Geo Customization Pass 1....

So yesterday was pretty much a wash with errands but today I was able to buckle down and get some good Morphy progress kickin.


Updates...

• Created 4 Men's hair styles and 2 Womens (I suck at modeling women's hair so please make something better if you can)
• Mustache, beard, soul patch added as well
• Need to solve how to keep the hair line with the ear during deformation (got a pretty good idea how to do this, just need to implement)
• Added teeth controls as per Kung Fu Rick's request (translation,scale, rotation)
• Also set up hierarchy so you can easily throw new teeth in and they'll work with the controls. Create some, toss em in the respective groups and you're all set. Ears should be the same (should memory serve...so I prolly should check that)
• Removed Chin and upper nose deformation joints as they weren't doing a whole lot
• Plan on adding some more chin morph options to get some more feminine stuff
• Thinking I need a thin and thicker eyebrow as well.
• Did some testing with the the picker script and I think I'm gonna keep it in though folks will have to install a script if they want that stuff to work. It adds a good bit and it isn't that much of a hassle
• Did some more weighting polish on the deformation facial joints. Still more to do but it's getting close.

Still waiting for geometry submission, peeps. I know a bunch of folks downloaded the Morphster so....if Morphy comes out and doesn't have the afro you wanted, I don't wanna hear squat about it. :)

Really shooting to have the intitial full rig ready for animation tests by late this week early next week as I have a gig I'm supposed to be starting before too long and even if I can't start my own animation tests, I'd like to have some testers doing it to find bugs.

An open letter to the creators of the Antivar Virus

Dear makers of the Antivar Virus,

Bravo.

I'm a very careful web user and you've successfully infected my computer twice now - my only infections in the last 12+ years of computer work. Still trying to figure out how you did it. You've successfully stolen several days of my working time with my own scanning and removal work for my computer and for that of some friends whom you've infected as well and aren't quite as tech minded.

I have to admit, you've put together quite an nice package - locking off access to the good stuff and blaring warnings signs that would certainly make my mom click it. Especially clever in mimicking a real product. I never click anything which makes my infections especially curious to me.

It's puzzling to me why you would spend your obviously talented minds and skill sets on a product that might land you in prison when you most certainly could be creating something useful to folks that they would freely pay for.

It just doesn't make sense to me why you'd spend so much time and effort which would likely get you punched in the face if you happened to share what you did at  local bar with someone you've infected when you might get a beer bought for you should you create something that very person might need and want.

I had hoped to work some on Morphy today but I guess it'll have to wait.

Knowing this is a pointless exercise,
-Josh

p.s. Should anyone else have problems with said infection - Here are instructions for removal.

Morphy Body Open Beta!

Well, Morphy is coming a long slowly and surely and is getting pretty close to being primetime ready. The reason I'm releasing the body in beta is a couple of reasons. I'd really like to release the first wide release with quite a few options in customizing the character mesh wise. So this is another call for help with that. My hope is that Morphy becomes somewhat of an Open Source community asset that people customize and share their customizations.

Download here! 

Notes on Beta rig (Maya 2009 and up):

• There are some quick poses in the scene I was playing with while weighting stuff
• The rig is based off of John Doublestein's rig because frankly it's a sweet rig with right click follow, switching and parenting menus AND pinable elbows! Try em out.
• There are quick select sets (my preferred workflow method) for the controls
• The Body morphing joystick control is temp while I'm playing with body morphing. The real release will have things split up more like I have the facial morphing stuff
• Hand scaling is on the palm looking controls. Currently it's a nonkeyable attribute but I think I'll probably switch that over.
• There's a semi height scaler on the all_anim control, but it's a pretty solid hack job. Version 2.0 of Mophy is gonna do more than I have the time to get done at present. I'd kinda like to animate him too as that's why I made him:)
• I'm playing with a couple of picking methods. I tend to use quick select sets but have used panel pickers and onscreen ones as well. Any preference there?
• If you toggle his mesh to a "3" smoothing manually, it get's a little wonky sometimes when popping through frames. Anyone have an idea why that happens?
• Why did I bail on rigging him completely from scratch? There's so much stuff I wanted to do that you'd be seeing version 1.0 sometime about 2012. I'll get to it when I can:)
• Give me his face rig, Burton! If I did that, would you be so inclined to help? :)

I'm interested in in:

• Geometry. Please look at my previous call for more information there.
• Clothes
• Textures - If you like painting freckles and skin, go to town. The face is fully UV'd
• Wrinkle map help - If anyone out there has done wrinkle maps and interested in this project I'd love some assistance. I know I can figure it out and it's on the list, but the list is still pretty long and I'm not ashamed to ask for help:)
• Facial stuff - beards, mustaches, other eyebrows, hair dos, glasses, etc. His head (sans facial rig is in this version so you should have all you need there)
• Teeth - Something feminine would be great. (Aaron, I'm looking at you;)
• Bodymophs - if you think mine suck or have new ideas, have at it. You can fine the necessary stuff under the bsGeo_grp. bodyBridge_bsGeo1 is there as a reseter mesh. I use abSymMesh for help when doing that stuff.
• Information.
• Questions - for FAQ's and for clearing things up, most folk don't think like me (and that's a good thing) so my rationale for placing a control somewhere might not be exactly apparent.
• Bugs
• Weighting issues

Please title emails to me (see contact page - remove spaces) with a subject line of  "I heard Morphy's Call!" so I can easily find them:)

What do you get for helping (should your asset be usable)?

• Early access to the release rig to animate tests with (as I'll be looking for those as well as most of my time will be trying to finish up the rig here and my animation time will we light). I expect to have a full beta rig ready in the next week.
• Your name and a link on the Morphy page when I get around to updating it.

Dangit...

The talented folks at Animation Mentor went and beat me to the punch...Bishop 2.0!

Hat tip to my buddy Matt for the heads up.

Pretty nice work I have to say and they've obviously been working on it for a bit. That or they're just a lot smarter as I've been working off and on Morphy since May. Their wardrobe system is a lot like I was wanting to do but have no idea how to do yet. On the plus side, Morphy will be free so he has that going for him.

Speaking of, no I've not had much time for him this week. I've been busy doing a rigging gig, trying to line up work for the next couple of months and trying to entertain my wife's family who's in town when not working. Oh, and Starcraft 2 came out...soo...yeah...but doing some of that too:)

Where's Morphy?!

I know. I know. He's been a bit shy this week. Actually I've been doing not very glamorous work on him as well as taking care of lots of errands - vet for the pup and a pony and all kinds of other stuff. The life of an animator/farmer sometimes requires a split focus.

Rest assured he's coming along and I've been getting great feedback from some friends. I can actually say the head is just about ready for primetime and his body has been being reworked a lot. After taking another look at The Setup Machine, I decided even though it made setup a lot easier it didn't have quite all the features I wanted. For example, I really wanted "pinable" elbow and knee control as well as easy space switching. So I went back on the look out and decided to use Doublestein's setup once again (we're using it on Garden City and I like his work...so why not). I'm modifying a few things but for the most part it's gonna be his awesome rigging tools doing the heavy lifting here.

The body rig is 90% done and I finished up my own hand rig last night (Doublesteins is fine...just wanted a few other controls and like to not have all the fingers on one control as the only option).

In the meantime, there's been plenty of awesomeness on the internets:

• The Engineer updated finally landed for TF2 so I've been getting my sentry on with friends some
• Limbo released for Xbox Live. It is a beautiful game that deserves your $10 or so or whatever it costs. Absolutely love the feel and moody settings.
• Someone else released a nice new rig here and I found his test animation pretty darn tight.
• And some sweet film stuff...
  

In laws just got here for a visit, gotta jet! Have a good weekend all:)

Yes, I'm working...

Had a quick remote rigging gig with Psyop this week which I think is all done and I think I'll be heading back to LA before too long to do some more work there. Can't wait to see all the LA friends.

He's such a tease...

Been a been able to squeeze a little bit of Morphin time in and making some good progress (just playing with some body deformation stuff above on the same skeleton - the head above just the base mesh).

• Body rig
• Decided to do The Setup Machine again for Morphy v01 just so I can get this done sometime this year. That hand My buddy Keith pointed me to some awesome tools one of his students wrote while at Ringling. - http://www.bohdon.com/scripts/. He has a load of neat tools there which I fully intend on checking out  when I have some time. Do yourself a favor and check em out yourself:)
• Need to figure out a best method for connecting my head rig cleanly. The end idea is that you can throw the Morphy head rig on any body rig you please
• Facial rig - Been getting great feedback from buddies and have a good list of changes to make for the next (probably 1.0 final facial rig)
• Adding a nose flare control
• Add asymmetrical customization options
• Upping the intensity of the sneer
• Changing mouth wide from being a smile to more of a horizontal transition to make the control feel better
• Push the limits on most of the controls from the 1.0 value limit so you all can awesomely break the face
• Add jaw rotation control
• Got some great ideas to try on Morphy 2.0. When I'll find the time for that I really don't know as I have a short film idea  I'm wanting to start working on.

Quick skin is indeed fast....

Well, it's another hot one in Texas. Went for a jog with Atticus (the name of the dog with no name) and we were both panting when we finished up. Never really tried training a dog before and it's kinda fun - come and sit are pretty good and stay is coming along nicely.

My cousin Jon was here this weekend which as usual meant a game-a-marathon. He always has sweet board games and what not. He also introduced me to League of Legends (which I suck at) and we tried Torchlight as well. I'm a fan of the free to play and nice sized demo options. Also, my cousin is gonna be in an episode of The Good Guys (which I really enjoy) and Friday Night Lights. Very cool.

Back to Morphy...

• Threw a quick mental ray quick skin shader on him just to see if I'm getting any weirdness in the smoothness of the deformation when rendered. Few areas to work on but the facial rig is close.
• Finished up a first pass on the tongue rig and I'm pretty pleased with it.
• Added about twice the range of motion on the jaw down and left right at the suggestion of a friend
• Talked to another good friend Scott (whom just released a new push pull constraint for maya!) and he gave me some great ideas that I'm definitely going to try in the future if I can't get it crammed in to Morphy
• There some deformation stuff I'm still not thrilled with. I'm gonna see about fixin that.
•  I'll probably start working on a test animation soon to test it out before release.

For now, I just got a quick gig so I'll be setting ole' Morphy down for a bit. He'll be back before you know it:)

Again if you missed it in the above. Scott Englert just released a cool new constraint for maya, go check it out!

Back to that hacking other people's scripts and other things....

Been working on cleaning things up on the facial rig to final it.

• Took Morphy to the dentist to hopefully fix that teeth penetrating the cheek issue (painful!)
• Added Cheek up/dn/forward/back poses at the request of one of my buddies (whose site I would be happy to link to if he had one to point me to...hint...Rick...:)
• Started getting rid of all the expressions driving the facial rig and going totally nodal. In doing so I'm hacking jsFacialWin as I pointed out last week. So, to aid that little endevour with as many controls as I have. I scripted the process of adding the necessary nodes, renaming and reverting the names. Took a page out of the author of that awesome scripts book in using string attributes for storing variables for later use. Neato! Here it is if you might find it useful...

The process for that is:

1. Source my script
2. to input the starter variables when you call the script such as
   
   jbFacialGUITricker ("circle_anim", "circle_anim_grp", "C");
   In this case "circle_anim" is the joystick itself, "circle_anim_grp" is it's parent transform group, and "C" is the type of joystick control I want it to emmulate. 
3. After you're done, select the anim control you wanna "reset" and type "global proc jbFacialGUITrickerClean"

/*variables needed

Script to trick jsFacialwin to using other "joysticks"
Sample input:
jbFacialGUITricker ("circle_anim", "circle_anim_grp", "C");

There's no error checkin cause this is mainly for me:)

*/

global proc jbFacialGUITricker (string $control, string $group, string $type)
{
string $controlAttr;
string $grpAttr;

//renames the controls
string $controlNewName = `rename $control ($control + "CircleCtrl")`;
string $groupTempName = `rename $group ($group + "Grp")`;

//adds our new attributes for the control window to work
addAttr -ln "name" -dt "string" $controlNewName;
addAttr -ln "type" -dt "string" $groupTempName;

//sets those new attributes
setAttr -type "string" ($controlNewName+".name") $control;
setAttr -type "string" ($groupTempName+".type") $type;

//renames the group to the proper format in an inefficient manner (that works)
select $groupTempName;
searchReplaceNames "_grpGrp" "Grp" "selected";

$groupNewName = `ls -sl`;

//adds our undo attributes to pull all this stuff out
addAttr -ln "originalGroup" -dt "string" $controlNewName;
addAttr -ln "newName" -dt "string" $controlNewName;
addAttr -ln "newGroup" -dt "string" $controlNewName;

//sets the attributes for jbFacialGUITrickRemove storing variables for another script
setAttr -type "string" ($controlNewName+".originalGroup") $group;
setAttr -type "string" ($controlNewName+".newName") $controlNewName;
setAttr -type "string" ($controlNewName+".newGroup") $groupNewName;


print "Done";
}

global proc jbFacialGUITrickerClean ()
{
string $originalName;
string $originalGrp;
string $newName;
string $newGrp;

//gets attributes from our selected control
$control = `ls -sl`;

$originalName = `getAttr ($control[0]+".name")`;
$originalGrp = `getAttr ($control[0]+".originalGroup")`;
$newName = `getAttr ($control[0]+".newName")`;
$newGrp = `getAttr ($control[0]+".newGroup")`;

//renames our controls to the proper names
rename $newName $originalName;
rename $newGrp $originalGrp;


}

Optimization stuff isn't exactly the most exciting...

Morphy and the dog with no name...

So, progress hasn't been as snappy as I'd like but we did get a new puppy that I check on once an hour or so. Some friends found him in the woods and we decided to give him a home. We're having a hard time naming him though. He'll have a name one of these days:)

Pretty cute, no?

When I've had some time, I've been trucking forward. Here's some new bits...


What's this vid showing? Well, I finished the first pass on the morph based tweaks to the face. I'm not sure if I'll add more controls, simplify or what. Only time shall tell.



Went ahead and threw some out there faces on the current rom to see how deformation is holding up. The teeth is gonna be a major issue that I need to 1) tweak some facial blendshapes 2) make it easy for the user to scale the teeth or move the lips off of them a bit...(come to think of it as I write this, that may just about be a perfect option...)


What's next? Tongue, optimization and some good solid testing. After that - a full body. I'd like to animate him some time in the next month so I best get crackin.

Eye Rig....check.

Eye/eyelid rig has been attached. Here's quick test seeing how things are deforming. Lots of polish necessary. So, here's a State-of-Morphy update:

• Facial rig is 90% done - still need to do some optimizing and looking to create some eye fk/ik switching and some visibility toggling.
• Weighting on the eyes needs a solid layer of polish 
• Several of my blendShapes need some work - I'd like to see some more volume in the cheek in the smile and tweak the creasing a bit. Also the mouth corners need some love.
• Still need to figure out how I want the morph based customization options to work and I'll probably start on that this week.

To those coming late to the party here - Yes, Morphy will be a full body rig (you can dig back though the older Morphy posts if you want some idea of what I'm doin there). I'm actually thinking about making the intial body rig with The Setup Machine to get it a Morphy v1.0 completed quicker and do my own body rig for 2.0. 

Hope everyone has a great Forth of July weekend in the US and to the rest of the world - have a great weekend anyway:)

Eye Rig of Doom!

But first, a little Morphy update...

Quick range of motion test on the 80% complete facial rig. Still have some pose polishing to work on but I'm pretty happy with the base controls.

So getting the intial moveable scalable eye rig working wasn't too hard until I wanted to have a master eye IK control .

Master Eye IK control, I shake my fist at you!

Picked this up and left it numerous times after getting frustrated with it. However, this morning, things finally came together. Heirarchy of the transformable, moveable eye rig. The basis for the rig is Scott Englerts fk/ik eye rig. Anywhere there's a "left" item, a "right" item is assumed to be as well. These are my notes so I can make sure everything is connected right on the other side....

• EyeRig_grp - this is the top group that contain all of the eye rig elements.
• Parent Constraint -  target - left_eyeorb_skin_jnt
• Scale Constraint -  target left_eyeorb_skin_jnt
• eyeRigAttributeHolder - empty transform node with a ton of attributes connected. Holds attributes for Scott's eye rig as well as the eyelid rig
• eyeIKMeasurements_grp - group containing all of the measurement elements to position the individual eye IK controls when the face is transformed. It is a template that helps us get the initial positions from which all subsequent offsets happen
• eyeIKMaster_loc - Simulates the position of the eye_masterIK_anim control using the exact same constraint setup.
• Parent Constraint - two targets - eye_left_rig_grp and eye_right_rig_grp
• masterLeftIkDeformPos_loc - this is the startpoint for the distance node that measures how far out we need to push the ik_eye_left_anim_grp to be where it needs to be when the face is deformed
• Parent Constraint - eyeIKMaster_loc
• eyeIK_leftDeformPos_loc - end point for this sides measurement node
• Parent Constraint - eyeIK_left_loc
• masterIKToEyeIK_left_dist - distance node using the start and end point listed above. Get's our distance to later plug into the individual eye's offset when the eye postion and scale are deformed
• eye_masterIK_Pos_grp - hold's the master IK control and the stuff necessary to move it where it needs to be when the face is deformed
• Parent Constraint - two targets - eye_left_rig_grp and eye_right_rig_grp
• eye_masterIK_anim_grp
• eye_masterIK_anim - The master IK anim control that moves both eye IK anim controls with it
• eyeIK_left_anim_grp
• Connection - masterIKToEyeIK_left_dist.distance >>> eyeIK_left_anim_grp.tx
• eyeIK_left_anim - Individual eye IK control 
• Aim Constraint - target left_eyeorb_skin_jnt
• eye_left_rig_grp - All the rest of the rig stuff for the individual eye
• eyeIK_left_loc - positioned where the original eyeFK_left_anim position is
• eye_left_IK_UpVector_loc - positioned above the eyeball to act as a Y up object for the eye's aim constraint 
• eyeFK_left_anim_grp - 
• eyeFK_left_anim - Individual eye FK Joystick type control
• Limits - .tx and .ty only open channels and both clamped to -1 to 1
• eye_left_orient_grp - holds the meat of Scott's rig
• eye_left_FKOrient_loc - "Joystick driven" eye rotation
• Expression - 

eye_left_FKOrient_loc.rotateX = eyeFK_left_anim.translateY * -eyeRigAttributeHolder.eye_left_UpDn;
eye_left_FKOrient_loc.rotateY = eyeFK_left_anim.translateX * eyeRigAttributeHolder.eye_left_LeftRight;

• eye_left_IKOrient_loc - Aims at the individual eye's IK control
• Aim Constraint - (.rx and .ry only) Targets eyeIK_left_anim
• Up object is eye_left_IK_UpVector_loc (who is located above the eyeball to simulate Y up when the head spins around)
• eye_left_Orient_loc - "End result" locator which the eye is constrained to
• Orient Constraint - Targets - eye_left_FKOrient_loc & eye_left_IKOrient_loc
• Weights are expression driven - 

eye_left_Orient_loc_orientConstraint1.eye_left_FKOrient_locW0 = eye_left_fkikSwitch_anim.translateY;

eye_left_Orient_loc_orientConstraint1.eye_left_IKOrient_locW1 = 1-eye_left_fkikSwitch_anim.translateY;

• eye_left_ikPOS_loc - Snapping object for the ik control that's driven by the FK control. Initial position should match the eyeIK_left_anim
• Parent Constraint - target eye_left_Orient_loc
• iris_left_anim_grp - Positions the iris/pupil controls to blend between the FK and IK controls
• Parent Constraint - (maintain position off) - Targets eyeFK_left_anim & eyeIK_left_anim
• Weights are expression driven to move the iris between the two controls

iris_left_anim_grp_parentConstraint1.eyeFK_left_animW0 = eye_left_fkikSwitch_anim.translateY;
iris_left_anim_grp_parentConstraint1.eyeIK_left_animW1 = 1-eye_left_fkikSwitch_anim.translateY;

• iris_left_anim - .sx only, connected to the iris scale blendshape via expression (.sy and .sz are connected to .sx)
• pupil_left_anim - .sx only, connected to the pupil scale blendshape via expression (.sy and .sz are connected to .sx)
• Expression for both -

 if (iris_left_anim.scaleY <=1) {

eye_left_bsNode.irisShrink_bsGeo = clamp (0,1, 1 -iris_left_anim.scaleY * iris_left_anim.scaleY);

}

else {

eye_left_bsNode.irisShrink_bsGeo = 0;

}

if (pupil_left_anim.scaleY <=1) {

eye_left_bsNode.pupilShrink_bsGeo = clamp (0,1, (1 - pupil_left_anim.scaleY * pupil_left_anim.scaleY));

}

else {

eye_left_bsNode.pupilShrink_bsGeo = 0;

}

eye_left_bsNode.irisGrow_bsGeo = clamp (0,1, iris_left_anim.scaleY -1 );

eye_left_bsNode.pupilGrow_bsGeo = clamp (0,1, pupil_left_anim.scaleY -1);

On hacking other people's scripts and node spaghetti!

Here's the current facial setup...

Trying to keep things simple...:)

Not quite ready to release an open facial rig beta but been deep in the depths of nodes trying to make things work well.

So back to hacking things. There's a really sweet script called jsFacialWin (which no one seems to have up currently that I can find for download - it was written by Judd Simantov @ www.cgmuscle.com and looks to be working on his website at present).

It's a great way to quickly created joystick controls and connect them to blendShapes or attributes driving poses via pretty elegant nodal trees rather than by expressions (which I frankly find to be a pain to edit and deal with)

Well, what does one do when you want to use this handy dandy connector but don't want to use the joysticks it makes? Great question and one I asked myself last night so I dug in to see what it's actually doing and found  an pretty easy way to high-jack it.

The first step is to identify what the controls it make are. Their hierarchy is as follows:

• Transform (group) - this moves the control around and give it it's basis for 0 to one values on all axis
• Control - this is what the animator moves to drive...whatever

Easy enough, all my controls had already been set up that way so by looking at the code and errors it threw when trying to load my control as a driver it became clear how things were working. The key is as follows.

Transform (group)

1. Name must end with "Grp" - I had been using "_grp" so a simple name change was easy enough
2. Add a string attribute called "type" 
3. Look at the jsFacialWin and see which type matches what you want - In my case, my value was "C"

Control

1. Should be a 0 to 1, -1 to 0 type control.
2. Name must end with "CircleCtrl"
3. Add a string attribute called "name"
4. Input the name of your control without the "CircleCtrl" in the field

You should now be able to select your control, hit the "update" button in the jsFacialWin and it should toggle to your control type. Load up your blendshapes or attributes on the right and connect away.

Now, with that problem solved, it was a simple matter of connecting most of my blendShapes. However I had another problem with my wide shape which I wanted to have very specific values at certain points.

Man this made by brain hurt trying to figure out. I'm sure better riggers out there would have been able to solve it quickly enough (and probably more efficiently), but this seemed to work okay.

See, nice and easy:)

Time to go return the favor and test a new contraint that Scott wrote and after that it's time to revisit the eye rig with the feedback I got.

Adios!

Happy Monday!

Had a good weekend here in south Texas - my wife made a couple of homemade breads I got to sample, mowing the lawn on Saturday, finally saw Toy Story 3 (beautiful film - darker than I expected), and went for a nice horse back ride last evening with some friends.

What's on the plate for the week? Gonna try get Morphy's face rig completely done. We'll see if it happens.

To start the week off, some great stuff from around the internets....

• Beautiful film by Anthony Holden from BYU...
  
  
• Free sculpting app plugged by Keith Lango.
• You can Kling-on to this gag! (via Lineboil)
  
  
• Some pretty remarkable stop motion work. Plug author has much more insightful comments then I could provide. Check his post on cartoon brew.
  

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)