When, where, how can I use Morpheus?

Gotten quite a few emails in the last week or so on Morpheus usage. They're mainly from students but there have been a few commercial queries as well. I tried to be clear in the docs, so I'm not sure if folks just aren't reading it or if I need to clarify. Some insight there would be helpful. (the docs are here). If it's not clear please lemme know.

So I'm gonna try to elaborate some...

• Crediting - please just credit to Josh Burton and a link to the project website (http://www.joshburton.com/projects/morpheus.asp) where anyone looking can find a full list of contributers. 
• If you are a student working on school projects (including competitions) or a professional working on personal work - you can pretty much do whatever the heck you like with Morphy so long as the 'would Pixar make this kind of animation' rule has been met. Short film? Go right ahead. Competition? Knock yourself out. Yes, I know that you might win some money. If you do, awesome. There is a place to make a donation should you choose but I'm not asking or requiring anything.
• If you are a school or competition wanting to point people to the rig - Awesome. Please use the link here - http://www.joshburton.com/projects/morpheus.asp
• If you are a professional or group of professionals working a commercial project - I've had a few queries on this and haven't come to a solution I'm comfortable with yet. I will say I am not in the least bit open to one time buy out option especially with an exclusive clause. I am open to talking about per project kind of stuff. If you'd like to chat about it, send me an email.
• If you are someone who doesn't care about permissions or creator's intent - Really doubt if what I say would matter so not gonna bother. If it ever becomes an issue I can worry bout it then.

Sorry again for the lack of posts, been workin long hours on my present gig. Should be comin up for air in early April.

March on Morphy!

Morphy Tip of the Month - Check out this tutorial from Andrea in Italy on how to more easily mod Morpheus' texture. Also,  don't forget to try scaling the hands down a bit for a more feminine look (or even using the finger tapering shapes if you're daring;)

A fun one from Stine who's studying in Denmark. Nice customization work too! Check out the other stuff on the vimeo channel as well...

Don't forget to check progress over on the Morpheus wardrobe project! Lookin pretty cool.

From last month's 11 second club:

• Morpheus And Squirrely! (done by a buddy of mine from back at Midway too)
• Minor character part. Posting cause I like the coke animation:)
• Date not going so well. (Like the punk hair:)
• Storm troopers in tights.
• Nothin gets you goin like a kick to the head...

Gonna be a crazy busy month with this gig. Don't know how much time I'll have for much else. If I don't respond to you, that would be why. I did finish a pretty cool python function for generating joint chains from lofted surfaces this evening...been coding like crazy the last couple of days as I have a lot of stuff to get rigged this week and doing it modularly will help:)

Wyocation...

Just one of the beautiful sites...

My wife and I were away in Jackson Hole this past week to celebrate our anniversary and for a little vacation - we had a great time. Learned a few valuable lessons as well:

• New favorite ski spot. Just as many slopes as Vail and half the peeps.
• Do not assume that someone else will know that just because you're standing next to a national park sign and ask them to take a picture of you that they will think to frame the entire sign in shot (go go Owstone Tional Park!)
• Vintage snow shoes work just as well as the new ones (and are stylish!)
• Do not tuck the gator of your snowpants inside your ski/boarding boots unless you want a painful morning on the slopes. Yay circulation cut off!
• D2D ski rentals are awesome. Oh, I don't have to stand in line to rent and turn in gear and not pay any more for that privilege? Yes, please.
• First Steven King book. Picked it cause it was it was thick and I read fast. Very talented story teller but a bit dark and unnecessarily explanatory on some especially dark stuff. 
• Pass bison on the right when snowmobiling. Also, they have the right of way.
• I am not ready for black diamonds.
• Whenever you're going to only eat someplace once it's never a bad idea to get the opinion of the waitor/waitress on what they think is good.
• Even with heated seats, the back of a tandem snowmobile is much MUCH colder than the drivers seat.
• There is way way too much sugar on the fruit and nuts in the classic snack box on United flights. I'd go far as to say an inedible amount.

With that, I have to get goin. Starting a gig today. It'll prolly be a light posting month as such. However hope to make some progress in the evenings on the python stuff.

jjb be gone.

Your Monthly Morphy update!

Morphy Tip of the Day - If the selection objects in the UI aren't working, you need to run boTriggers update script:)

First off, thank you for all the encouraging and kind responses to my last post. Back to the business at hand - congrats to Edwin Schaap for winning this month's 11 second club using Morphy! Here's a few from the month:

• The winner!
• Guys and a telescope
• Rubix cubes!
• Jedi number one 
• Morphy gilmore
• Couple of guys are the arcade
• Big head old guys
• Thieves
• Wish they'd finished..:)

Couple of things in general to those of you using Morphy. His shoulders in the t pose are high cause the arms are outstretched. In general, if you bring them down for a regular pose it's going to look better. There are exceptions of course but try bringin em down and see what you think. 

What else is up? Well, progress is moving along on bbThingamarig and my python is becoming passable. Got the template maker working pretty well as well as the main architecture for the arm rig. I had initially been thinkin about just the roll joint setup like AFR and Doublstein's rig use but I'm leaning more towards a ribbon setup so I've been experimenting with that. I think the new spine in particular will be much much improved.

What about cool stuff from the nets?!

• My good friend Scott Englert is working on some very cool stuff for maya. Check it out!
• If you ever wanted to try Project Messiah, now is the time cause this temp pricing is nuts.
• Also, this weather lately has been nuts -  65 one day and chipping ice off the water bowls outside the next

Why Smalltown, Texas?

Crazily enough, a lot of folks have really enjoyed Morpheus and I'm very glad of that. It's been so much fun seeing what folks have made of him. That also means I've gotten a lot of emails which I try to answer. However one of the recurrent themes is one I'd like to address in a larger format.

Why don't you move to where there's more work? It's been a question that has come up many times by folks recently (potential employers as well). I've tried to answer as I can but thought perhaps I might elaborate here. The expressions I receive are of incredulity, sometimes amusement as I meander my way through the winding path of my own justifications.

Here's the short answer - It doesn't make practical sense to do so. Also, the BBQ is really good.

Here's the meandering one -

Having been working professionally now for 15 years - first in the Marine Corps, then as a freelancer/student, and now as an animator/generalist for the last 5 years I've chased some dreams and have a pretty good idea of what I want now - what I love to do. Part of that is definitely seeded in the more personal areas of my life - my faith, my history but more than anything it is the choices I've made. Sometimes we drift through life like a day on the river - beer in hand and make our course corrections after we bump into some log or rock. Other times we decide to go up stream or grab an oar and head towards something. Still others we make camp and stay awhile.

Too much of my own life was spent heading toward some place else - as if that the arrival of one destination or achievement would bring contentment and satisfaction. Some of those goals were met, others not. Those successes never brought more than temporary joy that quickly began to fade as the next goal started to grow in my mind's eye. Not that goals are bad by any means. As a tool to grow as a human being they're amazing. As a reason for existing they suck pretty hard.

So, I've tried to stop that.

The economy isn't the greatest and our industry is a fickle one so it would be pretty selfish of me to ask my wife to quit a very good and stable job so I can work on Project X (on a 3-6 month contract). Also, most of the places where Project X's are being made aren't very cheap. So over a period of time I processed those facts and came to some new conclusions. As cool as that might be working on Project X and though maybe life will make that a more tangible solution in the future, for now it doesn't make a lot of sense for me. I love my craft but my joy of it is not wrapped up in where I do it or for how much I do it for (though if I'm doing it for free more than likely it's for my own enjoyment - I've done more than my quota of "spec" gigs).

This next year I'm trying to avoid away on site gigs so that I can be with my family and spread roots in my community, take my dog fishin, ride horses with my wife, help my neighbors figure out how to hook up a wireless printer - become more like the man I believe I was made to be. I know these choices cost me work opportunities. My hope is that they pay off in the more important areas of life. So far they have. In the process I hope to be salt and light in a world that needs all it can get.

For those that were curious, I hope that answers the question well enough. To those that weren't, I doubt you read this far. To both, sorry for the grammar and editing mistakes.

Be salty and let your light shine.

Now, back to python... :)

Couple of updates...

Great animation I got in the mail from Mike P:

• Updated the Morpheus Docs with info on the wardrobe project, instructions on mesh selection, and tips for selecting/keying stuff
• Added page for the bbThingamarig project. Not a whole lot there yet:)
• TD Matt is awesome
• Allergies are winning today.

Announcing the Morpheus Wardrobe Project

From one of the folks there

Check it out here!

It's my pleasure to announce the baton has been taken up by the good folks at Ex'pression College to head a Morphy Wardrobe Project. It will be a free to use library that their students will be working on as well as inviting participation from anyone who wants to participate. It's so exciting to see folks excited about Morpheus and wanting to take it further. We'll be establishing protocols for props and clothes to make sure everything works great. Check it out!

In the meantime, work continues on the tools to make the rig even better with 2.0.

And some more great examples of his use from the 11 second club last month:

• Couple of kids
• Balloon popper!
• Octopus head
• Balloon clown in space
• Annoyed chef
• Christmas at sea
• Channel changer
• Office banter
• Girl with a wrench

distanceTools.py is kinda workin okay...

Color me surprised. Been workin on this the last two days. Some of the foundation stuff for the project. Still getting used to syntax changes but really enjoying the flexibility python affords.

Also found a better way to display code in posts, woot woot!

"""
distanceTools.py
Josh Burton
www.joshburton.com
1/12/2011

Collection of functions for measuring stuff!

Function Key:
1) distanceBetweenPoints (point1, point2)
    return - distance
    
2) distanceBetweenObjects (obj1, obj2)
    return - distance
    
3) getWSPos (obj)
    return - world space position in array format
    
4) distanceBetweenObjectsArray (objArray)
    return - array of distances between each object in the input array

5) averageDistanceBetweenObjects (objArray)
    return - average of the distancees between the objects in the input array
    
6) measureDistanceBetweenObjs (objArray)
    creates - measure nodes between all ojects in the list,names them,  
              checks for a 'measure_grp' and if it finds none, creates it, parents distance nodes under that 


"""


""" returns the distance between two points in space """
def distanceBetweenPoints (point1, point2):
    from math import sqrt,pow
    distance = sqrt( pow(point1[0]-point2[0], 2) + pow(point1[1]-point2[1], 2) + pow(point1[2]-point2[2], 2) )
    return distance




""" returns the distance between two object's pivots """
def distanceBetweenObjects (obj1, obj2):
    from math import sqrt,pow
    point1 = getWSPos (obj1)
    point2 = getWSPos (obj2)
    distance = sqrt( pow(point1[0]-point2[0], 2) + pow(point1[1]-point2[1], 2) + pow(point1[2]-point2[2], 2) )
    return distance




""" simple worldspace position query """
def getWSPos (obj):
    pos = cmds.xform (obj,q=True, ws=True, rp=True)
    return pos




""" Pass an array of objects into it and get an array of distances """
def distanceBetweenObjectsArray (objArray):
    from math import sqrt,pow
    cnt = 0
    objPositionArray = []
    distancesArray = []
    cnt = (len(objArray) - 1)
    firstTermCnt = 0
    seoncTermCnt = 1

    for obj in objArray:                    
        """get its positional data"""
        tempPos = getWSPos (obj)
        objPositionArray.append (tempPos)
    
    while cnt > 0:
        point1 = objPositionArray[firstTermCnt]
        point2 = objPositionArray[seoncTermCnt]
        distance = sqrt( pow(point1[0]-point2[0], 2) + pow(point1[1]-point2[1], 2) + pow(point1[2]-point2[2], 2) )        
        distancesArray.append (distance)
        firstTermCnt +=1
        seoncTermCnt +=1
        cnt -= 1
  
        if (cnt == 0):
            break
    
    return distancesArray




""" averages the distance between objects in an array"""
def averageDistanceBetweenObjects (objArray):
    distanceArray = distanceBetweenObjectsArray (objArray)
    average = float(sum(distanceArray)) / len(distanceArray)
    return average 



""" Makes measure nodes between every object in the array """
def measureDistanceBetweenObjs (objArray):
    """need to add grouping and naming if I wanna use this"""
    cnt = 0
    locatorPositionArray = []
    cnt = (len(locArray) - 1)
    firstTermCnt = 0
    seoncTermCnt =1
    distanceObjArray = []
    coreNameArray = []
       
    if objExists ('measure_grp'):
        pass    
        
    else:
        tmp = cmds.group (empty=True, name='measure_grp')
        cmds.xform (tmp, os=True, piv= (0,0,0))
    
    for obj in objArray:                    
        """get its positional data"""
        tempPos = cmds.xform (obj,q=True, ws=True, rp=True)
        locatorPositionArray.append (tempPos)
        
        tmp = obj.split('_')
        coreNameArray.append (tmp[0])      
    
    while cnt > 0:
        distanceObj = cmds.distanceDimension( sp=locatorPositionArray[firstTermCnt], ep=locatorPositionArray[seoncTermCnt] )
        tmp = cmds.listRelatives ( [distanceObj], p=True)
        tmp = cmds.rename (tmp, (coreNameArray[firstTermCnt]+'_to_'+coreNameArray[seoncTermCnt]+'_distMeas') )
        distanceObjArray.append (distanceObj)
        firstTermCnt +=1
        seoncTermCnt +=1
        cnt -= 1
            
        cmds.parent (tmp,'measure_grp')

        if (cnt == 0):
            break        

Thinkin bout spines...

Python training is coming along well. At least Bokser hasn't gotten the switch out yet. Started into classes yesterday and they're pretty amazing. Progress is humming along on the "skeleton" of bbThingamarig. Bokser must have  had a late night and I have no new python assignments for the morning so in the meantime I thought some r&d would be fitting.

So spines are tricky things. For starters, I'm not thrilled with Morphy's current spine as I've said before and it's one of my major issues with the rig as a whole. That's something I plan on rectifying. And how!

In keeping with Master Schleifer's instruction, the first thing to do is to think. Why don't I like morphy's spine, how it might be better, and look at some other spines out there.

• Pivots - for starters my pivots are off. I had a version at the end for the testers that was much better but it was gonna add a good bit of work to roll in and I'd rather just do it from scratch.
• Reverse spine - I've been playing with a prototype spine from my good friend Scott Englert that uses it and it's an intriguing concept
• Extra channels - another buddy, Tony Bonilla asked for an extra rotation transform on the cog to deal with spins so that's something I wanna do as well.
• FK/IK blend or more of a mode system - Some rigs go for a strictly fk/ik spine (TSM comes to mind) with a switch while others go for a more hybrid approach (which Morphy's current rig is). At this point I'm leaning towards one or the other with snapping between the two but I'm definitely open to suggestion
• Ribbon spine - Seen this bandied about some so I'm lookin into this as well courtesy of Aaron Holly's "Rigging for Feature Animation"
• Any further suggestions for things to look into?

Also, made some homemade mushroom soup this weekend that was the base of some tasty strogganoff which I'm fixin to have for lunch. Just thought the internets would like to know that.

Python Baby!

Digging in to Python on the tutelage of my good friend and Python Master Bokser. I have to say I have a lot of fun doing scripting and td stuff - it's so immediate in it's objectivity. It works or it doesn't. Me likee.

We're getting underway with what I am temporarily calling 'bbThingamarig'. At this point we're working on low level function building blocks.

Here's a snippit:

def setRotationOrderOnJoint (jnt, ro):
    #Checks for valid rotation order
    validRO = 'True'
    rotationOrderOptions = ['xyz','yzx','zxy','xzy','yxz','zyx']
    if not ro in rotationOrderOptions:
        print (ro + ' is not a valid rotation order. Skipping')
        validRO = 'False'
    else:
        cmds.joint (jnt, e=True, rotationOrder= ro)
    return validRO

I hope to share some fun news about Morphy in the next few days that should prove to provide even more goodies for the community. Good stuff.

What else is going on...ice proofing exterior pipes, training Atticus the super dog on a wireless fence and becoming more convinced that there is a national conspiracy that all barbers have to scalp me every time I grace a barber shop. Good times.

Hope everyone made some good resolutions that last longer than the month:) 

Have a very Morphy Christmas!

See what you can come up with:)

There comes a time when you just have to "stick a fork in it" and this is it. Some of the stuff I wanted to do I'm gonna hold of till 2.0. But for now Morpheus 1.0 is done and released. Now. 

Get it on the Morpheus project page as usual:)

Additions in this release pack:

• The file I used to render the above teaser so you can get some ideas on how to push the customization stuff. Can't wait to see how you push it even more.
• Latest head rig as always for those tinkerers out there
• All necessary quick selects sets are in scene in a group so you don't have to worry about bringing them in when "tinkering"
• Both release candidates in case you have animations referencing them
• New finger/hand poses and new joints for more "meaty" poses.
• Hand blendshapes
• Accessible via the hand objects in the Morph-o-matic ui mode
• Ear animation controls
• Nose tip mover
• COG prop space object and switching
• Parts proxy mesh which enables you to turn off arms and legs and stuff - sorry it's a bit of a hack till I can completely modulize the rig
• Accessible via the all_anim
• Polished and pushed face poses (brows, eye squeeze)
• TONS of fixes that I don't remember them all...:)

IMPORTANT NOTES:

• Rotation order fixes were made on the hand ik controls. It will gimp any ik hand keys you have so if you're in the middle of an animation and don't wanna deal with it. Use the last release rig.

What's next?

I'm gonna chill till new years and put together a plan of attack to try to gin up some remote rigging work and pushing my skillset in that area as well. Python shall be tamed in 2011!

Where on earth have you been, Morphy?!

He's comin - I assure you. And sooner than you might think (if you were thinking next week that is). Life has gotten busy the last few weeks but that doesn't mean there's not more Morphy fixes and updates than I can remember. Here's a tease of some of them....

• Hand blendshapes for for flexibility
• New hand sdk stuff to make hands more meaty!
• Hideable parts on the rig (i.e. no legs, left leg only, whatever). Also - hideable parts retain morphing.
• LOTS of polish and pushing of shapes
• Nose tip mover
• Ear controls
• Partridge in a pear tree (if you were good this year)

My beta testers are looking at things now to make sure I didn't blow anything up. So keep an eye out:)

In the meantime, here's the best of what I could find on the internet using Morphy:

And a lot of fun entries from 11 second club's contest last month. Keep pushin him peeps! Here's a few:

• Yoga guys
• Rubber ducky, you're the one!
• Skullduggery....
• One thing Morphy could actually be wearing...:)
• Santa and elf
• Pit of doom!
• Painting, painting on the wall...
• mmmmm....doughnuts....

Keep your peepers peeled!

Moonbot Film Teaser!

This is the film I had the pleasure of working on back in August. Can't wait to see the final film. Check out the new project website here :)

Best of luck on the festival circuit, guys!

Thank you Disney...

Tangled was the best animated film I've seen in a long time. Easily up to par with the greats. Beautifully crafted and geektastically Keane'esqe. Loved it.

So last week I fulfilled my civic duty of eating way more than I should to celebrate Thanksgiving. The rotation fell on my wife's family and I had a good time. Went hunting with my brother-in-law - saw some does, shot nothing, and let my feet freeze for far longer than I ought. I have to say the northern Louisiana woods are beautiful - pines, white oaks and cardinals dropping by to say "good morning" on the edge of my treestand.

I've decided to curtail some of the Morphy fixes for the time being as some of the stuff it just gonna take too long to fix when I'd prefer to just do it right from scratch. So, I'm gonna make all of the non rig breaking fixes to Morphy and a couple of improvements and release full release v1.0. Then use him as my template character for rerigging using the tools Bokser and I are fixin to write (where I'll make the spine fix, scaling foot fix and some other stuff).

What else...again working a freelance gig as well so updates will be slow. Oh, and if anyone will be at the Austin 3d user's group on Friday, I'm plannin on being there so feel free to say hello:)

Hand update (all the better to grab yams with....)

Come here, my pretty...

So been taking a hard look at hands and came to the realization that Morphy's last release hands just weren't as good as I wanted them to be. Hands are such an imporant part of the expressiveness of a character. So, I've been doing some research and experimenting and think they're much better now. Did you know that finger segment lengths tend to follow set proportions? This was a good read on that.

Here's the changes on the hands:

• Added blendshape customization (still gotta figure out what controls to put em on - prolly the ui)
• Added bunch of fixer joints that are sdk driven to help maintain "hand meatiness"
• Moved a bunch of joints
• New sdk poses all around 
• Mesh changes as well

Oh, starting another gig any day now so things will slow down again. Apologies, but paying work comes first.

Other neat stuff from the internets!

• Really interesting read on where we look when we're accessing certain parts of our brain. Useful for facial:)
• Beautiful film.
  
  

Happy turkey day all!

Morphy 1.0 Plan of Attack...(it's a trap!)

So, got back this last weekend from a great gig with Sony in San Diego. Made a lot of new friends, ate great food, and saw the zoo! Coming back I'm gonna be putting a bigger focus on  rigging for the next little while as I think it'll offer more remote work opportunities.

So the first thing I wanna do is get the full Morphy 1.0 out the door. It's been so fun seeing what folks have been coming up with and a big thanks to the guys at 11 second club for putting Morpheus on the resources page. Took the last few days to relax and get caught up on errands but I've also been getting input from my closed Morphy testers on my list of stuff to fix and or add on the rig.

Here's a preview of what I'll be hoping to get done before a full 1.0 release. Wherever possible, I will make fixes in such a way that won't mess with any animation that's been done on the release candidate rigs.

• Face - anyone (who's done some lip sync animation) having any trouble hitting anything? I wanna get back and test the brows especially when I can. Any input you can provide would be helpful.
• Spine - Not thrilled with the fk funtion on the spine may want to revisit. Also want better hip isolation. Anyone else take issue?
• Hands - 
• Thumb weighting needs a lot of love especially in the webbing
• Think the pinky side of the hand needs some more meat.
• Add more range of motion on the thumb
• Add - overall face squash and stretch control
• Add - nose tip mover
• Add - ear control? had a request for an ear animation control but not sure how I'd wanna do that. Anyone have any ear controls they like in a rig?
• Fix - normals on the body and some hair are screwy. I know I fixed it but must have reverted to a previous version somewhere
• Utility FIX - got a great tip from Tobias on a way to group quick select sets so I don't have to leave em out of the scene. Should help people's confusion when trying to do mods
• Neck - wanna try to get less curve built in by default to make it behave a little more as expected
• Fuctionality add - wanna add the ability to toggle of visibility on body regions. Had a couple of teachers request this
• Add - easier to access joint squash/stretch settings
• Add - scaleable feet
• Add - settings saver script

After Morpheus is done, gonna start digging into Python. Woot!

Quick Morphy Tip (Selecting the mesh)...

Gotten a few emails on this and wanted to leave a quick tip on how to enable mesh selection on an unreferenced Morphy.

To turn on selectability, run this mel.

//turn on selectability
    //body
    setAttr "all_anim|Geo_grp.overrideEnabled" 0;
    //face
    setAttr "FacialRig_grp|Geo_grp.overrideEnabled" 0

To turn it back off, here's the alternative...

//turn off selectability
    //body
    setAttr "all_anim|Geo_grp.overrideEnabled" 1;
    //face
    setAttr "FacialRig_grp|Geo_grp.overrideEnabled" 1;

 Go, go Booleans!

Also, Semper Fi Devil Dogs. 235 years and still truckin. Any other fellow former Marine animators out there? I'm guessin it's a small club:)

Morphy Internet Roundup #1!

NOTE - please tag your animations on Vimeo, youTube or whatever site with "Morphy", "Morphy Rig" or "Morpheus Rig" so I can find em. I wanna see em;)

First off, things are going well on the gig and we'll be wrapping up this week so I'll be saying goodbye to some new friends (and old ones) and get to see my wife again. Can't wait. I'll also be getting back to Morphy to tie up some loose ends as well as digging into Python for another side project with Bokser (you should really go check out his site right now, it's nostalgically awesome).

Been starting to get some tests back from some folks and some friends at my current gig pointed me to some 11 second club entries as well. It's so exciting to see what everyone is starting to do with the rig. Please continue to send bugs/issues as I'll be back on trying to finish Morphy up next week.

Here's a great one from a polish animator


And here's another:


11 Second club entries from last month using Morphy. Nice mods peeps! I love it when I have to look at it a bit to tell if it's Morpheus:) I've heard from a couple of you but if you ran into issues or bugs please lemme know. In no particular order...

• Time travel guy
• Undertaker
• Mad Doctor
• Chair is too short guy
• Chess game
• Doctor with second guy
• Jekyl/Hyde
• Fortune teller
• Tied up guy
• Grainy guy
• Drinkin guy

From "Sunny" San Diego...

Actually it's pretty drizzly which my friends here tell me is an anomaly. Go figure. Got checked in at the gig on Friday and am gonna hopefully start pulling my weight come Monday. Great bunch of guys ("guys" includes the girls as well) here and looking forward to the gig.

Had a few emails on an issue with the Morphy scripts and wanted to provide some clarity there. In order to use the add mesh scripts you need to run the "tinkerers" qss script from the qss folder. I covered it in the vid but apparently wasn't as clear as I could have been. Again, I removed the qss's from the rig to keep the outliner clean. However, I got a tip from a guy on how I might be able to group qss's and so I'll give that a shot when I get back to the batcave. Keep your notes comin!

What else....

• Hodaddy's burger joint in San Diego is awesome. I recommend the single bacon cheese burger and chocolate shake. If you go for lunch you'll wanna skip dinner. Possibly breakfast.
• "Red" was a fun guy flick though I'd recommend a rental
• Don't walk on friends patio barefoot unless you check for charcoal dust first otherwise you'll spend the next 30 minutes with some paper towels and a bottle of resolve. :)
• Google maps isn't always right. My should have been 2 mile walk turned into 10. Ah well, needed the exercise.

That is all. Burton out.

Morpheus Release Candidate v2!

Download the latest on the Morpheus Project page.

This will be the last Morpheus Update for probably a month or so cause of a gig I'm startin. I'm still not considering this a "final" Morpheus release and won't to so until 1) I'm able to animate scene and make sure everything is working as intended or 2) I see a few scenes other people do and they don't have any rig issues. If you find errors, please email me your issue with the following info:

• Email subject line of "Bad Morphy!" so I can find it easily:)
• Maya version (only 2009 and above supported)
• OS
• Preferably a referenced scene file so I can see your issue
• Detailed description of what happened.

There's still a couple of bugs I've gotten that I can't replicate and I wanna squash em before a "final" release. Oh, I also updated my site with the project I worked on last month (though I still can't show footage yet) - "The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore."

Morpheus Release Candidate v2

Notes

• Until I can figure out a better way of lockin off a few things. Toggle off joint selectability or just turn off their visibility so you don't accidentally select them. 

Facial Rig

• New mouth twist shape on mouth move anim
• New lwr lip up for a better lip sneer
• Wider mouth wide shapes
• Pushed chin out more (good bit more actually)
• Weighting update
• Fixed bug in scaling of eye rig
• Pushed chin wide more

Body Rig

• Lots of rotation order fixes
• Twist fix on the wrist courtesy of my good friend Scott Englert
• Changed how the mid spine control was influenced so that the hips were more isolated. Will probably swing back when I figure out how I wanna rig spines for more hip isolation
• Weighting polish on the body

Scripts

• Scripts updated to work with referencing and some error checking as well
• More intelligent weighting updater
• jbMorpheusBodyCustomGeoBaker - New - Body baker similar to the facial geo baker. 
• jbMorpheusAddBodyGeo - New - Body adder. If you create a new body mesh and wanna use it instead. Easy peasy.