William Brittain Animation and Digital Creatures @cgtoolkitwb-blog - Tumblr Blog

Scrambled

Egg Rig:

After speaking with Sorin I decided to add in a demonstration of the egg rig showing some of the built in features such as the squash and stretch. This will be included before the footage from the short film.

Dino Toy Turnaround

With the texture being finalized I have rendered out both a textured and wired turnaround for use in the showreel.

Render of the Dino Toy v001:

Wired Turnaround v001:

Wired Turnaround v002:

I have altered the wire texture on the model and change the COG that the toy turns on.

Render of the Dino Toy v002:

I have altered the COG that the toy turns on and made small changes to the lighting.

Barbarian

Original Turnaround:

Updated Turnaround v001:

Between the two renders the following changes have been made:

- arm geo has been altered and now is not so block like and sharp

- background and lighting changes

- altered render and texture settings

Still render of starting pose:

Updated Turnaround v002:

- I have made alterations to the arms again making the triceps smaller and biceps bigger at the top and smaller at the bottom

- I have also moved the elbow making it higher and reducing the pinch on the inside of the elbow

- The skin texture and pecks have also been altered, the pecks have been raised and the skin texture has been redone

Human Rigging Work

I decided not to use my own gladiator model to demonstrate my ability to rig human characters as to fix the look and the topology would not have allowed me to have completed the rig before the submission date. As such, I used a model from the Pluralsight tutorial: Advanced Character Modeling in Maya by Joshua Brock. To rig the character I used the addon for Maya Advanced Skeleton which prior to this I had only limited use of.

Walk Cycle v001:

- a test to check the weighting of the model, overall I am happy with the character weighting, it could use some adjustments around the knees

Updated Walk Cycle v002:

- made changes to the weighting of the knees making it more pinched as the leg compresses than it was previously

Updated Walk Cycle v003:

- After speaking with Sorin I have polished the animation more, make the arm movement less stiff along with the hands, adding in more shoulder and hip movement

- These changes have made the animation much better, I believe the walk is now suited to be added into the showreel

Facial Rigging:

This is my first time doing any major sort of facial rigging. To test the facial rig I made the seven universal facial features just using the rig controls.

Character Body Stretching:

After speaking with Sorin I have added in an additional animation on showing the characters body doing different things, I have done this for two reasons. The first being that this character has been rigged so I can show that I am able to rig a human character, as such previously with just the walk animation it was not showing much variation in what the rig is able to do with the entire body. The second reason that i decided to do this animation was it would add more to the showreel as a whole, making it longer and after viewing it included in the showreel, better.

Losing Grip Rough Animation Updates

Shot 70 Rough Animation v1:

I was given this additional shot to work on, which is Claudia climbing up the machine after landing on her face. I am happy with the movement used in the shot.

Losing Grip Rough Animation Updates

Shot 45 Rough Animation v2:

With this updated version I have fixed the lift angle of the dino, I have also removed the issue I was having in the previous version when the claws pinched down on the eye.

Shot 47 Rough Animation v2:

The alterations made to this shot are the reduction in the squash and stretch as the toy lands and the angle in which the dino is lifted to match the changes made to shot 45. The landing has also been made faster for more impact when it lands. A change that could be made is as the dino is falling it is not stretching correctly, this is a problem because of how squash and stretch have been implemented in the rig with the use of deformers instead of a lattice or IK system.

Shot 68 Rough Animation v4:

The changes to shot 68 are as follows:

- Change to the camera angle with the camera now moving around Claudia as she runs, jumps and throws

- The eyes now look at the machine the entire time

- Timing has been changed to be in real time instead of slow motion

- final pose is now at the peak of the throw

- feet clipping through the floor as she jumps has been corrected

Overall I am happy with this shot after the above changes have been made.

Shot 68b Rough Animation v2:

The below changes have been made to this shot:

- shot now starts from the peak of the throw

- claw machine position has been changed to face more towards the camera

- camera angle has been changed

- more movement added while Claudia is in the air

Shot 69b Rough Animation v3:

The following changes have been made:

- hands no longer clip through the floor

- eyes now do not look as high as she tilts her head back

- less exaggerated facial expression as she looks at the machine

- change in timing of when the feet land, they no longer land when the rest of the body does

Skymachine

To fill out my showreel I decided to use the animation test John Everitt did with some corrections made to the weighting of the Ruhu character.

- I created a basic texture

- I changed the weighting on the final shot

Original:

Updated Version:

- added in a basic background and lighting

This so far it is good to be added to the showreel it just needs the video of the rig working added to it.

Losing Grip Shot 47 Rough Animation

Shot 47 was more difficult than anticipated to move from blocking to rough animation. The reason for this was that the timing was slightly wrong with falling taking to long through the drop and bounces which had to be fixed first. Once this was corrected, to give the toy more life I added in arm and feet movement which I think adds more to the scene and makes the bounces more impactful.

I do however think that more could be done with the feet and the final landing at the end.

Losing Grip Shot 46 Rough Animation

For this shot, because the movement is very basic in the animatic and the blocking I was going to need to add more movement to the chest and hands while doing the rough animation. As such, I added in chest movement and hand movement to give the impression that Claudia was pulling herself towards the machine in anticipation of getting the toy.

Losing Grip Shot 68 Rough Animation

The direction I was given by Thalia for this shot was to make the jump more impactful and for more motion to take place in the air after the jump. I implemented this well so far I think in the first pass with the arms and head now having better movement both before and after the jump, which has removed some of the stiffness that was present in the blocking. I also changed the camera movement making it go down with Claudia when she goes to jump, I am not sure if this camera movement works well.

Version 1:

Losing Grip Shot 45 Rough Animation

Shot 45, the direction I was given by Thalia to make form the blocking phase was to make the movements snappy and quick. I am happy with the rough so far but have noticed that in this version there is a jarring movement as the claws close on the eye which will need to be changed.

Version 2:

Losing Grip Blocking

The blocking passes for these shots went well with the feedback received being implemented to the best of my ability. in particular, a dramatic change has been made to shot 68 with the take off now being included. Shot 69, on the other hand, has also been done by Khoa and is much better so this version will be used instead.

Scrambled Egg Rig

To create the egg rig I used ‘Advanced Skeleton’ for the first time, I found that the workflow identified some areas in my workflow that I was previously doing incorrectly. As such the creation of this rig had far fewer problems in terms of the rig breaking and things not working correctly.

Some specifics of the rig is that instead of using deformers for the squash and stretch like the dino I did for Losing grip it uses a spine IK, which is much easier for the animator to use and looks better. It also has the basic functionality that comes pre-built in the ‘Advanced Skeleton’ tool kit.

Dino Model and Rig

Dinosaur Model:

After receiving feedback for Sorin and Thalia the following changes where made:

• Delete overalls • Eyes more front on and create eye socket so they’re more separate from the head • Add nostrils • Sharper edges around mouth/teeth • More detail where the spine meets the body • Longer tail • More separation between leg and body – more curved and sharper seam • More detail top arms • Claws added to the arms and feet

Front View:

Side View:

Dino Rigging:

The dino model has now also had it’s rig redone, for two reasons. First is that the original rig broke in a rather server way and the second is the major changes made to the base model.

Old Rig:

New Rig:

This is the first pass at the new rig, squash and stretch still need to be added to the overall body using a deformer lattice over joints. The reason for this is that a lattice is easier to implement as well as giving a good looking result.

Version 1:

Version 2:

A world control has been added and I opted for a non-linear squash deformer over a lattice. The reason for this is the lattice would not work correctly with the controls and joints being under its selection and as the whole Dino body need to be affected this wouldn’t work. As such the squash deformer was the way to go with a with is allowing the joints and other controls to move correctly with the deformer mesh.

Version 3:

I removed the bone from the right eye to enable a lattice deformation to be done for better movement when animating the eye as beforehand when the eye was picked up the volume was maintained which didn’t look correct. I decided to use a lattice deformation over a blend shapes as the blend shapes could not be set to just the eye and had to affect the entire model which would remove any option for secondary motion.

I also made some changes to the weighting of the tail of the Dino to fix the deformation when the tail bent.

Version 4:

After being told that the rig would not scale without the textures distorting, I had to do error checking and because I had recently used ‘Advanced Skeleton’ to create the egg rig I used what I had learned when doing this. I found that to solve the problem the entire history had to be deleted which would mean the skin would not be bound the skeleton as such I took this opportunity to fix the model so blend shapes would work as well.

Digital Creatures Assessment 2

Design Ideas:

References:

Final Character Design:

Body shape:

Final design with notes of materials used for clothing:

I could not think of a good design for the shoes so I will develop them as I create the character

Character Body Low Poly:

Character Body Detailed:

Clothing Geo:

While creating the geo for the clothing I ran into some issues while creating the gloves and will need to see the tutor about it.

Detailed Clothing:

I’m happy with how the detail is coming along, I have run into some issues with the shoulder pads though and will need to see the tutor about this.

High poly character turnaround:

I’m very happy with the textured result however, I have run into issues when it comes to exporting the textures and the normal map for several areas. These being the body, one layer of the shoulders and the brackets for the back and front straps. I am not sure how to fix this as nothing I have done to correct it such as importing a new low poly or changing output types has worked.

Rendered character turnaround:

I am very pleased with the end result of this project, however, after doing the textured render I noticed that the nipples do not really show on the model as well as they did in Mudbox. If I had time to render this again I would make the nipples a pale pink similar to the lips so that they are actually noticeable. That being said however the lack of nipples does not subtract really for the design as they could also be under the chest straps of the armour.

Facial Blendshapes:

I decided to do the playblast and render without the helmet as only the faces happy, angry, fear and sadness can be read properly with it on. Eyebrows have not been included in the model as when the helmet is worn they cannot be seen. But I think the facial expressions still come across properly.

Anger:

Contempt:

Disgust:

Fear:

Happy:

Sadness:

Surprise:

#digitalcreatures

Skymachine

Character design and turn around by Rachel Vella:

Model:

Proxy Geometry:

Head and Body joined together:

Leg and foot attached:

The first pass of Ruhu character model:

The second pass of the Ruhu Character Model:

As per feedback received on the 20th, Ruhu will need to have a throat modelled.

#KNB310 Production

Augmented Australiana - Dingo Puppy

Design:

Model:

Nose:

This is my first attempt at the nose, I did not like how this was going to look when complete so I changed the idea to the second image below.

This version of the nose relies more on the texture for defining the nose

Ears:

Paws:

Completed Model:

As per feedback received on the 20th, the back of the head needs to come out more, the faces in the eyes need to be removed and the body is still to block like, it needs to look more organic.

#KNB310 Production

Trending Blogs

Recently Viewed Blogs

William Brittain Animation and Digital Creatures