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Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Another labor day has come and gone...

In America means trading one's workweek labors for that of driving long distances to see family or something "neat." In our case we headed to land of my upbringing - Oklahoma. Yes, the wind was sweeping down the plain. Also, I ate way too much.

As I recently said, Morphy progress has slowed as I started a new animation gig which is gonna be a lot of fun. Still working on getting a feel for the characters but it feels good to stretch the animation muscles again after their break of the past few months workin mainly on rigging. Been getting some great feed back from people and did make a few fixes in the wee hours of the night last week.

Oh, a short note on submitting ideas/bugs. Please be as specific as possible in what you're seeing and/or wanting. For bugs, sending me a referenced anim file with your issue illustrated is very helpful and for suggestions, maybe do a draw-over or "over explain" what you mean. Email isn't exactly a great form of communication but we do the best with what we have:)

Here's a quick update:
Fixed:

  • Added in the pony tail and pig tail rigs that will show up when you choose those hair option now. Thanks to Mary Barreiro for doing those rigs and making it so easy to roll them in.
  • Pushed the muscle body morph 50% more and about done splitting that up again
  • Some polish on lips rolls and some other stuff
  • Did another tweak to ankle/shoulder;/hip positioning which required another re-rig
To Do:

  • Still having some issues with the shoulders and hips twist getting messed up so been workin on some solutions there and think we're getting close
  • Finalize UI functionality
  • Look at some texture submissions
  • Finalize head to rig connection procedures for documentation
Feedback request:
  • TSM  Morpheus version - Several of my friends are big Setup Machine fans and I was thinking about doing a TSM body version of Morpheus if there was any interest. It would only be an additional option for using Morpheus if folks like that rig and would illustrate the idea of using the head on different rigs as well. I already have the setup file done so it wouldn't be much hassle. If you're interested. Lemme know.
    • If you're not familiar with The Setup Machine body rig, you can download Squirrely and see what you think. (note - Morpheus will not have a tail)
  • Hands - I've had some mixed reviews on the hand rig setup. The setup is pretty much following Schleifer's AFR setup and I tend to really like it but I've gotten a couple of responses from folks who thought it wasn't clear. I'd like to hear if anyone else feels it's lacking or your thoughts. Please remember that each finger has it's own attributes as well:)
  • Facial - If you start doing facial animation tests or lip sync tests, please let me know if you're having trouble hitting poses you want. Been getting mixed feedback on this one as well and I've not had (and won't have) time to test it myself for a while.
My hope is the next release will be in the next week or two and will be Morpheus Release Candidate v 0.9

2 comments:

identikal said...

All the facial controls work great except there seems to be a lack of options for "forward-back" movement of the lips. This makes it hard in particular to simulate the 'EFF' mouth shape where the bottom lip goes behind the top teeth and also a puckered up 'Oooo' shape. I also had to some extra blendshapes to get a sucked in mouth shape for extra enunciation for the 'EMMM' phoneme.

If that was abit confusing, my general feedback is to have an extra axis in the lip control curves to hit those phonemes better =)

Nonetheless best rig i've ever used. Love what you're doing Josh!
Keep it up!

Unknown said...

Thanks identical. Please keep in mind that the outer lip (upr/lwr) controls actually affect z movement as well on the tx channel of the control. Some folks haven't noticed that until they mess with it enough.

All that being said, I've done new roll and narrow shape tweaks since the beta release and they're much more pronounced in the latest working version.

Glad you're likin it so far:) Really gonna try to get the release candidate out in the next week. The body rig pretty much has all the kinks out now and just workin on finaling everything up.

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