Morphy Deformation Rig Beta (maya 2009 version)!

First of all, thanks for the great feedback on the eye rig. There were some great thoughts there on how to make the rig even better. Much appreciated. On to the next...

So, this is the beta release for Morphy's facial deformation setup. Here's a quick guide...(if you prefer to just jump in without knowing what things are, skip to the disclaimer and download link at the end)

So, what do we have here?

• When you open the scene, go ahead and play the timeline. You'll see some quick deformation poses I set so you can get an idea of how things move. There are a series of controls surrounding the face that are being animated.
• Now, grab the temporary morph joystick and move it around. I made 4 quick morph targets (one of them especially quick but more on that in a sec) and connected them to the control  to make it easy to mess with initially. There is a blendShape node connected to the face that the joystick drives. The four points of the "compass" for the joystick are fat, feminine, SculptMe, and masculine if looking at it starting 'north' and going around the dial clockwise. See how they affect the various deformation poses throughout the timeline. The idea is that part of the customization process will be with the deformation controls and part of it will be via the blendShapes
• The eyebrows are simply connected via a wrap deformer (please note the polycount on them is quite low). I'm planning on using the same for other customization stuff as well but and open to ideas if you have them.
• Now to play...
• There's a quick select set called "qssFaceCustomize" that as all of facial deformation controls in it. I use zooTools set manager to work with Quick select sets and find it to be a very quick workflow. "d" is my hot key and I bring up the menu if I hold it and select my last set if I just hit it once. 
• Feel free to delete my poses or just add your own after them and see what you can come up with. Start moving them around, scaling them whatever.
• That SculptMe blendShape is for you to sculpt on without having to add it to the blendshape node though you can feel free to add your own as well on that front.You'll be able to see them if you turn on the layer "MorphTargets"
• If you want to play with asymmetric facial deformation, open up the expressions editor and comment out or delete my FaceCustomizerExpr and you can just grab those right side joints yourself and break the face to your heart's content.
• No, the facial rig isn't on this beta. Sorry still working on it:)
• Yes I know the lids aren't weighted yet on this version

This is the feedback/input I'm looking for on this beta test:

• Are there enough deformation controls for you? If you'd like more, where would you like them.
• Would you like some sort of interface to drive the morphs in the customization phase?
• Would you like precanned types like the quick pass I've done here or would you like it broken down to nose types, chins in a more area-centric fashion
• Are you happy with only deforming one side of the face and having it mirror across or would your prefer asymmetric deformation ability? 
• Do you want to have the morphability when you are animating or would you like a "freeze look" function that pulls out unnecessary nodes and what not for speed's sake?
• Please email feedback to me (see contact page) with a subject line of  "Making Morphy Moldable".

-Call for submissions - 

The final morphy rig will more than likely be limited on the the morphability side for free with a very low cost "honor system" fee for the full blown rig. I'm not 100% on that yet but am leaning that way as a way of justifying continued character making efforts (which I happen to enjoy quite a bit but doesn't exactly pay the bills). So...anyone providing an asset that makes the cut on rig inclusion will 1) get early access to the final rig, 2) get a credit in the release docs as well as the morphy page on my website with a link to your website and 3) not have to pay anything to get it as my way of saying thanks for taking the time to help this endeavor. What am I looking for?

• Very cool facial morphs - make a really cool nose, chin or something else I haven't even thought of
• Customization stuff - Now that you have the base head, you have the basis to make beards, mustaches, hair dos, new eyebrows, glasses, new ears, earrings, monocles or whatever you can think of.
• Textures - the face is fully UV'd. I'd like to have some different skin types for release. Sure I can paint them but 1) I'm not the best texture artist and 2) I'd rather be working on making the rig awesome. Also, if you don't like my uv layout, feel free to redo it and if it's better I'll substitute it
• Submissions should be sent to me (see contact page for email addy, don't forget to remove spaces) and a subject line of "Mophy shall be mine!" 

Should you wish to provide something, please make sure the poly count isn't crazy. Look at the ears and eyebrows for an idea of what may not be too much:)

Disclaimer - Without (much) further ado, here's the rig. I'm gonna ask you don't go take my head and use it for other purposes- especially not until I've released the final character and more specifically not commercial ones. However I can't do anything to stop you should you be inclined to do so other than not do these betas which means working in a vacuum which I find to suck. Yes, that was a pun. Yes, I know it's not as funny to point that out. No, I'm not a comedian. /scene

Here it is!

Can't all you verts just get along?

Blendshape fun

So lesson learned here. At some point when I was sculpting Morphy at the end there I lost symmetry and in doing so made getting my blendshape targets symmetrical nigh to impossible. So I spent most of yesterday restoring symmetry to the base mesh and all the subsequent morph targets. Good times. Current count of morphs is 33 without and left right splitting on the main targets. Most of my facial rigs in the past have been bone based so I'm a bit new to the blendshaped facial workflow.

So new rule is: "When creating a blendshape based facial rig, before beginning to make your final morph targets, CHECK symmetry."

Should you find yourself in a similar predicament, here's some useful tools in this exercise:

• Silo - why maya doesn't have a calculate and restore symmetry function is beyond me. If it does and I don't know where it is. Don't hesitate to point out my maya modeling newbish self and laugh (preferably as you tell me where that tool might be).
• abSymMesh - Check symmetry of targets based off of base mesh and restore it
• Extractblendshapes - Great little script for exporting all the shapes of a blendshape node to new meshes

Now I'm SURE there are better ways to do this but here's what worked.

1. Make head fixed for symmetry.
2. Hook up all asymmetrical blendshapes to original asymmetrical head (baseHead).
3. Hook up symmetry head as blendshape to asymmetrical blendshape node
4. Turn on symmetry head blendshape channel
5. Manually duplicate the baseHead as you turn on the blendshape channels one by one (while leaving the symmetry head channel on).
6. Save all of these new exported shapes into a new scene.
7. Bring in your symmetrical head as your new base head and use abSymMesh to compare the various shapes to the new base head and restore symmetry to them
8. Use your symmetrical head as your new base and connect your now symmetrical shapes to this head
9. Delete all the blendshape meshes
10. Select the symmetrical base head and run Extractblendshapes to get your new final symmetrical blendshapes
11. Go look in the mirror and say to yourself, "Don't do this again."
12. Profit.

Have a nice Saturday all.

On the elegance of remap nodes....

Typically when I rig I hack the heck out of stuff using expressions and what not. For example, this had been my expression driving lid movement...

//Left Lid connections
eyeRigAttributeHolder.blink_center_left = clamp (0,1, -blink_left_anim.translateY);
eyeRigAttributeHolder.blink_inner_left = clamp (0,1, -blink_left_anim.translateY);
eyeRigAttributeHolder.blink_outer_left = clamp (0,1, -blink_left_anim.translateY);

eyeRigAttributeHolder.upperLid_center_left = clamp (-27, 35, -uprLid_left_anim.translateY * 35);
eyeRigAttributeHolder.upperLid_outer_left = clamp (-25, 25, -outer_uprLid_left_anim.translateY * 25);
eyeRigAttributeHolder.upperLid_inner_left = clamp (-8, 20, -inner_uprLid_left_anim.translateY * 20);

eyeRigAttributeHolder.lowerLid_center_left = clamp ( -12, 21, -lwrLid_left_anim.translateY * 21);
eyeRigAttributeHolder.lowerLid_outer_left = clamp ( -14, 12, -outer_lwrLid_left_anim.translateY * 20);
eyeRigAttributeHolder.lowerLid_inner_left = clamp ( -5, 12, -inner_lwrLid_left_anim.translateY * 12);

//adds rotation on the center eyelid skin joints for bend in the eyelid and is then negated by the blink so things seal up
left_uprLid_skin_jnt.rotateZ = uprLid_left_anim.rotateZ - (uprLid_left_anim.rotateZ * -blink_left_anim.translateY);
left_lwrLid_skin_jnt.rotateZ = lwrLid_left_anim.rotateZ - (lwrLid_left_anim.rotateZ * -blink_left_anim.translateY);


//left eyelid group follows the eye
eyelid_left_rig_grp.rotateY = left_eye_skin_jnt.rotateY * .2;
uprEyelid_left_rig_grp.rotateX = clamp (-35, 10, left_eye_skin_jnt.rotateX + (eyeRigAttributeHolder.blink_center_left * 35)) ;


//joint following
//left_uprFan_jnt.rotateX = left_uprLid_jnt.rotateX * .7;
//left_outerUprLid_jnt.rotateX = left_uprLid_jnt.rotateX * .7;

That's a bit of a mess and a major pain to edit for the user and wanting to follow in Shleifer's Animator Friendly rigging principles I looked into a bit of a more elegant solution and learned to love remap nodes in the process.

So with a bid of elbow grease and heavily modifying Doublestein's eyelid joint setup by adding new attributes and some new doodads everything connects in one nice little script.

Here's a chunk of that code...

//connecteding eyelid controls -jb
//upr
string $uprLidMovementRemap = `createNode remapValue -n ("remapUprLidMovement"+$location+$side)`;
setAttr ( $uprLidMovementRemap+".inputMin") -1;
connectAttr ($uprLidControl+".ty") ($uprLidMovementRemap+".inputValue");
connectAttr ($uprLidUprLimit) ($uprLidMovementRemap+".outputMax");
connectAttr ($uprLidLwrLimit) ($uprLidMovementRemap+".outputMin");
connectAttr ($uprLidMovementRemap+".outValue") ($uprLidMover);

//lwr
string $lwrLidMovementRemap = `createNode remapValue -n ("remapLwrLidMovement"+$location+$side)`;
setAttr ( $lwrLidMovementRemap+".inputMin") -1;
connectAttr ($lwrLidControl+".ty") ($lwrLidMovementRemap+".inputValue");
connectAttr ($lwrLidUprLimit) ($lwrLidMovementRemap+".outputMax");
connectAttr ($lwrLidLwrLimit) ($lwrLidMovementRemap+".outputMin");
connectAttr ($lwrLidMovementRemap+".outValue") ($lwrLidMover);


//Blink setup - jb
string $blinkmdNode = `createNode multiplyDivide -n ("BlinkmdNode"+$location+$side)`;
connectAttr ($blinkControl+".ty") ($blinkmdNode+".input1X");
setAttr ($blinkmdNode+".input2X") -1;
connectAttr ($blinkmdNode+".outputX") ($blinkMover);

It's also pretty cool in that there's now attributes sitting on a control that you can mess with to tweak the range of the lid movement by the controls. Pretty nifty.

Now I'd really like to buckle down and learn some python but if I'm gonna finish Morphy anytime soon, it'll have to wait.

Beta Eye Rig is Maya 2009 safe!

Found a pretty easy way of getting my weights over when I was playing with some different joint orientations for the eyelid control stuff. It was especially easy since the face was UV'd.  That being said, here is a more compatible version of the beta eye rig for Morphy. I also added a rotation control on the middle eyelid movers for even more flexibility.

Updated rig here

Also wanted to mention what I neglected to earlier. I'm using my good friend Scott Engert's eye setup and John Doublestein's eyelid method (with some extra stuff on it). I updated his (awesome) script to be able to account for multiple eyelid joints and if anyone wants that I'll ping him and see if he minds. 

Time for bed. Tomorrow I'm moving back to the rest of the face while I wait for some feedback on this.

Morphy Eye Rig Open Beta...

Looking for a few good animators (with Maya 2011 preferably)....apparently the new maya has a completely new skinning paradigm that blows up in old versions of maya (though everything else works). I'm afraid I don't have time to reskin it for the test in an older version though I shall be doing Morphy's final skin in an older version if I can't find a work around for that. So, down to business.

You can download the wip eye rig here

Here's  a key to the controls. What I'm looking for is feedback on:

• Control positions and feel - I've been planning on doing the whole rig being "on face" as is apparent in the quick test on the whole face last week.
• Specifically the FK eye control position - try it where it is, then select it, pickwalk up once to it's transform group and snap that to the locator in front of the eye to try it there.
• Blend between the fk and ik setups and see what you think of the iris/pupil and fk/ik blend moving between the two. I thought it was kind of a nice way of seeing what you're using (though I'll have a visibility toggle as well)
• Does anyone actually know a good way to get maya 2011 skin open in an older version of maya? If it's an issue I probably need to shift development to an older version.
• Please email me your feedback with the subject line of "Morphy has his eyes on you"

Note:

• If you have an older version of maya, you can open it fine back to 2008, just delete the skin or hide it.
• It's a quick skin
• The right side stuff is only partially setup, so feel free to mess with it but half of it's broken:)

To my few readers who check often enough, thanks ahead of time if you can take a look. To my mom who reads this as well, I'm afraid you probably can't help on this one though if you wanted to make me some fried okra next time I'm home we'll call it even.

Thanks!

Spring 2010 Demo Reelage...

Found some time to update the ole' reel. Added some Psyop work, the latest Garden City work and cut a couple of things on the last one. Getting Morphy done can't come too soon. I needs me some more lip sync on there. So sad that I have SO MUCH lip sync footage from Midway that's just facial animation only and thus worthless for a full body keyframe reel.

Ah well.

Morphy is coming along fine. Got his eye and lid rig working for the most part. Gonna post another post in a bit to try and get some beta testing on the eye rig.

Until next time!

Morphy's Head is UV'd...

...And it's not at all visible at any point in this post. So you'll have to trust me on that one.



So, what are you lookin at here? Lemme tell ya:

• First 140 frames are just a simple cycle of poses
• After that, the same cycle continues till the end only now I've added facial customization control animation on top of it.
• Only the left side face controls are on there and connected to (unsplit) facial blendshapes while I'm polishing the poses)
• All three heads are exactly the same rig, only I've toggled some visibility to make things clear. The blue controls on the left are facial deformation controls that you can use to scale and move different parts of the face. The green and yellow controls are regular animation controls that you'd use when doing facial. The right side will be the same as the green ones, only mirrored and red.
• I may still add a few more controls as well for some more things I've been thinking about adding. Such as...
• Lip corner compress
• Eye squeeze
• Middle lip controls

Man, some of this stuff is taking a while to get working the way I want. Getting the jaw's movement to scale with the mouth shrinking was especially contentious.

What's next?

1. Eye rig - this is gonna be a bit tricky as well because I'm moving the eye around but I think I have a good plan of attack on that.
2. Polishing poses for the facial rig and then creating the left/right variants.
3. Tongue rig
4. Making deformation morphs - noses, lips, and other such things
5. .....finish the body rig at some point:)

Joint Based Deformation Controls and a final head...

FINALLY got happy enough with a head to call it final. Here's a semi polished range of motion with Face Machine only work on it. I'll have to do a good bit of sculpting and tweaking to get things where I need them but I'm happy with the base deformation at least....



The funky little anomolies in the range of motion are the breakdowns (upr/lwr lip variations).

Now to the good stuff. So I posted a test a few days back where I was looking at what morph only based deformation could do for facial variation. I know that can work but wanted to have better flexibility and control for the end user that would be funner than just grabbing sliders. So today I decided to experiment with a joint based inital facial deformation system that will get the user 85% there on the facial tweak which can then have some morph tweaks (new noses, etc) added or they can sculpt on it if they like. I've been LOVING the maya relax polys mode with the sculpting brush to get good geometry distribution.



At this point I'm thinking workflow will be for the user to do these tweaks at world center away from their animation and drive the tweaks to the facial rig that attached to the body rig but I'm not sold on that yet. Tomorrow should nothing crazy come up, I'll be working on on an initial pass at hooking up facial poses to controls to start testing things.

Can't leave well enough alone...

This is quick down and dirty test as proof of concept to see how the facial feature morphing will work with the actual pose blendshapes. Yes, the shapes need a lot of polish. The generics coming from Face Machine are doing some funky stuff under the lower lip and on the upper as well in the smile. For the most part I'm thinking it's gonna work great and I have plans as to how the user will be able to move the eyes, brow and mouth that I have yet to implement.



In the above, all are a referenced animated "rig" which I then turned on the whole face morph on the faces on the left and right.

So yeah, I messed the snot out of the head playing with planes of the face and what not. There's things I like about the new one and things I don't. The hope is that the customization will be able to get to a wide variety of looks. One issue is for the maximum flexibilty, the base has to be a bit more boring than I'd hoped. Pretty happy with how it's moving aside from the brow. Really prefer the the amount of movement I was getting in the first range of motion I posted last week.

Thanks to David Bokser on the feedback and the ideas for how to be able to do a blendshape rig vs a joint based one (which I had been leaning towards).

Other stuff I've been playing with:

• Iris/Pupil variation - played with bout a joint based system and morph based one. Ended up going with the morph based one to make scaling easier and for the customization stuff I was wanting to do.
• Attaching eyebrows/beards, etc  - Looking like just a wrap deformer is gonna work on this front
• Moving facial features - planning on using a heirarchy of "mover joints" with good natural fall off.
• Big facial morphs - like in the above vid - I made a "girlish" morph as well as a more "manly" one. I'm trying to think through if it would be better to have a couple of those or go wild and break it down to nose big/small, head variations, etc or if people would prefer just to have a hook up to do their own customizations. Any thoughts would be appreciated.

In other news, the bass were hitting the buzz bait like champs on Saturday. Not so much on Sunday.

Morphy Facial ROM v01

Trying to be better about keeping notes at the behest of Jason via Animator Friendly Rigging. Been using Google notebook so I have my notes wherever I am workin. If it's useful to anyone to see process or my idiocy, I'll be happy to post em:)


Here's the ones from today...

Completed

• First pass of poses in the face machine
• Finally happy with sculpt of head
• Another pass of 060_010_010 - hoping to be final

To fix on face machine setup:

• Look at Skull deformation geometry - brow is sliding past where it should
• Make some new attempts on smile crease placer to get better deformation
• Note - will have to manually create eye crease shape as TFM doesn't have controls to get to close to it

To fix on head model (v03):

• Lip corners need work  - reference Stop Staring chapter for better layout ideas
• Model mouth interior
• Shrink teeth size to match geometry shift made in Rom file

Questions/Ideas

• Model or scrounge some teeth (Perok, Henry?)
• Don't forget - grab hand and leg fixes from last body rig version
• Possibly make version of head with eyelids closed to see if better shapes are possible out of TFM
• Tracking teeth placement  - instead of including teeth in deformed geometry look into rivot type contraint to follow a couple of faces that are fully influence by the jaw. Could potentially create empty groups for folks to put whatever teeth geometry in for replacement.
• Should eyebrows be apart of deformation mesh....?

Also, here's the latest version of that last GC shot - put in a bit more polish over the past few days....part of me would like to go back and polish some of my early GC shots but I think I'll work on Morphy to get a character other that a Garden city one on my reel:)

Fresh from the Internets!

More amazing things falling out of animation land...

• First up, hailing from Canada - Shaz Lym's Mr fresh! And that's an awesome name Mr. Lym. Almost as cool as my Marine buddy of old - the one and only Cisco Schaff.
  
  
  
• Man the new Rapunzel Tangled trailer looks perty - check it!
  
• More from that amazing school in France....geez, these guys....
  

To the Face Machine!

He looks kinda like that old horror movie "pinhead" character with all the things stickin out his face...

So I've been resculpting the face umpteen thousand times over the past few days. I'm finally pretty close to what I want so I'm gonna throw it into Face Machine to see how it's deforming. It's a pretty sweet app for checking a head deformation. Half hour of setup and you can pretty much get any pose you want out of it. Something isn't working well? Well go back and fix the model, rerun the rig maker and you have an updated look at how things are blendshaping up. I'd think about using it for the actual facial rig but 1) it's a bit heavy and 2) users have to have special nodes installed.

At first glance, Face Machine is a bit pricey. However for the amount of time it saves me in creating my base set of facial blendshapes I find it well worth the price. I am however, not much a fan of the the cost for their upgrades to new versions of maya. If you're not doing anything more than making the existing plugin work in the new version of Maya just give it to your customers or charge a lot less. It's a bit annoying having to shift back to Maya 2008 to run it. Silo and Zbrush have much more aggreeable upgrade paths.

My most recent workflow on rigging faces the past few times has been:

1. Model head.
2. Put in face machine, setup  and create the face.
3. Make a referenced range of motion file on the face to see how things are looking.
4. If I don't like how things are deforming I 1) go back and tweak the model or 2) go to my setup file and move things around if I think it's a pivot issue.
5. Tweak out the blendshapes in Silo of Maya with some surface sculpting
6. Use the range of motion file to export my blendshape Obj's
7. Make my right/left blends in a new file 
8. Rig things up to my osipa style setup
9. Profit

It's been a pretty good workflow over the past few characters I've done. I've actually been really suprised as I was able to use it for Lobstery and Squirrely both and they're not very humanesque. 

Calling all Masters of Disguise!

Looking for some input for some potential Morpheus customization options. Here's what I came up with last night when I should have been going to bed (it shows).

Here's an image to use should you choose to participate in this exercise. Hair, nose, eye placement whatever is in play. Think as far outside the box as you like and I'll see if I can make it work.

Send your entries to me (you can find my email addy on the contact page, don't forget to remove the spaces) and please put your subject line as "Make Mine Morphy!"

If you don't submit an entry you waive your right to complain when Morpheus is released to the public:)


Back to learning how to create matching controls for FK/IK setups!

Finished up his hands and legs today. The screen grab on either do the complexity of Jason's methods no justice (much less the coolness) of it. Really love the hand ik usage in the rig for some complex poses.

I'm interested to see how he handles fk/ik snapping in the next part (4b).

Trying to decide if I should finish the body rig or move back to the face for a bit to give this stuff some time to gel or if it would be better to stay in the learning zone for a bit longer...there's still some of the stuff I'm just following along cause I have no idea what's going on.

On to the last part!

Morphy Update...

One arm and no legs! At least Tiko had two arms...:)

Just wrapped up part IIIb of Jason Schleifer's fantastic series. Man my head hurts from all the stuff he's been covering. It gonna take doing it multiple times to really have it sink in. However, Morphy is slowly moving towards animate-ability. 

The head still isn't final but much closer. Gonna finish up the body rig before finaling the head. at the very least I'm gonna have to remodel his lids and mouth for better edgeloops.

Some of the few things I learned I'd never tried before in maya:

• What shape nodes are and how replacing them can do neato things.
• "cntrl h" to hide stuff 
• "g" will repeat the last command
• Writing set driven keys with mel
• Jason has SO MANY great scripts that will find a permanent place on my personal rigging shelf

Yup, 6 years with the app and still a newb.

Say, if any modelers out there wanna help out. I'm gonna need some help creating hair styles, glasses, etc for customization.

Hope everyone had a great weekend. Had a nice relaxing Monday fishing, hanging with friends, grilling and making some homemade ice cream.

Here's a sweet short trailer I ran across this morning on the internets. Love the look.

On to the fingers!

Happy Memorial Day!

One of the neater things I think there is with the Norman rig is that folks have found ways of modifying it so that they all don't look the same. Some of the Animation Mentor students have begun doing the same and to me it makes a huge difference rather than just seeing the same character all the time. So one of the features I want to implement in project Morpheus is at least providing an initial leg up in that department for animators using it.



Here's a quick proof of concept attempt on a 80% complete body model. The idea is that people can vastly change their appearance by working out, eating more, eating less or whatever- it's still their same skeleton. I know that women and men have different skeletal proportions but hey this is animation and I can break rules if I want to. Right?

Still gotta decide where to do the head cut off from the body and if doing a single body mesh makes sense.

Initially Morphy will will have several body sizes to choose from for the animator depending on what they wanna do in their animation exercise. I plan on doing the same in terms of facial tweaks (noses, jaw lines, hair, etc) to provide.

I've been wondering about trying to see if some of the body stuff can be done via displacement maps and what not but as I don't have a lot of experience in that area it'll have to wait. The final Morphy will be fully UV'd should anyone care to go nuts on that front.

So, progress for the project on the week...

• Head - completely redesigned - 72.3% happy with it. Far enough along to start working on the body rig via my Animator Friendly Rigging master class progress
• Body - 80% done. Will probably end up shrinking the feet and adding more edgeloops for mophing detail.
• Hands - Modeled with a goal of being Milt Kahl-esque in proportion
• Body Morph tech - Reasonably confident it's gonna work

Hope everyone has a great memorial day weekend. Think we're just gonna hang out with some friends and get caught up.

Out.

Also, finally saw How to Train your Dragon last weekend and it was awesome. Got the art book this week. Likewise.

Morpheus Head Progress

More appealing?

So when I went back to the head I started last year and looked at it more it just felt a little too generic and somewhat similar to some of the other free rigs. With that in mind I started a redesign (as seen above). This isn't final and I think folks will think some of the modification toys I have in mind pretty neat when I finally get them done. Don't wanna spill the beans too early;)

Been collecting reference and what not as well from a myriad of choices. I've fallen in love with Milt Kahl's animated hands from Sword and the Stone and so I think I'm gonna go for something kinda like that.

I mean, look at this awesomeness....( image courtesy of google image search)

Hands are such a huge pet peeve of mine on character rigs. I hate not being able to get the shapes I want or when the fingers are too long and can't roll up well.

Back to it!

Announcing "Project Morpheus"

All characters shown copyrighted to their respective owners. But that "?" is all mine!

As I mentioned last post, I've been looking into doing another character rig. "Project Morpheus " is a temporary project name but for now it'll suffice. First thing I did was pull up some of my favorite rigs I've seen used to good effect so as to not recreate the wheel. Or at least not recreate the same silhouette. I was surprised how similar some of them were and decided to keep being different in mind as I started designing the character's body.

I'm in between gigs right now (waiting for answers on a couple of things) and trying to be productive in the downtime. Working on updating the reel,website and resume for another releasing of the doves hoping for an olive branch. Bokser wants me to do one more Garden City shot so I'll probably end up with one more there.

Been going through Jason Schleifer's fantastic rigging for animators series and learning loads I plan on implementing. He recently started releasing the DVD's himself at a substantial savings to what they had been on Autodesk's site.

Project Morpheus Goals:

• To create a flexible bipedal character for animation tests and even projects including modifiable body and facial proportions and features
• To develop more solid rigging muscles to add to my hireable toolset
• Write some rigging tools using python to learn the language and speed up workflow
• Using animator friendly principles from Jason Schleifer as well as ideas displayed in others rigs.
• Play with the idea of a free baseline rig and a more advanced option set rig setup that I might charge something for to help support character making (which I happen to enjoy)

Garden City Update....

Pretty close to final on my last shot of Garden City. It makes a lot more sense with the music but you're just gonna have to wait to see that in the final film. Also, there're 10f heads and tails on the shot.

Gonna start getting together a new reel here with a bunch of new work to send out and there are a few projects on the verge of happening that should keep me busy for a few months.

Anyone else in Texas see the absolutely amazing lighting storm last night? It was like a strobe-a-thon for an hour lighting up the landscape clear as day at 15fps or so (that's flashes per second). Wish I had a camera capable of taking that in.

Been trying to decide what path to take for the next professional development project

• Short film I've been ruminating on for a while
• Getting into digital sculpting in Zbrush
• Delve more into the rigging side of things
• Do another free rig (the human I started last year) since people seem to like Squirrely so much

...for now need to pick up some meat for dinner tonight:)

SO MANY great films coming out this year....

They just keep coming...Best of luck to the class of '10!

• Work by Michael Rianda
  
  
• Changes in Weather by Amelia Lorenz
  
  
• The Hardest Jigsaw by Eric Anderson
  

In the end there could be only one....

Blocking (maybe a bit further along then blocking) on my FINAL Garden City shot. Can't wait to start seeing some renders. The shot is directly before the house falling a part one from a couple of weeks ago.




And here's some more goodness from the internets...

• From one of my favorite flash animators....
  
  
  
• Beautifully different looking film
  
  
  
• Fantastic webinar courtesy of Animation Mentor with some great animators
  
• Animalific film of a few years back...
  

Couple of great shorts and an update (with Controls!)

Had a guy email me asking me to post a couple of animation with controls visible in the playblast. So here they are...


First off, here's a pretty close to final pass on the last (sequential shot) in my last Garden City sequence. Still not happy with a couple of things but waiting for notes from Bokser before hitting them up.


Secondly, here's the Squirrely animation which he'd specifically requested to see with controls.

Now for some really good stuff. It's getting to be the end of the year and that means lots of great student films. Best of luck class of 2010! Here's a few:

• "Helium" by Daniele Zannone
  
  
• "Crater Face" by Skyler Page
  
  
• "A Bear Film" by Kris Anka
  

No this isn't a student film, it's a studio reel, but holy cow is this some amazing stuff...

Keane and a blue moon...

Great series of vids. Hat tip to my pal Kyle for the find.

The moon was so bright last night it was eerily awesome at 4 am. We live in the middle of nowhere now so there were NO outside lights to spoil the beautiful blue illumination. It was casting these sweet blue shadows on my back patio and the big old moon was just glowing there like a great big light bulb in the night sky. Shoulda got the pastels out.

Why was I up at 4am? Allergies, my friends. Gotta love em.

Got some good thinking done as I lay there surrounded by tissue paper on the couch (decided to not subject my wife to my sniffles if I could help it) and have some new ideas on the next project side of things to workout. This is if Garden City ever finishes.

Progress makes...progress

Sorry, still no audio

Pretty close to final on a couple of shots here. The house will have lots more going on when Bokser get's done with some sim. We also need to break up the fence a bit more and add a few more things. Bokser made some pretty cool tools to help animate the house and move pivots during animation

Been busy on a wide variety of things from this sequence above to riding lawn mower research to still combating this poison ivy/oak of 4 weeks now.

Warning! 
Fixin to talk about God and faith here so if you wanna keep to the art skip the following....

Reading a lot as well. Rereading some of the emergent thinkers lately and listening to some of their podcasts. Specifically rereading "A Generous Orthodoxy" at present and don't find it very generous in it's characterizations of some sides. "Strawman" arguments get a little old. Attended a church that leaned that way for about a year. There are many good things I saw there and in the "movement" but I can't quite seem to fully make the jump philosophically. Still not sure how I feel about some of the ideas and what not. Actually that's a part of the problem with post modern theology - it's often hard to get to point of what some of the people are saying in the midst of the the perpetual "Yes and"'s. What that means is they'll set up a yes/no question and then proceed not to answer it. On many questions of the faith (protestant Christianity) I'm in the solid "I don't know" camp which is a long long way from where I once was in high school when of course I knew everything (if my thenself met my nowself and chatted about belief I might well call myself a heretic).

One of my main issues is that it feels like much of the emergent movement seems to be wrapped up in politics and I'm just not a fan of that on either side of the aisle. In as much as the "religous right" has swung to the ride side of the fences, the emergent branch seems to swing just as hard to the left. Frankly, if a preacher starts telling me who to vote for it's time to find the exit. Had some good conversations with some atheist/agnostic buddies when I was in LA and frankly I sympathize with a lot of what they had to say about their experiences with people of faith.

I pray I'm never one of "those experiences."

Another day, another Garden City Sequence...

Been workin on my last Garden City sequence and here's the blocking for it sans audio. As I mentioned a while ago, no more audio on the GC stuff so as to keep the story mysterious. I've moved onto the the linear/spline stage but wanted to post something to kick myself into making so progress. Did my first calf sorting with some friends last night near where we live. It was an interesting and fun experience. For the uninitiated, it involves a pair or peeps on horseback sorting a number of calves in order. Something like "nine ball" on horseback. Only they have to start at whatever number the judge tells you to. I need a lot of practice. The small joys of rural life:)

Hope everyone had a nice Easter...

First things first, I have the internets at maximum warp again! Well, not maximum, but quite sufficient.

The commercial I worked on last month at Psyop finally aired and someone who worked on it posted it so I reckon it's okay to link it.

My main shots were -

• s17 - fore and mid ground Octo guys, their Squid bubbles, and the arms.
• s23 - quick shot of the fox at the Octobot controls
• s24 - foreground fox, octobot and bubble sac, and the near-midground action of the bubble sac being hit by the turtles and eaten by the sub

I'll post the playblasts when I get the project page up as there's a bit more there. I had a blast on the project and really enjoyed the team and look forward to working with them again in the future.

Had some lemons of life lately which I'm workin on making into something sweeter...maybe lemonheads...I like those. The most recent of which was discovering Poison Oak in some other vines I was clearing off of some trees. Never had it before. Don't want it again. Don't want you to have it either. Avoid this at all cost....

However, I do have a sympathetic, supportive and beautiful wife who makes the bad days not so bad.

That and the prospect of a gator hunt on a neighbor's pond sounds like a life experience that suburbia just can't offer that the rural one can:)

Also, Bokser wants to finish Garden City this decade so I best get back to that...

Me vs AT&T....

Been fighting (and losing) a long hard battle with AT&T trying to first get phone service to the new house, an internet hookup (which thankfully landed last week), and now up to a decent connection speed. Fact - large facets of the cg community's internet sites are a chore to use at sub 600kps speeds. Don't know how many hours and days I've wasted so far, but I sure hope it can be rectified before too long. The thing is my neighbors have the very same service they say is unavailable to us all.

On to better things... Things have been crazy busy because of this and more. Finished up my second stint at Psyop last week and and expect to go back next month for another. Can't wait till I can show this last spot as it's a very interestingly stylized and cartoony spot. Should air next month.

In the meantime, been doing some horse riding with the Mrs., hopping back into Garden City for a few last shots and thinking through my next short. Also, looking forward to my family coming to visit this weekend. My wife, one of my nephews and I all share birthdays within a 4 day span. Crazy.... Here's a few cool things I've come across:

• Absolutely love the look of this one. There's some elements that I'd like to try in my next short there.
• And another with awesome style:
• Behind the scenes look at a film that's been making the rounds. It's great to see how miniatures and stop motion are being played with coupled with CG.

Live from LA...

Things have been either crazy busy or crazy slow the last few months. Had a good holiday with the family and January 1st found my wife dropping me off at the airport for a month in Cali for some work at Psyop/Mass Market. A good friend of mine is letting me crash on his couch so I can repeat the get up, jog, work, sleep routine for a couple fortnight (such a cool term...shame it's not used more). Working on some very cool projects and excited to get a pinky toe in the door of the commercial houses. It's been a lot of fun wearing so many hats (animating, rigging, minor modeling), and I'm learning a lot of new tools in maya I'd never messed with before. The internets have unleashed all kinds of cool and odd in the weeks since my last but I'll do my best to gather some morsels here. So, tuck your napkin in your shirt and bon appetite.

• Margarita - A beautiful whimsical film from Spain (I think).
• Alma - This one has been making the rounds but in case you missed it I'll drop it here. Great set designs - especially liked the subtle gaping mouth of a shop front.
• Fun little viking greeting card animation.
• And another "Voila" from Spain

And for some quickies:

• Cool iphone app sketch books from some amazing artists
• Fantastic blog on the principles of drawing with a bent toward animation/boarding

Fall 2009 Reel...it's right here....

Updated the reel with polished Garden City stuff along with some Lobster shots. Lots of sprouts of opportunities shooting up, hoping to see one blossom soon:)

Another week in the world of the animation (through myopic lense)...

• This week in amazing student films courtesy of Sheridan...
• Lasseter is involved in a Christmas special that is looking mighty sweet (props to my buddy Rocky for the tip via im)...
• How to Train Your Dragon is looking sweet. Have several friends working on it and the animation is looking pretty awesome. Hadn't known Chris Sanders was involved with it till this week and I'm a fan of his so it's stock when up even more on Burton Exchange. I think you can see a bit of Sanders' look in the main dragon design and feel.

Reading for the week....

• Another great Cloudy with a Chance of Meatyinformation post...
• Nice little lighting tutorial
• Nice production post on a short that Keith Lango posted about. Here's the post.

Lobster gig is a wrap...

So here's the final Lobster work (at least for my reel stuff). As I said, the client ended up doing the animation in house so I just used the audio and shot framing (with permission) for my reel. I threw a temp texture on him and set up the shaders and lighting as well. Wasn't able to get the background plates so I made some temp ones that felt similar to the vids. You can find more info about the project on this page. Some of the shots make more sense with the vid (i.e. the empty plate is actually a live action plate of food...and the last shot has text up on the hold at the end). All told, it was a very enjoyable and rewarding project and I'm looking forward to the next! Things are going along fine here in Houston, gonna update the reel this week with Lobster here as well as a lot more polished Garden City stuff. Back to reel editing...

A Lobster, a lighthouse, and...an animated Jesus

• Lobster - I made this character last summer for a client who was doing a commercial. They liked Squirrely and wanted a "lobster-Squirrely" character - hence" Lobstery" (Yes I should probably come up with a more imaginative naming convention). The client ended up doing the animation in house for various reasons but were cool with my taking a stab at it for the old reel. The shots make more sense with the live-action plates:)
• Great stuff to watch... First up, fantastic mood in this piece. I'm a big "playing-with-light" fan so this is just a beautiful piece. Care to guess which amazing French school it came from?...guess I gave it away there Next up is a pixelated take on animation. Love some of the poses and the look is something I've not seen since the old King's Quest days and it didn't move like this:) Another fun one from across the pond... If you're offended by non-kosher* use of the image of Jesus, avert your eyes. Not sure I understand the film but whatcha gonna do? Enjoy the visuals, that's what! There's some sweet animation in this and great timing. * "non-kosher" - Yes, I'm aware that using the term with Jesus might appear to be ironical. However, He being a Jew, God incarnate and originator of a whole new faith I'd hope would both understand the complication created and appreciate the attempt at humor.

No Sound for you!

Blogs are funny things. You start to feel guilty when you don't post on them for awhile - kinda like a journal or a sketchpad. Ah well. Let's see what this belated (or timely) post brings...

• Garden City - So in keeping with not revealing the entire story of Garden City there will be no more audio with the shots I show from it.Here's the latest: Henry is none too chipper at the moment...
• I want to learn! - There are a lot of absolutely amazing resources out there now for animators wanting to hone their skills. I've been watching Jason Ryan' seminars lately and they've been great. Also, recently Keith Lango started a YouTube channel with some of his lessons on there which is also a great source of info and frankly inspiration as well.
• Inspired - Here's some great work I've my rss net has gleaned from the internets... This one is a little dark, but very good... A fun one from a buddy and his pals... Great layouts and so much done with limited animation. Check out the site for more info. Gorgeous designs as well.

Updates and tidbits...

Garden City is still chugging along. Just finished a large sequence and starting another. Here's the blocking from the first new shot. I shot some vid reference for this one (still experimenting with workflows) Personal life has been busy and been reading a tome of a book - Les Mis. What an amazing study in character development. Lots of neat stuffs on the internets:

• Pencil Test Blog - If you're an animator, you should subscribe to this the rss feed here.
• Need an idea for a doodle? - Check it out or the Worms of the Ensnaring Messiah might get you (Worms courtesy of the Dark Minion Generator on said site)
• Amazing Paper-cutout/Illustrations - Love this piece.
• Animator Tools - Some neat ones listed on a great blog for things to add to the toolbox
• Nice Post on the 180 Degree Rule of Filmaking - Interesting read.

Couple of things...

• The shot that will not end. I've been polishing on and off on this shot forever. Most recently because I got the final mop and an updated facial rig that warrented a rework so hopefully it's looking better and DONE. :)
• Nice post on character design can be found here.
• Heading to Dallas tomorrow to seem some friends at ReelFX and for my cousin's going away party. He's heading to England for a year to study some more acting/writing/improv. Hope he has a great time but I'll miss him feeding me odd asian candies whenever I crash his pad for an Austin trip.
• Beautiful short film here:

Lots of stuff and not so much...

• Animals Shmamimals - Squirrely has worked overtime on getting attention and I appreciate his efforts. Been busy the last few weeks working on a commercial project for some folks "down under". The character and rig are ready to roll, just waiting for what I need to animate. He was a fun character to design and model. Bokser helped me out with body rigging and cloth and I took care of the facial. Learned some new stuff along the way as well. Really looking forward to how that's shaping up and can't wait to show it
• Love the look of this show - Been following it's production art at the great blog they have set up.
• Jason Ryan Classes - Signed up for Jason's seminar and enjoying catching up on the classes very much.
• Great post on "dirtying" up animation - Read it. You won't regret it.

Gobelins makes me wish I was European...

...And had gone to school there. A couple of more from the champs of student films. Enjoy. Making of... And another...

Some ok work, some amazing work, and some learning...

• Another Garden City shot done: Pulled out the "school girl laugh" and added a good bit of polish.
• Please look at this if you're an animator - Some phenomenal workflow vids from animator Jeff Gabor. The first is a comparison reel and the second is an evolution reel. Do yourself a favor and check em out.
• Blender - Started a gig this week where I'm learning blender. It reminds me of a slightly more complicated Lightwave. I will say that for being free, it has a lot of features however from just an animator workflow perspective I'm not finding a lot of my perferred tools. I know some nice shorts have come out of it, I'm just trying to figure out what kind of workflow they must have used. Time shall tell...

First pass on 030_030_050

Finished up a first pass on this yesterday and got back some notes today. The giggle isn't working for Dave, so I'm reworking it. Got some gig's in in the works though I don't know when I'll be able to talk about em. Garden City updates are definitely gonna slow down a bit for awhile. Hope everyone had a great fourth! (those in the USA at least...though I reckon I hope you had a good fourth regardless of if you spent it on cookouts and fireworks or not)