Thursday 26 November 2009

Stretchy Limbs

Right, I'm back in Maya again, rigging my character from some time ago. I've made a few minor tweaks to the model such as finishing the hair, and scaling up the body so the head is a bit more proportioned... you seem to notice the smallest things after not seeing your own work for a couple of weeks, and the head:body ratio stood out too much for my liking.

But yes, for a special treat, I've been working on my rig for the model. Ideally I want it to be as functional and user friendly as possible, being a stock rig and all. There are a number of things I've learnt from the past 3-and-a-bit years of character building, and one of those is that it's all well and good to automate features such as the clavicle raising once the arm lifts above the t-pose (see this vid for what I mean), but if you have to then fight it during animation... just leave it or give the animator the option to turn it off.

With this in mind, I'm currently making a variety of different features for the limbs which can be toggled on or off. One of these is a stretchy limb option. Pretty much once the IK leg control moves out of range for the typical leg, the joints and mesh stretch a little (or a lot) to meet it. So you have some squash and stretch at hand if you want it in your piece. This is pretty much all done with the expression editor.

First of all, you use the distance tool (under Create>Measure Tools) to look at the distance between the hip and ankle joints, and point constrain the resulting locators to the hip, and the foot Control (the ankle locator has to stay with the contoller at all times for good reasons). You will see a number between these locators. Now, this may be the same as the Distance Attribute or may not (I was lucky as it was), but this number is important to note when you stretch your IK leg to its maximum.



A little expression needs to be written that pretty much says "if the distance between the 2 locators is greater than the full length of the joint chain is, then scale the joints along the appropriate axis until they meet."

To keep that scale even, so the joint stretches at a proportioned rate with the distance, you just have to divide the distance attribute by the original distance. (Bit of example maths distance of 30, original distance is 20:. the scale will be 30/20= ScaleX 1.5) The rest is sorted by a few conditional branches to ensure the scale is at its default of 1 at any other time.


And this is the result when the stretch is switched on! When skinned, the leg will stretch out nicely to meet the foot controller. Note the distance is greater than normal, so the scale is increased to stretch the joint chain.

That's about it. It's eaten up a lot of time as I'm new to expressions. A word of advice... make sure the distance number you jot down is actually right. Mine was a fraction too low to start with. That's 2 hours I shan't see again!

-Stuart

Saturday 14 November 2009

bpelt

Hey all, if anyone is into Photoshop, particularly for cartoons or webcomics, there are some handy plugins I recommend. This makes colouring in and shading a real easy task, as you don't have to worry about messing up the line art, going over the lines, leaving any white patches and so forth.

If you search for bpelt on Google (it may actually just be www.bpelt.com in fact) you will find two plugins on the site; multifill and flatten. Download these both and drop them into the plug-ins in your Adobe Photoshop folder in Program Files. They'll install when you open the program.

If you draw anything with either a graphics tablet or the pen tool onto a new layer, you can fill the closed sections with solid colour. A bit like Paint I guess, but with anti-aliasing and a damn sight more ease in tiny sections. Pretty much all you do is duplicate the drawn layer, merge one of those with a layer of solid white (hide the other drawn layer for now) and use the tolerance tool to remove all the anti-aliasing for the layer, so we just have black or white; no greys.

You will then use the multifill plugin to automatically fill any section with solid colour. No white bits, it's solid. Then flatten it to remove the black outlines, and voila, you have a crazy multicoloured layer that's accurate to your drawing, and all you need to do is change the colours with the paint bucket tool (turn anti-aliasing off for now, just so colours remain solid round the edges), and put the original drawn layer on over the top of the colour layer.

This is how I coloured my character sheets for Want That Ball, and believe me, it's much faster than any other way I've dealt with. The other bonus is when you want a darker shade round an edge, you can do so just as fast. Essentially what you do is when you have a duplicated version of the drawn layer, add a few lines to indicate where the light will change. Then merge this with a white layer as before. It gives you other sections of colour to deal with, without having lines over every different colour. If need be, turn anti-aliasing back on when you're fine tuning the shades of colour.

When I get access to my own PC with the tablet and scanner, I'll put up some images to illustrate exactly what I mean. http://www.questionablecontent.net/tutorial.php has a great tutorial of how to get some good cartoon shading on the go, I recommend reading this.

Chat soon!

Saturday 7 November 2009

Social Care TV, etc

Hey folks, I've now finished at RJDM, so hopefully I'll be able to work some animation round day and evening shifts at work. Or at least make more worthwhile updates.

One thing I'd like to show is the Social Care TV advertisement that Brad, James and I designed, animated and comped. The clean. updated version is also now up! It can be found here.

It's a shame I can't show any of the other pieces we put together, but they're top secret, prototype projects for big companies so they'd kill us if we leaked any of it.

More to say soon!

Wednesday 28 October 2009

Tiiired

Apologies for no update last week... my brain has been truly fried. 6 or 7 day weeks tend to make you forget things, namely to update on time! This could either be seen as an early update, or a very late one from last week (Hopefully the latter, I do have other things to say but it's too late to say them now)

My final week of RJDM is upon us now. I'm going to miss it, as I've really enjoyed working there. Not much conventional animation has gone on; no building and animating full characters, but then again the kind of stuff we've been working on of late just shows how much potential work there is for animators if you're willing. It's a huge market, and random 'basic' shorts (arrows, AGH!) are just as frequent in the industry (if not more so) than character based stuff.

I've learnt some pretty neat tricks, and I hope to show them in blog form. Seriously, arrows following a simple motion path is NOT as straightforward as you'd think!

Anyway, I've been doing homework for the last two nights til midnight so I think it's time I got some sleep.

Be good.

Sunday 18 October 2009

Very late, been hard at work

Woah, this update is somewhat late. But in my defense, I've been insanely busy at RJDM. In order to get our project done for the client for Monday (well, technically last Friday...) we have all been on a mad one to get scenes to match up, and for renders to be consistent. Apparently ambient occlusion nodes are somewhat unpredictable when you attach them to objects that have been scaled up, even if you keep the attributes to the same level. Some clever camera trickery had to be performed there, along with many other places to bodge out the bugs.

I've also had a good old play in my old friend Combustion yesterday, where I learnt the benefit of Mattes and contribution passes in Maya. It seems that a render layer will render out, say just the floor and shadows that are cast on it, but contribution passes literally cut out patches of the floor where anything would normally be rendered over it. Although this would generally be handy as you can recolourise sections of a render without adding time to render areas you'd never see, you are then prone to getting some ugly black outlines round each pass where the Matte does a poor job of masking everything. Luckily you can shrink this in Combustion to minimise it, but personally I find render layers are much better to control the compositing of your shot. Still, either are very easy to set up in Maya 2009 and 2010 compared with older versions, with the help of material overrides and surface shaders.

I've been invited back to RJDM for another week or 2, so expect late updates again, as I don't tend to get home til 8pm and I'm usually too frazzled to type, but I'll keep everyone posted.
Also, keep an eye out for our video online soon. I'll post a link when it's released!

Friday 9 October 2009

2nd week of RJDM

Oops... a little late this week (Updates seem to have been happening every Thursday so I'll try and stick to that) but I just clean forgot. Let's put it down to being drained from work.

Again, no work of my personal stuff as I've had my second week at RJDM studios. It's been hectic trying to ensure this project meets the standards of our client (they are pretty indecisive which is very frustrating) so we could be spending a morning on one thing, only to find the feedback received at noon says they don't like that aspect. So we're back to the drawing board. And that has happened, and I'm sure it will again.

I've got to play in Maya a lot more this week, animating short sequences and staring at the graph editor. We have also got an additional project to do by the end of next week, which consists of making an advert for a website. The storyboards are down and the feedback has been pretty good, which is a bonus. That should all be done and dusted in the short time we have.

Next week may be the final week in the studio, until November anyway when I may well be going back to help out.

Thursday 1 October 2009

Employed and everything!

Well, it's been a fun few days at RJDM, as we have all been working there since Saturday (that was a doozy). I can't really say that much in terms of the projects, but we're going to be fairly busy with juggling about 3 projects. A lot of time so far has been spent storyboarding, trying to make the first piece as clear and polished as possible to the client. God, I hate storyboarding, especially when you add in a single frame, and eeeeeverything has to be pushed back one space on Photoshop files with 6 frames. Such a hassle! And I'm getting a bit sick of the cheesy smiles that istock has to offer, even on kids with black eyes.
In terms of programs, Photoshop has been on my agenda a lot for many reasons. Maya has been used a smidge by myself, but a lot more by others. I've also got to grips with Final Cut Pro even more which is handy for my own experience... I'd try to stay away from Macs if I can help it, but being forced to use them does give me opportunity to widen my knowledge of them.
Not much else to say really as I haven't progressed further with my own work. Closing statement will be 'I must learn AfterEffects!'

Until next time

Thursday 24 September 2009

Maya Time...

I've been a busy bee in Maya lately. I've managed to knock up most of the model for my stock rig. There have been a few things to consider when modelling:

Posing itself is definitely something to look at from a rigging standpoint. A straight-up T pose is the classic way to model, and seems to be favoured by animators over having arms at a 45 degree angle. However, another useful pose is classed as 'the motorbike rider', which essentially has each joint at a more relaxed pose. The shoulders, elbows and knees are slightly bent, so when it comes to skinning, the body is not set in a particular extreme, giving fewer crazy distortions when say the arm is bent more than if it was modelled purely straight. I've taken this into account to an extent, and I've naturally modelled the knees slightly bent, and the elbows also bent a tiny amount. Through trial and error, I'll see if this technique works, or if I should implement it further.

Here's a quick pic of what I have so far. You may spot that some of the hair is missing, as I haven't got round to modelling that side for an asymmetrical 'do.

On another note, I'm going back to work at RJDM next week, along with James and Brad, to do some more animation work, which should be good. Rather energy draining again I'm sure but quite an experience. I'll be there for 2-3 weeks so I don't really know how much I will progress with my character. On top of that, 360Red got back to me today. Sod's law, as I can't really do the work he wants right now. Bit gutted that I'm going to miss out on that side but hopefully there will be more stuff at hand when I'm finished with this job.

Laters

Thursday 17 September 2009

Scrap it, sculpt again!

This last week has been slightly more constructive than the week before. After looking at my old clay model, I came to the conclusion that I wasn't that happy with it and wanted to start over. I still kept the drawings in mind as they weren't too bad, but something was lost in the 3D process. So here we are again, a nice new concept sketch!

The hair has been simplified for 3D, as well as bringing out the eyes a little, ultimately making the character a little less Keith-ish. Following this,  I started out with a new clay head, perched on a biro.

There's a lot more definition in the face now, such as a stronger brow and a thinner jawline/cheekbones. I'm pretty happy with this, much more than last time. Note the blu-tack piercings... they're not actually going to be on the final model as the character will be linked to closely to mysef, and although this character is going to be a characature of myself, I'd rather it has some sort of difference to act like a stock rig over a direct copy of my face.

Here is the skeleton, made primarily from foil and some pretty thin wire for gardening. That wire had to be twisted on itself a good number of times (8 or 16, I forget) for it to be strong enough to hold the sheer amount of plasticine that would be wrapped round it. However, this frame is still a bit shaky, and when the weight of plasticine is put on, you are essentially fighting gravity over actually creating an ideal design. The foil cuts down on weight, but not enough for you to have an ideal amount of control over your model. To combat this, it's best to have the feet literally pinned down to a base so they can't actually move from the ground. As a pretty shoddy, yet effective, base, I found a bit of skirting board with 2 screws already tapped into it. Fortunately these screws were an ideal space away from each other for each foot without affecting the pose. So the model's feet have about an inch of screw tapped into them to prevent it toppling over. It could still happen like anything, but that worry had been averted.

After a good few hours and the Resident Evil trilogy (nom, Milla Jovovich), the model has been built up, with the head attached to the top of the wire skeleton and smoothed seamlessly. Hands are not that detailed here, as they are so damn tricky to model in Maya, they are a project on their own; I'll leave them clenched here as there's no point trying to make them to scale right now. I have also added fuller cheeks to the head after bringing it together with the body, as they looked a bit flat. Overall, I'm pretty happy with this direction and have fewer doubts about the design than before. This has been used to create front and side orthographic drawings to proportion, and are being used in Maya as we speak. Hopefully, a good model will be viewable next week, as well as a spot of rigging, which I'll try and cover over a few bonus posts, as I know rigging is everybody's enemy and I'd like to share my personal tips to get round the awkward phases. I'll leave you all with an extra picture of the Mikey sculpt, surrounded by the bombsite that is my desk.

Pretty long post today to make up for last week's embarressment. Peace Out!!!

Thursday 10 September 2009

Lazy...

Hmm, not that much to comment on this week. In all honesty, I've done very little since finishing the keys. I did get a positive response from that project, but I've been a little overrelaxed lately.

I did get round to watching the original short of 9 the other day, which was very clever and atmospheric. It will be interesting to see how the mood changes when voices are added to the characters, as well as new enemies for the characters to face. From a character design standpoint, my favourite element of 9 has to be his eyes. Blinking acts like a camera shutter, where the pupil shrinks to close. I thought this was a really cool, unique idea as it still retains all the expression that a standard eye would have, yet assists the feeling that 9 is a manmade character.

I also went to see District 9 yesterday (there's an awful lot of films about lately involving numbers, not sure if there's any relevance though). The feature film trailer for 9 played, and it kind of bugs me how they didn't mention Shaun Acker's name at all, but managed to cram every voice actor in there, as well as Tim Burton himself. I know these people are all well-known and such, but seeing as it was Shaun's original short and he wasn't given any airtime in the trailer, it feels that there's a great element of namedropping there. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure the film will be brilliant, but it's just one of those niggles.

Back to the film, yes everyone should see it. It has a nice documentary-esque style to it and the managed to keep a sense of reality there (take note Hollywood, if anything big like aliens on Earth happened, there's a very slim chance of it happening in a big American city.) . The film deals with quite a few serious issues but doesn't patronise you with obvious plot turns. It's left me thinking quite a lot about the whole back story.

I should be thinking of a potential story for a group project, but my mind hasn't come up with anything of any worth. I guess it will happen when I don't think about getting inspired. It's always the way

Thursday 3 September 2009

Some Jolly Keys

Brace yourselves... I have actually been doing work in Maya this week!

In response to a request from 360red in Leicester, I modelled, animated and lit a short scene to demonstrate my 'realism' skills. It should serve as a nice little [pointless] animation as well as some potential VFX work. In the end I made some keys, and a cheesy tagline to go with it



Although it's all secondary, subtle animation, it has made me realise how much I've missed animating. Hopefully a new rig will be underway soon (I'll dedicate some time to sitting down and cracking on in Maya with the orthographics I already have drawn).

On another note, some other former Animation students from DMU and I may be starting a group project, maybe to enter for a film festival or whatever. We shall see about this one. Currently there aren't any stories in all our heads to pick apart and develop but it's early days with this idea. And as the story will take a good few months to get spot on, I'll have to get my animating fix elsewhere. Most likely when the new rig is finished, I will enter the 11 second club or something similar.

In short, this diddy key project has rekindled my love for animation. Not like it ever went away, but I haven't done any in so long.  Roll on more projects!

Thursday 27 August 2009

Job Opportunities

Seems I didn't get round to updating last week... probably because I didn't really get that much done, so there wasn't anything worth commenting. A couple of cartoons, life art and general sitting about. But then again everyone needs a holiday. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.

This last week has been more prosperous. I have finally got a job to pay the bills, and with working 21 hours (with a chunk of those being time and a half) I can actually crack on with some animation without the stress of not being able to afford anything. A big load off means my brain can be entirely Maya-orientated. And with this, I managed to sit and draw some decent observational sketches as well as mapping out some orthographics for my generic rig, ready to be scanned, tweaked in Photoshop and stuck directly onto image planes for my Maya cameras. That should see some light very very soon now I have the relevant references.

In addition to my own work, I've been contacted by a Leicester-based animation company. Basically the owner should be getting a few projects in soon, and needs some animators fresh out of uni to provide a bit of manpower. After a chat, I know one of the main focuses of the company is in 3D compositing and matching work up with the real world. Not neccessarily ultra-realistic work, but it needs to look like it fits in with the environment, such as lighting etc. I will be providing a short animation with a high-realism finish on it that will be imported into Flash for some added interactivity. My knowledge of Flash, Encore and the like should really plug this for me, as although it's self taught, I am in the know with interactive multimedia projects.

This project should be done by the end of next week, so I have a tight deadline to get this as good as possible. At the moment I am thinking of what object I should create that will be acheivable in the timeframe, and what will look impressive. If I pull this off, there should be some animation work in store for me, which will also help provide this blog with some handy techniques I'll no doubt pick up as I go along.

Fingers crossed!

Thursday 13 August 2009

Clay and Sketching...

I've been spending a lot of time sketching characters, obscure folk with no true direction as of yet. Once I have a couple of interesting profiles for these characters to go by, then maybe a couple of designs will be put forward, along with many fresh designs and styles. At the moment, I am still thinking of some entertaining people that have suffered some rather unfortunate accidents (better than just falling off a ladder into a pot of paint) so they can go ahead and sue someone. Turns out this task is quite tricky when you have to make it as clear as possible that it is a believable accident without being awfully cliché. And this is without taking the humour into account.

However, I have redesigned what would be my stock rig in the near future. It's a little more characatured version of myself, although it shan't be named 'Stu'. This should be more expressive and easier to use than a chunky-limbed figure... the skinner the limbs, the less awkward the binding will be. Here is a basic sketch...

The eyebrows should help expression a lot more, as the previous character only had a brim of the hat. For some reason I forgot to add eyebrows to an awful lot of my characters in the past. This head has also been built in clay (and good old tin foil)




He is at risk of looking a little Keith-esque, which I think is down to the bags under the eyes. I shall avoid this in development.

As well as this, I have also built another experimental head to see how a single eyeball could be used for a two-eyed human, much like Beano characters and the like. Using one of those dosing balls from detergent packets, I made a solid eye and worked round it. Overall it turned out pretty well.

This coming week I am off on holiday for a bit, so I'll take my sketchbook down on the train and have a go at designing a few more people based on the southerners there.

Stuart

Wednesday 5 August 2009

Getting back into it again...

It's been quite a break from animation... in fact over a month since I did anything linked to my work, and even then it was modelling and animating cigarette packets. Now I'm just wanting to get straight back into things, but before I start up in Maya, I'm going to have to get some sort of plot, character design or general idea together before anything is going to take shape.

Originally I was planning to make another generic rig, hopefully one that does not follow any particular story so it's a bit more universal for exercises. So a cross between my Stu Rig v1 (which is a year old, and I've learnt so much more since in every department) and Keith, which is nice and easy to use thanks to trial and error over about 7 character models. I may still do this, perhaps making a better characature of myself. I've seen some pretty impressive models that animators have made of themselves and was thinking it's not a bad idea. After all, the inspiration is staring straight in the mirror at you.

However, a new project that hopefully will take off is a little collaborative piece with a few people from uni, which should give me/us some direction in what to achieve in the big bad world. I've spent the last few days sketching some random characters to create a bizarre little community within my sketchbook. Some are good, others not so good, but hopefully I'll figure out some decent designs for people who are rather accident prone, eccentric, or just unfortunate. That, and one person who is just so charismatic and confident that you will have to buy what he is selling.

Hopefully some headway will be gained soon, but seeing as one of the people I will be working with is off on holiday, I'll either crack on with this by myself, or I will get on the case with a generic rig. We will wait and see.

Sunday 26 July 2009

Stuart's Blog

Well, here is the start of my blog. If I discover anything interesting that I think will help people, or if I get going on a big project, I'll write something here. 

I doubt there will be a regular post at any given time unless I really get into the flow of it, then I'll make a note to actually update every few days/weeks/whatever.

In the meantime, I hope you are enjoying my site. If you're not actually on the site while reading this, check it out at www.stuart-owen.co.uk

Stuart