(no subject)
Er, so the Technical Direction class has been over for... a week now? It occurs to me I should post my videos.
It looks like Photobucket did odd things to these, but it might just be my browser. But if not, be aware that these videos are 1000 times more awesome than what you see here!
These are motion tests. I take all the controls and wiggle them to show that the rig actually moves and doesn't break horribly and whatnot.
These are playblasts, so they aren't rendered out - if I had rendered these, you wouldn't have been able to see the controllers, and everything would look much more shiny.
Behold, my thendrax! This rig I finished first, as it was pretty simple - the hardest part was setting up the IK controls on the legs to give them the arc of motion I wanted. But it had no feet, no arms, no face, and no spine. And once I worked out the right combination of IK handles for the legs, it was very easy.
Second, my kreesha! This one was the longest, because it had the most complicated rig. Both the neck and the jaw had a semi-complicated thing going on with the motion - I wanted it to translate when I rotated it - and it took me quite a while to figure out how to work that. And there was the general crazyness of rigging feet, which is surprisingly complicated. Because the hands double as feet, I got to do that twice, which was interesting as well.
Finally, because the kreesha doesn't have enough facial control, I did a head! Dilligent readers may recgonize this from my modeling 1 class. Which I don't think I actually posted. So they'll be dilligent readers indeed!
Anyway, the trick to facial expressions is blend shapes, which has nothing at all to do with the skeleton. Although I hear you can set up the skeleton to do this, but it makes the head look something like a porcupine with all the joints there. But we did blend shapes. With those, you take the actual geometry, duplicate it (and if you have a full body and you just need the head, you do a bit of arcane magic to just get the head), and then actually sculpt it into the shape you need. Repeat as needed.
And that's the results of Technical Direction! Now I have two classes at the same time, Texture & Lighting 2 and Motion Studies. Motion Studies is where we get to do motion capture. That'll be interesting. For Texture & Lighting 2, I'm going to do a shot of my kreesha in a canyon by a river. Holding a fish. He was going to be drinking, but it looked better like this.
It's rather tempting to have the same shot but have my thendrax drinking from the river instead. I don't think I'm quite crazy enough to do that, though.
... although really, since the set would be the same... it wouldn't be that much extra work...
It looks like Photobucket did odd things to these, but it might just be my browser. But if not, be aware that these videos are 1000 times more awesome than what you see here!
These are motion tests. I take all the controls and wiggle them to show that the rig actually moves and doesn't break horribly and whatnot.
These are playblasts, so they aren't rendered out - if I had rendered these, you wouldn't have been able to see the controllers, and everything would look much more shiny.
Behold, my thendrax! This rig I finished first, as it was pretty simple - the hardest part was setting up the IK controls on the legs to give them the arc of motion I wanted. But it had no feet, no arms, no face, and no spine. And once I worked out the right combination of IK handles for the legs, it was very easy.
Second, my kreesha! This one was the longest, because it had the most complicated rig. Both the neck and the jaw had a semi-complicated thing going on with the motion - I wanted it to translate when I rotated it - and it took me quite a while to figure out how to work that. And there was the general crazyness of rigging feet, which is surprisingly complicated. Because the hands double as feet, I got to do that twice, which was interesting as well.
Finally, because the kreesha doesn't have enough facial control, I did a head! Dilligent readers may recgonize this from my modeling 1 class. Which I don't think I actually posted. So they'll be dilligent readers indeed!
Anyway, the trick to facial expressions is blend shapes, which has nothing at all to do with the skeleton. Although I hear you can set up the skeleton to do this, but it makes the head look something like a porcupine with all the joints there. But we did blend shapes. With those, you take the actual geometry, duplicate it (and if you have a full body and you just need the head, you do a bit of arcane magic to just get the head), and then actually sculpt it into the shape you need. Repeat as needed.
And that's the results of Technical Direction! Now I have two classes at the same time, Texture & Lighting 2 and Motion Studies. Motion Studies is where we get to do motion capture. That'll be interesting. For Texture & Lighting 2, I'm going to do a shot of my kreesha in a canyon by a river. Holding a fish. He was going to be drinking, but it looked better like this.
It's rather tempting to have the same shot but have my thendrax drinking from the river instead. I don't think I'm quite crazy enough to do that, though.
... although really, since the set would be the same... it wouldn't be that much extra work...