

Optional: you can add a Boolean headOrient attribute to the headControl, connected to the orient constraint’s Head Control WO attribute, to be able to turn on or off orientation driven by the head control. By turning it off you’d basically be using the neck control to orient the head.

Now make another NURBS circle, transform it into position in front of the eyes and pinch its center UVs to create a mask shape:

Name it eyesControl. Create→Locator and snap it to the left eye. Drag it out front in Z, and holding the C key, MMB-click on the eyesControl to snap it to the same Z-plane as eyescontrol. Name it left_eyeControl. Duplicate it and snap the duplicate to the right eye, moving it into the eyesControl Z-plane as well, and naming it right_eyeControl. Resize the eyesControl to fit around the two locators, as pictured below. Freeze transformations and delete history on all three, and then parent the locators to the eyesControl.

Select the left_eyeControl and then the left_eye joint. Constrain→Aim (Options) and set to Maintain Offset. Do the same for the right eye.

Parent the eyesControl under the masterControl. (Some animators prefer to parent the eyesControl under the headControl, but I find this encourages an overall "spaced out" look in the CG character – the eyes shouldn't be following the body movements, they should typically be locked in focus on something. In animation, you can use this totally independent eyesControl to snap or constrain it to objects in your scene so the character appears focused and alert.)

To test these eyes out, go ahead and skin them to the eye geometry. Select the left eye joint and the left eye geometry, and go to Skin→Bind Skin→Smooth Bind (Options). Set Bind to: selected joints. Do the same for the other eye and then move eyesControl to see the eyes rotate.

Clean Up

Now go to your Outliner and make sure Display→DAG Objects Only is on. Delete any empty groups and unused nodes. Select masterControl and group it – name this controlGRP. Select the root joint of the skeleton and group it – name this skelGRP. Select all the geometry and group them – name it geoGRP. Select any IK splines or any other nodes that are left over and group them – name it miscGRP. You should have four groups at the top of your scene graph now.

You could group these four into a main "generikat" group so that it remains discrete when you import or reference this rig into other scenes, but you could also have this happen automatically upon import. You may also be utilizing Maya Assets in your pipeline which will require a little further setup. For best practices, try to keep all of your control objects in one hierarchy, skeleton in another, and geometry in another. In this lesson we cheated a bit and parented a few control objects straight to bones to avoid more elaborate setup. When you do this, however, be mindful that joints have "dirty" attributes that can pass down to a "clean" (zeroed out) control object and make their attributes nonzero. To keep this from happening, always Create→Empty Group and parent it to the joint first, and then parent the control object to the empty group. The group acts as a buffer that will not pass down the dirty attributes so your zeroed out control stays clean.

Check once more that every control object is zeroed out and that you have locked and hidden any unused attributes. Save your scene as a backup, and then optimize scene size and delete all non-deformer history. organize your layer editor so that all geometry is on a layer so you can later make it a reference layer, and everything "hidden" (like IKhandles, joints, etc.) is on its own layer that you can hide.

It's also a good idea to color-code your control objects, because pole vector objects and hand controls get all mixed up during animation. Select each of the left-side objects and color them blue by going under their attribute editors to Drawing Overrides and turning on Enable Overrides – then adjust the color slider to blue. Do red for the right side and green or yellow for the middle.

You are ready for facial setup and then skinning the mesh to the rig, but those are subjects for future lessons.

Character Development Workshop: Part 1 - Modeling

2011-06-14T09:35:00.000-07:00

The purpose of this tutorial is to provide an overview of the character development process in Maya using a very simple character design. We will use an archetypal toon-style character. To jumpstart the process and get us on the same page, I've provided a Photoshop template file to enable you to customize your creation while still holding true to the basic form.

Download the layered .psd file here.

In this file, you will find the layers as they appear in this screencap:

On the "example" layer, you'll find an ambiguous bear/cat-like design that you can use if you like. Or, hide the example layer and draw your own variation on the "draw here" layer. The shaded shape areas are your guides: simply trace around the shapes and bridge them to create a unique character. Or, hide the "template" layer and show the "Shapes" layer group. These are the vector shapes from which the template layer was originally rasterized. By selecting layers with the Move tool (turn on "Auto Select" and "Show Transform Controls" on the options bar) you can manipulate their size and placement to create a new template for toon designs of different proportions.

Tip: Copy your line art layer, create a new channel and paste it in, and then Image→Adjustments→Invert (CTRL+I) to create a negative of the line art in an alpha channel. Save the file as a 32-bit image (such as tiff or targa) and the alpha channel will read as transparency in Maya. This means your image plane will only show the line art, not the white of the page. If you want, use the version I've already done this to: generikat2.tif

Once you have something you are happy with, turn off all layers but the "draw here" layer and save it as a flat file. Bring it into your 3D modeling package as an image plane in both the front and side views. In the image plane attributes, under Placement Extras, manipulate the Center, Width and Height values until the character is centered over the vertical axis in both views and standing flat-footed on the ground plane. Copy the width/height and center Y values between the two image planes to ensure the character lines up in both views.

Create→Polygon Primitives→Cube. Move and size it to just fit within the character's largest bulk; in this case, the belly. Give it a center line in all directions. In other words, Subdivisions set to "2" in all dimensions.

Go into face mode and delete half (all faces on one side of the y axis in the front view). Select the other half and Edit→Duplicate Special→Options. Set it to "Instance" and scale negative 1 on the x. This will create a mirror across the x axis for symmetrical modeling. We will create the rest of the model with a series of extrusions; just remember from time to time to delete the inner faces that will be created anytime you extrude along the center line.

Drag-select the top faces and Edit Mesh→Extrude with 3 divisions to the top of the torso.

Tip: Window→Settings→Preferences→Selection→Polygon selection: Select faces with Center. Use this setting in order to drag-select edge faces in the orthographic views easier.

Remember to delete these inner faces and all faces along the centerline going forward. Hit "3" to smooth preview and it will remind you if you have hidden faces to delete. Hit "1" to return to unsmoothed mode.

Tip: Double-click the Move Tool icon to get at its settings. Turn on "Reflection" and "Preserve Seam" to keep you from accidentally moving vertices from the center line. In case a center vertex ever does get moved, hold "X" to grid-snap it back to the center.

Move the top of the three new verts to the edge of the neck. Move the next one down to the top of the shoulder. Move the next one down to the armpit. Remember to drag-select rather than pick select in the ortho views to get the unseen vertices behind.

Move the bottommost side verts inward toward the crotch to represent the inside of the leg. Move the next vert down to become the outside of the leg. It should now look like this:

Add a new edgeloop in the center of the belly. You can use the Edit mesh→Insert Edge Loop Tool or I suggest a shelf button with the following MEL command: PolyConvertToRingAndSplit; - this command will split any edge you currently have selected with a new edgeloop. Move the new vert to the character's silhouette.

The rest of the process will follow this basic procedure: Extrude to get new geometry, move verts to refine shape, add edge loops to further refine.

Next extrude for the arm. Select the arm face, extrude to the wrist with 4 divisions. The middle one will be the elbow.

Move the verts to position.

Do the same for the leg: select the face, extrude to ankle, divisions 4, move verts into place.

Uh oh. Looks like we've been neglecting the side view. Move all the verts to the nearest character silhouette. Keep the center line in the center.

Now your model should look something like this:

Next extrude the bottom leg-face down for the foot. Flatten out the verts so they lay flat on the ground plane. You might want to add a division.

Next select the front faces of the last extrusion and extrude them forward in the side view to form the foot:

Fashion all these new vertices into the foot shape by dragging them in the side view.

Next extrude the end-of-arm faces for the hand – pull it out to the end of the palm (beginning of fingers – approximately half the length of the overall hand). Give it three divisions.

Grab the faces at the end and scale them inward along Z until the middle two faces are collectively the same width as the inner and outer face. These will form the finger bases (since this is a cartoon, we will be sticking with the cartoon convention of three fingers).

Select the first face and extrude for the index finger. Add divisions=4.

Select the middle two coplanar faces and extrude the same distance for the middle finger. Divisions=4.

Then do the final finger.

Now, swing to the bottom and select and extrude from this face to make the thumb:

Switch to the front view and move verts to the thumb silhouette. It should protrude from the bottom of the palm at a 45 degree angle forward:

Now swing back to the top of the hand. Split the ring from the pinky to the index to create a center line on each digit, as shown:

And split the thumb ring as well. now all digits should have a center line running through them.

Speaking of center lines, it's time to add a center line to each half of our symmetry. Select any horizontal edge on the front of the torso and split them with an edgeloop:

Do the same for the arm:

And leg:

Now you should have enough vertices you can "punch back" the corners to create a less boxy shape. The fastest way is to double-click whole edgeloops along the corners and hit Mesh>Average Vertices (make this a shelf button for repeated selecting of components and averaging to smooth the shape).

Also take a moment to thin out the arm from the top view if you haven't yet.

And tweak the foot vertices in the front and perspective view.

In the top view, double-click to select the edge rings between joints in each finger and scale them down.

Then add edgeloops on either side of the middle loop on each finger – this will be the knuckle. Since this is a cartoon, we will also stick with the convention of only having one central knuckle per finger (leaving off the smaller outer knuckle). Also add an edgeloop close the base of each finger.

Also add an extra edgeloop at the wrist, either side of the elbow, and the shoulder.

Do this for the legs too.

Check you work in smooth mesh preview mode (3). It is starting to look tooney!

Now in the front view, select the top faces and extrude up for the neck. Give it a division or two.

On the next extrude, scale the faces to the width of the head in the front and side views.

Extrude once more upward with 6 divisions (remember to toggle the switch on the extrude manipulator to be extruding in worldspace so as not to stray from the centerline).

More the edge vertices to the silhouette of the character in the front and side views. Scootch the highest one inward to form the inside of the ear.

Select the corner edges and average vertices to round off the corners.

Select the backmost top face to extrude upwards for the ear.

Select the front faces of the ear and extrude by scaling uniformly inward and then extrude again and push those faces back to make a cup-shaped ear.

Use the split polygon tool to draw the following edge up the center of the face:

And then select the following faces and extrude scaling inward with three divisions to create a series of edgeloops around the eye sockets.

Do the same for the mouth, but remember to delete the inside faces and then snap the remaining verts to the centerline.

Extrude the innermost mouth faces back in Z to create the mouth sack. You can use ALT+H to isolate a selected half of the body to see what you're doing while working on the mouth sack. It can be relatively primitive, but there needs to be some geometry inside the mouth to cast shadows and hold the teeth and tongue that will be imported later.

Now you have a "base mesh" for the Generikat.

Next is the time-consuming process of messaging all the verts into place. Get a cup of coffee, stretch, and then sit down and spend an hour using soft select, average vertices, and other tools to smooth and nudge every vertex into place based on the line drawings of your image plane.

Import spheres for your nose and eyes. Use stock teeth and tongue or quickly build simple ones from cylinders and planes. When you are ready to move on to UVing and then rigging, your model should be at the resolution of the one below.

The Base Mesh, Part 2

2011-06-12T02:40:00.000-07:00

My last post was a whole lot of pontificating on the concept of the base mesh library -- starter meshes from which you can launch multiple future projects. It pays to have a variety of base meshes at varied levels of development. The less developed (more generic) ones can be used in the widest variety of circumstances, while the more refined (but less generic) meshes give a greater head-start to the project (but are limited to more specific circumstances).

Allow me to show you some of the base meshes I've created. This library is very much a work-in-progress, so I would appreciate comments and suggestions.

As a starting point, I believe every CG artist needs a "parts" directory, with eyes and ears and such. Here's a stock eyeball with a simple procedural texture map:

Notice it's two meshes, the transparent (but reflective) cornea over the glossy iris/pupil layer. Use a ramp texture with stretched fractal noise mapped to the iris band. The "color" of the eye can be changed pretty quickly by changing the color of this noise texture. Looks good enough for 90% of CG jobs. For game engines, leave off the cornea sphere and just use the inner eyeball.

Next up we have an ear. Keep a few ears around; they are laborious to model. Import and attach a stock ear whenever you can; it could save an hour of development time. I have more refined ears, but I find a simple block outline of an ear (above) to be the most flexible. It allows me to get a decent head-start while leaving me free to model unique characteristics (ears, like noses, are highly individualistic).

Next you need a good set of choppers. That is, every character needs at least teeth and gums. They show up in almost every facial expression. Primary characters also need a tongue, to form phonemes and create more refined expressions. You should keep a few levels of detail of teeth around. The most extravagant should have individually modeled teeth, tongue, and mouth roof (above). The next level down will be the most useful: a simple set of teeth and gums mindful of poly count. Great starting point for most characters.

At the next level you should have a very simple two-dimensional set of teeth for background characters. At a distance, they won't be revealed in the round, so just model the front side of the teeth. This one has around 900 tris:

Next you need a good hand. Most of the time I go ahead and model the hand to suit the individual, but I keep a stock of generic hands around just in case I'm running out of time, like this quickie I recently built:

Next you need a few heads. Facial topology takes the longest to refine, so any time savings here is greatly welcome. Once you hit upon a good working topology, it can be morphed to create any number of characters, male or female, merely by pushing groups of points to change proportions. Below is an early one I've used in a few projects, inspired by the Osipa method. It has a fairly decent nose, mouth and eyes. The ear is pretty ridiculous, but it was meant to be obscured by hair so it was never really developed.

Next up, you should have some seamless full-body base meshes. At least one male and one female. I've been working on females recently so that's what I'll be focusing on. Here's a simple generic one:

Then I pushed it to create a more stylized version:

I pushed things even further with this highly stylized hero-woman base, employing the technique of extruding individual muscle groups to create a lo-poly topology that defines exaggerated form with minimal geometry:

I've also been working on this more "realistic" base for female characters that aren't stylized:

Also, I keep a lot of character primitives around as a starting point for cartoon archetypes. Like this guy:

The Base Mesh, Part 1

2011-06-09T13:16:00.000-07:00

Poly modeling has changed a lot in recent years. Once was, there were "hi-poly" modelers, employing NURBs and Beziers, moving around very dense meshes with brush-like tools, and "lo-poly" modelers, specializing in meticulously placing points to create sparse meshes that were abstract suggestions of form.
In a manner of speaking, the lo-poly method won out, in part because of Mr. Catmull and Mr. Clark. But in another manner of speaking, the new workflow is a hybrid of the two. Today, no matter the output medium, you will almost always create both a hi-poly and a lo-poly version of the mesh. For high-def media like film, the high-res mesh is the star, and for interactive/realtime, the lo-res mesh is the hero; but in both cases, both meshes are employed. For film, a high-resolution mesh is tessellated or substituted at render time from a low-resolution proxy mesh. For games, a low-resolution mesh is dressed with a normal map extracted from its high-resolution counterpart.
The result of all this has been the coalescence of 3d modeling as an art form. Today, want ads no longer ask specifically for a "hi-poly" modeler or a "lo-poly" modeler; but simply, a modeler. This does not simplify things for the average modeler, however. Now it isn't enough to master either the Haiku of lo-poly or the Rococo of hi-poly - you must do both.
Theoretically, either model can come first in the process. Half the professional modelers out there start with a hi-res mesh, sculpted with the more immediate, intuitive toolset of digital sculpting packages like ZBrush or 3d-Coat, with lo-poly meshes later derived through the process of retopology (basically, drawing the lo-poly mesh onto the surface of the hi-poly). They prefer to start with "ZSpheres" or simply a sphere – a lump of virtual clay sufficiently generic enough to be the starting point for anything. Others create the base mesh first, and through subsequent subdivision and sculpting on layers derive the higher-level LODs. Both workflows are appropriate depending on the job. A third approach is to start with a very generic base mesh (the "block mesh"), then the sculpt, then retopology for good edgeflow.

My main approach is to start with a topologically organized base mesh, which belies my origins in the dark ages of console games. Back then, every polygon was counted, and oftentimes 200 triangles were too many for a character. So I'm comfortable with the approach of laying down meshes poly-by-poly. I also feel that this approach affords certain advantages. No retopology phase, for one; which bypasses a process as mindless and tedious as UV layout. Also, by starting with a carefully thought-out base mesh, you can sculpt a hi-res mesh with great ease, since all the basic forms are already blocked out, so no unsightly stretching has to occur.

The other reason it pays to start out with a good lo-poly base mesh: you can reuse them. Yes, digital sculpting is fast; ZBrush can allow you to crank out multiple variations on a design concept in a single day. Topology, on the other hand, is tedious: figuring out when to use a quad, when to use a triangle, when to flip an edge, when to add an edge loop. Watching poly counts and studying anatomical references for correct edge flow. Tedious. The good news: a good base mesh can be reused for multiple characters. In fact, you put in the time up front to create a set of base meshes, and most of your future contract jobs are already done. You will need a realistically proportioned adult male, adult female, and child. You also need several archetypes of "toon" characters. With a small collection of solid base meshes, you can start cranking out digital characters like there's no tomorrow. The next couple blog posts will be about the sometimes tedious process of creating that base mesh library.

UV Solutions for a Maya Pipeline

2011-05-27T00:51:00.000-07:00

Ah, the UV layout process. You know: the long, soul-draining buzzkill after modeling and before texturing? I have yet to meet an artist that looks forward to it. Thankfully, recent trends have been toward expediting the process through automation wherever possible, and in some cases doing away with it completely. This week I’ll focus on a few of the more popular tools as I weigh the options available.

Since Maya’s UV toolset is generally considered to be an incomplete solution, the question always arises: what tools best fill the void?
One method that I find quickest:

Use RoadKill plugin in Maya to identify seams and make the initial split into islands (faster selection of edgeloops using Maya’s toolset; more intuitive than UVLayout’s flow)
Export as obj and open in Headus UVLayout to flatten (better flattening algorithm than RoadKill)
Import back into Maya and do final tweaking

Still missing from this workflow: a set of brushes with falloff to allow pinch/magnify/smooth of UVs – think Artisan brushes for UVs. Anyone know of a plugin that can add this functionality to Maya? While I’m on the subject, why is Maya so far behind on this? UVing is something every digital artist deals with every day, yet we still have to rely on external applications or plugins to get basic functionality? Also, since UVing is basically “poly modeling in 2D,” why not have the same robust set of tools for moving UVs around, including Artisan brushes? /end of rant

Headus UVLayout
http://www.uvlayout.com/ $300 pro version
The most complete toolset with the crappiest interface. Most of the “pros” recommend it; it does just about everything you’d want a layout tool to do, except the ridiculous interface requires some getting used to. (At least some tooltips for the cryptic icon-less buttons? Please?)
Pros: awesome flattening tools and other goodies
Cons: external to Maya so requires an import/export. Also, did I mention the horrid interface?

RoadKill
http://www.pullin-shapes.co.uk free!
Two components: a Maya plugin and a more full-featured standalone interface. Basically brings Blender UV unwrapping to Maya users.
Pros: brings “pelt-mapping” paradigm into Maya, and did I mention it’s free?
Cons: not a complete solution

Auto Unwrap UVs tool (MEL script, included in Bonus Tools)
http://area.autodesk.com/blogs/stevenr/unwrap_uvs_tool_update_an_interactive_tool_for_automatically_unwrapping_uvs
Autodesk’s “official” attempt to add RoadKill-like pelt-mapping technique to Maya’s workflow (i.e. selecting edgeloop seams as a basis for cutting UVs into “islands”)
Pros: lots of different methods to accommodate different topologies
Cons: none of the flatten methods are very good. Tried all of the techniques; the results required lots of back-and-forth between “Unfold” and “Relax” with the smooth UV tool before the results started to be useable.

Cas_autoUnfold tool
http://www.castorlee.com/maya-tools/auto-uv-mapper Free!
MEL script, organizes a lot of Maya tools into a convenient toolbox for easy access. Also brings together some of the more popular unwrapping algorithms available from other plugins from Highend 3d.
Pros: useful tools
Cons: a bit buggy and largely devoid of up-to-date documentation

ZBrush: UV Master plugin
http://www.pixologic.com/zbrush/features/UV-Master/ Free download if you already have ZBrush
Great for quick and dirty mapping of complex organic objects. For when speed, not optimization, is the directive. Automatically produces acceptable results for 3d painting (a la Mudbox or ZBrush).
Pros: the best option if you already have a Zbrush-based pipeline. The best automatic results of any tested. Zbrush consistently has some of the most ingenious solutions to common problems – this is no exception. For example, auto-creating seams based on ambient occlusion ensures they will be in low-visibility areas –brilliant!
Cons: not a complete solution for most jobs (however, a GREAT starting point for any UV workflow)

3D Coat
http://www.3d-coat.com/
The best solution if you already have a 3d-Coat based solution. 3d-Coat, if you don’t know, is the dark horse many predict could be the future of 3d; they ooze innovation in every area. If you get comfortable with their interface, their UV tools are top-notch. By the way, they have the UV smoothing brush I wish Maya had.

Whatever happened to DeepUV?
Back in the day I was an expert in the DeepPaint/DeepUV workflow. Sadly, this package fell into neglect and has not been developed for years. Amazingly, I just checked and it’s still for sale, though it “doesn’t run on Vista.”
http://www.righthemisphere.com/products/dp3d/deep3d_uv/index.html

Unwrap 3D: I know nothing about this one, but it’s 50-60 bucks.
Check out its feature list: http://www.unwrap3d.com/u3d/features.aspx

UV Mapper, another standalone I haven’t used, around 60 smackers: http://uvmapper.com

Unwrella, a plugin for Max or Maya, though I suspect their Max integration is better: http://www.unwrella.com/ £150

At the high end is Unfold UV, too rich for my blood but rumored to be awesome:
http://www.polygonal-design.fr/e_unfold/index.php £700

Also, Blender is free and useful for more than just UVs – it’s a complete 3d production pipeline:
http://www.blender.org/

Also, Silo, Modo, and just about any other 3d modeling package has the ability to generate UVs with variable ease of use. XSI users swear by theirs. Let me know your thoughts. What is the best UV toolset out there? What is the best solution for Maya pipeline?

Lessons Learned
To push the thousands of objects through the pipe for my short film, I’m moving toward ZBrush as the fastest method for the majority of set dressing objects, only optimizing in Headus UVLayout and Maya for “hero” objects. It just makes the most sense when the crucial factor is time.
Going forward, I’m all for a UV-less future: Mudbox Ptex texturing and rendering in realtime with Maya 2012’s Viewport 2.0 (which supports Ptex, or UV-less texturing). Without UVs OR render farms to contend with, I’m envisioning a 25% time savings in the 3d pipeline.

More about UVs for those have no idea what I'm talking about:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UV_mapping
Popular Flattening Algorithms:
ABF: http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~sheffa/ABF++/abf.htm
LSCM: http://www.blender.org/download/sandbox/lscm-basics/

Old Baldie

2011-05-06T09:44:00.000-07:00

Another bald wrinkly guy from Mudbox. Why does Mudbox always seem to elicit bald wrinkly guys? 'Cuz hair is hard but wrinkles are easy? Maybe. Next digital sculpting doodle will not be bald and wrinkly. I swear.

The In(dy) Crowd: thoughts on crowdfunding and crowdsourcing

2011-04-29T23:44:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I've done an update on my short film. After all, that's the main purpose for starting this blog, so I feel an update is overdue. I will update soon, but first, an update on the independent film environment.
A lot has happened in the past couple years since I've gone mum on the subject. A pivotal revolution in film-making has transpired in the interim; the new funding and distribution model for indies is now "crowdfunding." Sites like Sokap and Audience Productions have joined the likes of pioneers IndyGoGo, RocketHub and Kickstarter in allowing the potential audience for a film to participate in its funding. A brilliant model, in that it not only circumvents the prejudices of corporate distributors (who are usually too scared of their own shadows to innovate) but it virtually guarantees an audience when it is released (well, to the same degree that Gallup Polls can "guarantee" a winner in a political election). I've personally witnessed both success and failure among my peers in regards to crowdfunding. Certainly one of the successes was a project I followed for years before a tweet from Neil Gaiman pushed it over the top. The Price began as a labor of love by Christopher Salmon, a Gaiman fanboy seeking to animate the short story of the same title. At first, I considered his $150,000 goal to be far-fetched. To date, it is at $161,774. What this basically means for Mr. Salmon is that he can now concentrate on finishing his film as his full-time job, not something to devote an hour to each evening after the kids are in bed. The indy animator's holy grail. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2024077040/neil-gaimans-the-price
Crowdfunding is a variation on crowdsourcing, which is the idea that creative communities naturally gravitate toward collaboration, even sans compensation, for the right project (see the successes of Wikipedia or Open Source if you don't believe). Along these lines, there are other films I'm following to track the success of their zero-budget business models. Devils, Angels and Dating taps in on the trend of 3d artists either underemployed or underwhelmed with their current creative lives that are seeking inspirational volunteer service to bolster their demo reels. There seems to be steady progress posted on director Michael Cawood's blog, which is an educational service to the community which certainly justifies the experiment. Then there's Pink Slip Animation.
Anatomy of a Nightmare is the labor of love of DreamWorks animator Ben Rush. Though a volunteer project, it has a good chance of making it: First Flight originated in a similar manner and eventually was greenlit by the studio. When I was at Disney, we tried to tap in on this proto-crowdsourcing movement with something called the "Disney Shorts Club." As an institution, it never really went anywhere (as soon as it gains the Company's participation, it loses its Indy status and everyone wonders why they are not getting paid to work on it). However, individual projects associated with Shorts Club are still in the works. Mila and Ballad of Sinister are prominent examples.
Why isn't "Ballad" on Kickstarter? I'm not ruling it out, but I'd rather wait until it's 75% done and I'm in the final push. With all of the finished material I'd have on hand by then, it would be easier to promote and convince investors of its potential. Until then, it will have to remain a weekend hobby.

March 2011 Life Drawings

2011-04-09T16:01:00.000-07:00

Gamesites

2011-03-30T16:37:00.000-07:00

Here's a list of bookmarks I made for my Game Production students. They are very specific to game art and the Seattle area in particular, but you may find value in some of them. Enjoy.

Game Industry Sites

Gamasutra http://www.gamasutra.com/

GameDev.Net http://www.gamedev.net/

DevMaster.Net http://www.devmaster.net/

Tech Flash (Seattle tech report) http://www.techflash.com/

Game Dev Kit (Business law for game startups) http://www.gamedevkit.com/

Game Industry News http://www.gameindustry.com/

Game Politics http://www.gamepolitics.com/

GamesIndustry.Biz http://www.gamesindustry.biz/

Game Industry Map http://www.gameindustrymap.com/

Game Dev Map http://gamedevmap.com/

List of U.S. Game Studios http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Video_game_companies_of_the_United_States

Game Biz Advice http://www.sloperama.com/advice.html

Google group for Game Industry http://groups.google.com/group/comp.games.development.industry/topics?hl=en&lnk

Game Career Guide http://www.gamecareerguide.com/

Microsoft Dev Site http://create.msdn.com/en-US/

Organizations and Conferences

International Game Developers Association https://www.igda.org/

Entertainment Software Association http://www.theesa.com/

The Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences http://www.interactive.org/

The E3 Expo http://www.e3expo.com/

Game Developers Conference http://www.gdconf.com/

The GDC Vault http://www.gdcvault.com

Independent Games Festival http://www.igf.com/

Dice Summit http://www.dicesummit.org/

PAX http://www.paxsite.com/paxprime/index.php

Seattle Casual Connect http://seattle.casualconnect.org/

Seattle Retro Gaming Expo http://www.seattleretro.org/

Women in Games International http://www.womeningamesinternational.org/

ACM SIGGRAPH http://www.siggraph.org/

Global Game Jam http://globalgamejam.org/

NW3D (Northwest 3D artists) http://groups.google.com/group/nw3d

Washington Interactive Network http://www.washingtoninteractivenetwork.org/

Seattle Flash User Group http://seattleflashusergroup.com/

Seattle Game Audio Group http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/SeattleGameAudioGroup/

International Festival of Independent Games http://www.indiecade.com/index.php

General Game News

http://n4g.com/

http://www.ign.com/

http://www.shacknews.com/

http://www.gamespy.com/

http://www.gamesradar.com/

http://www.gamespot.com/

http://worthplaying.com/news/

http://gamestyle.com/

http://www.hookedgamers.com/

http://gameinformer.com

http://www.g4tv.com

http://kotaku.com/

http://gotgame.com/

http://www.giantbomb.com/

http://www.destructoid.com/

http://epicbattleaxe.com/

http://www.joystiq.com/

http://en.gamers.com/

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/

http://www.indiegamemag.com/

Game Reviews Aggregators

http://www.gamerankings.com/

http://www.gamestats.com/

http://www.gametab.com/

Game History and Information

http://www.mobygames.com

http://www.arcade-museum.com/

http://www.moddb.com/

http://www.vgmuseum.com/

http://www.gamefaqs.com/

http://www.allgame.com/

Video game maps database http://www.vgmaps.com/

Video Game Manuals http://www.replacementdocs.com

Speedruns Archive(sceen captures of game playthroughs) http://speeddemosarchive.com/

Wikia Gaming http://gaming.wikia.com/wiki/Wikia_Gaming

Game Deals http://www.cheapestgames.com/

Indie games blog http://www.indiegames.com/blog/

Flash Game Development

http://www.gotoandplay.it/

Flex/Flash Tutorial http://www.brighthub.com/internet/web-development/articles/11010.aspx

Big list of Tutorials http://pelfusion.com/tutorials/35-flash-game-development-tutorials-fla-files/

Game tutorials http://www.flashkit.com/tutorials/Games/

More tutorials http://www.tutorialized.com/tutorials/Flash/Games/1

http://www.flash-game-design.com/

http://www.flashperfection.com/categories/Flash-Tutorials-Flash-Games-Tutorials-.html

Game Art Development

Game Artist http://www.game-artist.net

Game Artisans http://www.gameartisans.org/forums/index.php

CG Feedback http://www.cgfeedback.com/cgfeedback/

Concept Art http://www.conceptart.org/

Polycount http://www.polycount.com/

http://conceptartworld.com/

http://www.cgsociety.org/

http://www.cgchannel.com/

http://www.3dm3.com/forum/

http://www.3dtotal.com/

http://www.cghub.com/

http://www.cgarena.com/

http://www.cgartworld.com/

http://www.gfxartist.com/

http://www.leewiart.com/

http://www.3dvf.com/

http://www.3d4all.org/

http://www.visualart.ro/forum/

http://www.cgart.ir/

http://www.cgtantra.com/

http://www.render.ru/

http://www.arttalk.ru/

http://www.imaginefx.com/

http://www.advancedphotoshop.co.uk/

http://tech-artists.org/

http://gallery.cgland.com/

Concept Art Blog http://www.sketchfeed.com/

Character Design:

http://characterdesignnotes.blogspot.com/

http://characterdesign.blogspot.com/

http://www.characterdesigns.com

Dominance War (Annual Game Art Competition) http://www.dominancewar.com

Modeling reference http://www.hippydrome.com/

http://face-and-emotion.com

Tutorials

Guerilla CG Project (fundamentals of CG) http://www.guerrillacg.org/

http://www.free3dtutorials.com/

http://www.cgbootcamp.com/

http://cg.tutsplus.com/

http://www.cgtutorials.com/

Unreal

Docs http://www.udk.com/documentation

Wiki http://wiki.beyondunreal.com/

Unreal Developer Network http://udn.epicgames.com/Main/WebHome.html

Tutorial http://www.waylon-art.com/LearningUnreal/

ModDB Tuts http://www.moddb.com/engines/unreal-engine-3/tutorials

Wiki http://utmapping.wikidot.com/

Software and Tools

Microsoft Student Developers Program (FREE) https://www.dreamspark.com/default.aspx

Apple iOS Developer Program http://developer.apple.com/programs/ios/university/

Autodesk Student Community http://students.autodesk.com/

Photoshop exchange http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/exchange/index.cfm?event=productHome&exc=16

NDo http://www.cgted.com/

nVidia Plugins http://developer.nvidia.com/object/photoshop_dds_plugins.html

The Valve Developer Community http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Main_Page

3D-Coat http://www.3d-coat.com/

Crazybump http://www.crazybump.com/

xNormal http://www.xnormal.net/Downloads.aspx

RoadKill http://www.pullin-shapes.co.uk/page8.htm

ZBrush http://www.zbrushcentral.com/ and Sculptris http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?t=090617

Silverlight Show http://www.silverlightshow.net/

Skipper & Rex

2011-03-27T02:30:00.000-07:00

A ZBrush work in progress.

February Life Drawings

2011-02-26T18:31:00.000-08:00


February Drawings

As usual, my medium is newsprint and conte crayon.

New Life Drawings

2011-01-29T02:57:00.000-08:00

The Day the Dead ... Came Alive

2011-01-18T21:06:00.000-08:00

Submitted for your approval, the first scene of the first act of The Day the Dead ... Came Alive. This is the most famous portion of an old audio skit I performed extemporaneously into a tape recorder with my neighbor boy around the fifth grade. Years later this tape became a party favorite in Club 202, my college dorm room. We would perform these words nightly as a Dionysian ritual. Now you can bring the magic to your own clubhouse. Everyone choose roles, or have some megalomaniac among you assume the part of the director and assign roles. Lights, camera, action. If you forget your line, everybody drink, the director yells "cut" and stomps around the set, and then makes you start all over from the beginning.
Here, I made some character sketches this weekend to help you visualize your part.

Baby

Daddy

Joey

Mommy

Peter Farnswick

The Day the Dead … Came Alive

(Script for an animated movie/drinking game)

Act 1

Peter Farnswick in his study, introduces the story with a Hitchcock-after-a-stroke speech impediment that has him spewing brandy down his quivering chins as he slurridly enunciates.

Farnswick: Come with me now as we embark on a dark and dismal journey through the stinking corpse of Middle America we call Suburbia for a cautionary tale that will leave your sheets wet. A tale we call … The Day the Dead (looks around confused as if making up the title on the spot) …. Came Alive!

Eerie title in Scooby Doo font floats in front of Fanswick as he tries to laugh menacingly but instead chokes himself up in a phlegm-laden coughing fit.

Fade to: a quiet family home at dusk. All houses in neighborhood are identical McMansions, all have eerie blue TV glow flickering in the windows.

Farnswick: (VO) We descend upon the happy household of the Family of 4 …

Farnswick (Voice over as we jerk the camera from close-up to close-up of the cast): Mommy, Daddy, Baby, and Joey.

Joey: Gee, Mom, what’s for supper?

Mommy: Asparagus.

Joey: Aw Mom I hate asparagus.

Daddy: Son, you have to learn to eat what is set before you.

Baby: Ga ga goo goo ga ga

Daddy: Shaddup!

Mommy: Harold, don’t yell at the baby.

Joey: Hey Pops, can me and Lewis go snipe hunting after dinner tonight?

Daddy: NO!

Joey: Aw, Dad, you promised!

Daddy: I said only if you get your homework done so get to it!

(Smacks the kid)

Joey runs crying up the stairs

Mommy: Harold, you’re being too hard on the boy.

Daddy: It’s good for him. Teaches him respect. Say, what’s for supper?

Mommy: Asparagus.

Daddy: (Lost behind the newspaper) Say did you read here about Old Man Caruthers?

Mommy: Um … no, no I hadn't ….

Daddy: Well it says here he died last night from some strange reason they can’t … detect….

Mommy: No I hadn’t read that.

Daddy: Someone should check up on Mrs. Caruthers. Say where’s that supper?

Mommy: Aspara- oh I burnt the asparagus! Now we’re having pickle juice.

Baby: Ga ga goo goo ga ga

Mommy: Shaddup!

Aaaaaand Scene.

Head of a Merchant

2010-12-28T00:43:00.000-08:00

Check it: Head of a Merchant is an exercise I did last night to test out Sculptris.
Sculptris is a free, independently-made digital sculpting app that started making waves this past summer. Naturally, it was promptly bought out by Pixologic (of ZBrush fame). Schucks, competition quelled in the Sculpting App realm ... for now. (But look out for still-indy darkhorse 3d-Coat!)

Both 3d-Coat and Sculptris offer something industry leaders ZBrush and Mudbox do not: dynamic tessellation. DT (I may as well make it an acronym now, lord knows it's coming) is the automated refinement of the surface based on localized detail. In other words, all you do is sculpt; the software subdivides the surface on the fly as necessary to support the added detail. What this means to you, the artist, is: no more back-and-forth to Maya to extrude appendages; it all takes place in the sculpting package. The polygons multiply rather than stretch.

The upside of the Pixologic acquisition: we can probably expect dynamic tessellation in the next release of industry-leader ZBrush. Which means always-the-copycat Mudbox is sure to follow suit. Their work is cut out for them, though: both use a quad-based subdivision algorithm, which may prove tricky when trying to emulate the relative ease with which Sculptris tessellates on the fly (Sculptris works on basic triangles, the building blocks of all CG).

But I digress. My thoughts on Sculptris: fun! Until it crashes. Yes, it crashes a lot (hey, it's a Beta program built by one guy, give him a break), but it restores the last session, so I never ended up losing anything (other than the time spent rebooting). Some of the brushes are better than their ZBrush counterparts! (Undoubtedly another reason for the hasty acquisition.) It only outputs to OBJ; no normal-map conversion, so it is not ready for prime-time as a production pipeline tool (except for previs). But as a toy, what a toy! I've never had so much instant fun with a sculpting app before; almost no learning curve! Very intuitive. If you're looking for a great app to practice sculpting, head on over to Pixologic and download the still-free (for how long?) beta version of Sculptris.

Here's a few more shots of the semi-stylized Merchant. By the way, I've come to realize the meaning of "stylized" - a term that's often bandied about by Art Directors. It's a balance between the way things look and the way they should look. Certain features are exaggerated as a way of conveying a deeper meaning or subtext. Similar to caricature, but "stylization" is a broader term that conveys information about the artist as much as it does about the subject.

Rigging Reel

2010-12-21T13:36:00.000-08:00

Rigging Demo Reel from Erik Van Horn on Vimeo.

Drawn to Life

2010-12-17T00:43:00.000-08:00

Among the challenges I've faced this year, I was brought in to turn around a college Game Art program that had fallen into neglect. First, I did the easy stuff: updated the software, hardware, curriculum and instructors. Then I had to tackle the hard part: trying to raise the artistic level of the students. To this end, I've had to go to great lengths to organize life drawing workshops in an effort to get the kids drawing again.

Game Students are an odd bunch: they are willing to devote hours, months even, to the tedium of piecing together an elaborate mod or game level in their favorite engine. But getting them to keep a sketchbook for five minutes a day is a Boss-level effort. What I've noticed among techie-type art students is that they feel that drawing is somehow obsolete, or at least a waste of time. What they have yet to realize is that every technical art process, from constructing level designs to texturing to animating, exists in its purest, most distilled form in the act of drawing.

This I repeat to my art students: drawing is not about learning how to draw. That's a side effect of drawing, yes; you learn to draw, but that's not the main reason we, as creatives, do it. Drawing is about learning to see, to observe, to organize information and re-present it through an abstract medium in an act of COMMENTARY. A drawing is a comment. A comment is the expression of an opinion. This is the essence of all art, from dance to writing to acting: teaching oneself how to express an opinion on a given subject. To relay an observation about life to the audience.

In a gesture drawing, start with an observation that interests you: it could be the curve of the back of the neck, or the way a specific wrinkle in the drapery falls. Get that observation on the paper, exaggerate it if you have to, just convince your audience to share in the same observation. Drawing is an abstract medium; you decide what to leave out. If you begin a drawing by deciding what the drawing is about (what comment or opinion you're making) then the task of what to leave out becomes obvious: leave out anything that does not support your comment.

This is why quick gesture drawings from live models are the most important type of drawing to practice. Having to make a statement in under one minute forces best practices. In a quick gesture drawing, you don't have time to fall into the trap of noodling over details that don't convey the essence of your statement; you have to think while your hand is moving. If you get caught up in doubt or over-analysis, the model moves and the essence is lost forever. You learn to "feel" the drawing, not just see it, and express it in the very moment of observation. If anything, the audience for a gesture drawing is yourself; you are recording a fleeting observation so you can see it later. And the fact that the subject matter is a living, breathing person aids in this effort. The natural tendency in humans is to empathize with others; so when you see a model straining in a difficult or off-balance pose, hopefully that empathy is expressed in the quality of line that you record on the page.

Here are some recent drawings I've done at our sessions. Most are 1 to 5-minute gesture poses.

I'm Back

2010-09-25T19:49:00.000-07:00

Anyone wondering why it's been so long between posts should know that I just moved my family to Seattle, and after a four-month interruption I've just set up my new studio in my new house. I've got a great wifi workstation setup and a huge garage to do concept and background work in all kinds of traditional media. We are digging the Pacific Northwest and I am eager to get back into Sinister and my other projects after being away for so long. The evergreen forests and magestic mountains make for excellent reference for the kind of Highland/Bavarian landscape I'm crafting for The Ballad of Sinister. Stay tuned for new posts soon!