Blake Rig and Script Jobs...

note - NOT my rig creation

Came across a new rig on Highend 3d and it's a pretty good looking rig. So I decided to use it for the lip sync piece I'm fixing to start on. It makes use of script jobs which don't seem to like referencing as the creator notes in the docs on the site. So I did some noodling and figured out how to make it work. If the character is referenced (all nodes prefix option) to "Ch1:", this is how to make the rig work.

1. Fix the Expression
   • Go to the expression editor
   • Select the "CH1:blake_FKIKSpaceSwitch_scriptNode"
   • Input "CH1:" in the spot provided
2. Fix the script jobs
   • For each character, you'll need to run this is in the script editor: scriptJob -ac "CH1:blake_L_arm_ikFK_switch.FK_IK_Match" "LArmFKIK"; scriptJob -ac "CH1:blake_R_arm_ikFK_switch.FK_IK_Match" "RArmFKIK"; scriptJob -ac "CH1:blake_L_leg_ikFK_switch.FK_IK_Match" "LLegFKIK"; scriptJob -ac "CH1:blake_R_leg_ikFK_switch.FK_IK_Match" "RLegFKIK"; scriptJob -ac "CH1:blake_L_arm_ikFK_switch.parent" "LArmSpace"; scriptJob -ac "CH1:blake_R_arm_ikFK_switch.parent" "RArmSpace"; scriptJob -ac "CH1:blake_L_leg_ikFK_switch.parent" "LLegSpace"; scriptJob -ac "CH1:blake_R_leg_ikFK_switch.parent" "RLegSpace"; scriptJob -ac "CH1:blake_tie_ikFK_switch.parent" "TieSpace";
3. Notepad is your friend for additional characters - see Find and Replace
4. Ran into an issue with referencing that the rig maker was kinda enough to help out with. You'll need to create a new script set to fuction on (Open/Close) and set the name spaces: proc multipleChars() { // prefix for character1 string $character1= "CH1:"; // prefix for character2 string $character2 = "CH2:"; // prefix for character3 string $character3 = "CH3:"; // prefix for character4 string $character4 = "CH4:"; string $a[] = `ls -sl`; if (($a[0] == ($character1+"blake_L_arm_ikFK_switch")) || ($a[0] == ($character1+"blake_R_arm_ikFK_switch")) || ($a[0] == ($character1+"blake_L_leg_ikFK_switch")) || ($a[0] == ($character1+"blake_R_leg_ikFK_switch")) || ($a[0] == ($character1+"blake_tie_ikFK_switch"))) { scriptNode -executeBefore ($character1+"blake_FKIK_SpaceSwitch_scriptNode"); } else if (($a[0] == ($character2+"blake_L_arm_ikFK_switch")) || ($a[0] == ($character2+"blake_R_arm_ikFK_switch")) || ($a[0] == ($character2+"blake_L_leg_ikFK_switch")) || ($a[0] == ($character2+"blake_R_leg_ikFK_switch")) || ($a[0] == ($character2+"blake_tie_ikFK_switch"))) { scriptNode -executeBefore ($character2+"blake_FKIK_SpaceSwitch_scriptNode"); } else if (($a[0] == ($character3+"blake_L_arm_ikFK_switch")) || ($a[0] == ($character3+"blake_R_arm_ikFK_switch")) || ($a[0] == ($character3+"blake_L_leg_ikFK_switch")) || ($a[0] == ($character3+"blake_R_leg_ikFK_switch")) || ($a[0] == ($character3+"blake_tie_ikFK_switch"))) { scriptNode -executeBefore ($character3+"blake_FKIK_SpaceSwitch_scriptNode"); } else if (($a[0] == ($character4+"blake_L_arm_ikFK_switch")) || ($a[0] == ($character4+"blake_R_arm_ikFK_switch")) || ($a[0] == ($character4+"blake_L_leg_ikFK_switch")) || ($a[0] == ($character4+"blake_R_leg_ikFK_switch")) || ($a[0] == ($character4+"blake_tie_ikFK_switch"))) { scriptNode -executeBefore ($character4+"blake_FKIK_SpaceSwitch_scriptNode"); } } scriptJob -killWithScene -e "SelectionChanged" "multipleChars";

That outa do it. Thanks Jason for the great rig and the help trouble shooting the referencing issue!

Update on my shot and this week...

This is the first solid pass on the shot and I sent it off to Bokser to get some more eyes on it. That's the hardest part about not working in a studio - not being able to spin around in your chair and say "Hey, how can I make this better?" or more likely "How much does this blow?" This week will prolly mainly be swinging back and picking up fixes on about 4 shots I have out. I'm trying to wrap things up to send out some reels at the end of April. Gonna be doing a lip sync in the next couple of weeks to round things out. This spring has wreaked havoc with my health. I cannot seem to shake this cough/headcold. Anyone else having a harder than normal time? /off to look for some advil...

Previous Post Progress...

First day of 3dizing my 2d pass. I'll try to keep posting the updates. Hoping to have first pass done in another couple of days and locked by midweek next week. We'll see how that pans out. After this shot I'm gonna hop off Garden City for a couple of weeks to do a lip sync to round out my reel which I plan on sending out at the end of next month.

Post Something!

Alright, alright... This is a half day's work on roughing in another shot for Garden City in 2d. I've got about 4 shots in semi finish status - waiting on crits and final props. Things are coming along well. Life has been a bit busy lately. A couple of weeks ago, I was doing some freelance work for a studio in LA with Bokser which was a lot of fun. The render looks great, not sure when I'll be able to show it though. My wife and I finally closed on a little piece of land to put some horses on and I've been talking to Cory and we're finally gonna collaborate on a little bit of animation - the 2d kind and I couldn't be more excited to have a part in breathing some life into some of his characters. That's it for now. I'll try to post regular updates on this shot as it's pretty straight forward.

Patrick Smith and the Credit Crisis...

No, he didn't cause it. At least, to the best of my knowledge he didn't. He has however made some amazing films over the years that are now available on YouTube. Here's a really good one: You can find more of em here. Check em out. I met him a few years ago at a film festival and he was really nice as well. Keep up the great work, Patrick. So about that Credit Crisis, I came across the really well done motion graphics piece and just wanted to share because of what a great instructional animation it is on a very complicated concept. Why no updates lately? Cause I've been too busy:) The shot from the last post is about done, I'm waiting on the final mop and I've done a couple of more shots since then. There's another collaboration in the works that I'd love to talk about but it's just not far enough along yet. Until next time.

3d-ification...ACTIVATE

It's been an interesting process going from 2d to 3d. I'm pretty good on the initial pass at 3dizing my shot. Surprisingly, the 2d pass translated well even though he's moving through space. Haven't made as quick progress as I would like as I've been working on finalizing the shot following this one (which thankfully is done*). This should be a fun sequence once it's done. Moving on to linear. * When I say "done", I mean "artist done"

Another day, another wip...

Here's a quick update on the shot. Moving into 3dizing it and hope to have that pretty far along by Friday. Been doing some polish on the shot before and after this as well aiming for approval. It was a long weekend in Louisiana which was a nice escape. My mother-in-laws computer had a virus that took my best computer ninja skills to vanquish. Hopefully, that's all set. Back to it!

030_020_020 2d Wip

Squirrely had to take a side seat to Henry this week. I'm working through my next shot on Garden City. Had a bunch of stuff come up the last few days so I haven't got quite as far as I'd hoped to, but it's coming along. Still very rough, but that's what WIP means, no? It's been a bugger working things out with the camera doing all kinds of crazy (can't complain too much there though...I did the layout...) Dave put together an up to date in progress version of the film this week and it's great to see it starting to come together. I love this part of the film making progress - from reel to real:) We'll prolly be letting that link fly here before too long to get an early "screen test". If you're interested, check back soon:)

Squirrely Starts his Obstacle Course...

I'm trying a new workflow for animating - doing it in 2d first. Animation Mentor had a webinar last month that Jason Ryan lectured and this was his workflow and I wanted to give it a go. This is the first day of animation on Squirrely's obstacle course test. I worked on the key poses yesterday along with "3dizing" my set from my drawing. I'm still playing with how it's gonna end up. Still a lot to go, but it's coming along. If you got any idears or see things amiss, critique away. Bokser is done with his freelancing, so it'll be back to Garden City next week for the most part. I'll try to get some more progress on Squirrely during the weekend, but it's looking kinda full.

Real quick...

So this is Squirrely's next test. In the long tradition of Scrat. I'm gonna try and do some of the Animation Mentor exercises by myself and get some friend's feedback (as I can't afford AM at the moment). This will be my "Obstacle Course" one.

Tribute to an artist friend...

He only asked me to do this ages ago, bout time I made good. This is my friend Mark Evitts, an amazing master of the strings.

Squirrely Runs in Place

Did a quick test of Squirrely to test the rig. Nothing fancy. Pretty happy with the rig so far. I'll be changing some of my characters sets, cleaning up repeated and dead nodes and locking things down in general. Maya's doing some weird stuff with mental ray on the scene file. I may just pull the SSS shader and use a reg shader for the release version. Also, wow is Maya more stable on XP than OSX....such a shame:( Note - if you care to actually see the cycle better, you should be able to download it at the Vimeo site. They sure do make adding video easy...

Things I've been learning...

Waiting on the computer do do some reinstalling and had a few minutes to write...

• Maya doesn't like OSX - Well, that or OSX doesn't like Maya. Crashes. Mel Scripts not working, good times in general. Also Flipbook, my 2d animation software, crashed on me after 45 minutes of work. That coupled with all my Maya crashes brought me to looking into Bootcamp...
• Time Machine is Neat - The ease of use of apple's backup system is a thing of beauty. One, it's simple to maintain. Two, it makes reinstalling the OS a piece of cake. I had to do that to partition my Macbook Pro's drive for a windows partition (see first item from today).
• Slipstreaming - Bootcamp requires a Windows XP install cd with service pack two. I have two initial release copies, but didn't have a SP2 one. So, I made one via a process called slipstreaming. If you ever wanna bootcamp it, might be a good link to keep handy.
• Maintaining computers is a pain - Sometimes I wonder if they're worth the hassle. Justin has been having his own hassles over on his blog. I've been trying to walk my mother-in-law through some of her own issues a state away - looking like a nasty virus has taken hold but that'll prolly have to wait a few weeks for my wife and I to make a trip.
• The Jury is out on macs - The jury is still out for me on whether or not I wanna permanently get my mac on. On the one hand, the user experience is a thing of elegance and ease. On the other, my main apps crashing all the time is not. WHY does apple insist on overpricing their hardware? They could have such a bigger market share if they'd at least get competitive. On a whim I took a look at the mac pro's today...upgrading from 2g to 8g of ram = $1500....a jaunt over to crucial.com = $399. Seriously. Who on earth does that make sense to? Lower the price of your hardware or release the OS so peeps can stop hackintoshing it. For now I'll keep straddling the fence with my new 20gig partition of windows, but I can't see justifying the purchase of another mac down the road compared to what I can build or buy a comparable pc for.

Looks like the reinstall is about done, back to it....

Beautiful Docu-mercial -entary...

If you think oragami is pretty sweet and love film making you just can't go wrong watching this little gem. Happy Monday!

Squirrely's Face Wishes you a happy New Year...

And so do I for that matter. Speaking of him, he's pretty much done. I'm gonna do some animation tests with him over the next couple of weeks and then I plan on releasing him to the wild and see what others do with him. This is a range of motion test on his facial rig which isn't as robust as I'd like but will have to do in the meantime. It's been a great year. Lots of change, but change isn't a bad thing. I've got idears of what to make of the new one, but more on that some other time. For now, hope you had a good new year and set some good goals for yourselves. Blessings!

Some Old Midway stuff...

Here's some old work from Midway. I'm assuming they don't care as Mortal Kombat has shipped and the other project is canceled. Most of my fam wasn't really sure did what I did at work all day - this is a good taste of it. If anyone at Midway does care, lemme know and I'll yank em.

• Canceled project - This is a facial animation test from a canceled Midway project. They wanted a couple of quick dialogue tests, so I did em. The animation isn't the best, I didn't get to spend a lot of time on them. Just putting the rig through it's paces. I also did the facial rigging and weighting.
• Mortal Kombat Facial Rig - This is a range of motion video from the prototype facial rig for Mortal Kombat vs. DC. I created the poses for the rig to drive and did the facial weighting pass. It's a joint based rig whose architecture was set in place by my coworker and friend Scott Englert. Subsequent rigging work on characters was done by Tony Lewellen and his team.

Site updates...

Hope everyone had a great Christmas. I sure did though my belly is full of chex mix and chocolate covered pecans... Oh, and I'm a big fan of what may or may not be a trend. I got a couple of Blue Ray DVDs for presents but don't have a Blue Ray player yet. However, they both came with digital copies downloadable via iTunes with an unlock code. I'm wondering if this is the standard or just an anomaly shared by the Dark Knight and a little robot that could named Wall-E. Hoping it's a trend:) Projects pages updated:

• Garden City
• Mortal Kombat vs. DC
• Ballers: Chosen One
• The Wheelman

Progress on Garden City is coming along just dandy.

Been a while...

It's been way too long since I've made a concerted effort to draw more and actually followed through on it. Plan on changing that. This is a 20 minute photoshop pastel of our cat. Man, I need to practice. There's only so much time in life and lately I don't feel like I've been the best steward of mine. That's something else I plan on changing. That'll be my present to myself. Also, this is absolutely amazing...

For my friends...

Almost all of my friends at Midway today were let go. I'm still shell shocked about it. They are all talented animators and artists and would be asset at any studio. Any one hiring folks should look em up on Linked in or the link if I have it here:

• Scott Englert
• Mike Peterson
• Randy Stranton
• Roger Berrones
• Nick Carter
• James Gentile
• Justin Muir
• Tony Lewellen
• Matt Taylor
• Phil Kourie
• Chris Torres

This is the list as I know it so far, if I find out more were let go, I'll add em. My thoughts are with you guys.

Lessons....

Finally wrapped my first sequence on Garden City. Don't know when I'll be able to show it but it was a lot of fun to do. Also the first bit of full body animation I've done in some time so it took a bit to get back into the swing of things. When I went to start my next shot on Garden City only to find the updated set made my layout pass of Henry dance his way into the shower. Understandably, gonna have to fix that. However, while I was waiting for the updated set, I stumbled across some great info and inspirational work via the ole' Google Reader:

• Visual Comedy 101 - Carlos Baena had some edutainment gold on his blog in the form of a series of vids staring the ever humorous "Bean" on what constitutes visual comedy. Check it out here.
• More Gobelins awesome-ness - Here's my visual fav and the making off is embedded below. All of them can be seen here.
• From the Maker of "Simon's Cat" - More hillarity...