I promised some videos and here they are:
First of all - a video showcasing the soft-eyes rig. Obviously looking at it, it immediately needs a lot of tweaking to look right - but the principle it there. It is driven by a combination of blendshapes (corrective ones too), expressions (linking the blendshapes and connecting the controllers) and SDK to drive the motion of the eyelids with the rotational value of the joint. There is 3 joints in the eye, one of each eyelid and one for the eyeball itself. Doing this excersise let me get to grips with a lot of facial workaround as well as linking up blendshapes to be driven by controllers. When it comes to producing the character, I'd like a rather strong joint-based controlled system, as blendshapes can't give you complete control over the character (especially in this case as our creature has a rather long snout).
Secondly, we have a really quick turntable of the rough human sculpt I'm working on. This helps me imagine the form a lot better as I lay the clothes on top of him. I'd like to spend more time detailing this, but as I don't really need to it's more effecient to move on now that I have the shape correct.
Wednesday, 22 February 2012
Thursday, 16 February 2012
Animex 2012
Hey blog!
The lack of activity lately is due to the fact that for the entire of last week I attended Animex, a festival for games and animation/film held down in Teeside University, Middlesbourgh. I originally intended to do work down here, bringing my laptop along - but upon arrivial I discovered that there was too much to do that was not to be missed out on. I attended talks by Valve, Naughty Dog and Epic, as well as talks by Framestore, MPC and Double Negative - visual effects companies. I also attended a workshop that was relevant to my dissertation - titled "Engage your left brain - practical maths and physics for digital artists". Overall, the festival was a very enjoyable experience, and although I did not managed to do a lot in terms of my university dissertation I learnt a lot about the realities of work and also a lot of interesting tips, tricks and solutions for specific problems encountered in these fields. Finally, I learnt that my portfolio is rather weak, and it really needs to be beefed up upon graduation - something my project will help me achieve.
I could write a whole entry on my experience at Animex, but this is not really the place to do it - as although it wasn't entirely helpful to my degree at hand - it was certainly extraordinarily eye-opening in terms of what I can expect due the summer - when I'm dropped into the big bad world of work.
In the meantime, I have done some quick rigging tests with corrective blendshapes and a soft eye rig (driven by a combination of joints, expression and blendshapes). I will post this test up here.
In the coming week I hope to complete my human character's sculpt and begin rigging and texturing - a very time-consuming part of the process.
The lack of activity lately is due to the fact that for the entire of last week I attended Animex, a festival for games and animation/film held down in Teeside University, Middlesbourgh. I originally intended to do work down here, bringing my laptop along - but upon arrivial I discovered that there was too much to do that was not to be missed out on. I attended talks by Valve, Naughty Dog and Epic, as well as talks by Framestore, MPC and Double Negative - visual effects companies. I also attended a workshop that was relevant to my dissertation - titled "Engage your left brain - practical maths and physics for digital artists". Overall, the festival was a very enjoyable experience, and although I did not managed to do a lot in terms of my university dissertation I learnt a lot about the realities of work and also a lot of interesting tips, tricks and solutions for specific problems encountered in these fields. Finally, I learnt that my portfolio is rather weak, and it really needs to be beefed up upon graduation - something my project will help me achieve.
I could write a whole entry on my experience at Animex, but this is not really the place to do it - as although it wasn't entirely helpful to my degree at hand - it was certainly extraordinarily eye-opening in terms of what I can expect due the summer - when I'm dropped into the big bad world of work.
In the meantime, I have done some quick rigging tests with corrective blendshapes and a soft eye rig (driven by a combination of joints, expression and blendshapes). I will post this test up here.
In the coming week I hope to complete my human character's sculpt and begin rigging and texturing - a very time-consuming part of the process.
Saturday, 4 February 2012
Week 18+
Start of a new semester!
Okay, so since submission I've done the following:
First of all, some quick modelling was done to get the composition of the scene set out. Here is the character in relation to the creation and the corresponding layout of the final scene below.
The creature was explored some more, this was more along the lines of something I wanted, but it's still needing finalised at this point.
When deciding upon the character as it finally stood, I had to consider how I might construct and build the character, as well as material types. No colour tests were done as I'm currently hoping to get my monitor colours calibrated. I found when drawing that neither of my monitors currently represent true monitor colours, and thus they need calibrated. Luckily, a friend of mine is willing to lend me theirs so I can continue on with my project accurately.
As mentioned before, I had to take the character into considering when bringing it into Zbrush. I decided the only sensible part of his outfit to be cloth simulation was his robe, as I hope to drive the hood with a hair system within maya (allowing automatic overlapping animation and collisions to save time. I then took the model planes into ZBrush and laid out zspheres to map the shapes.
Now it's completely on to sculpting and building out the model, while using subtools to create the cloth. I will create the skull separately and import it into the final model to be attached via the rig. The horns, clothes, and other details will be added as subtools, then retopologised.
The character is currently being sculpted, but I do not feel comfortable showing it as it currently is in the blog, when the sculpt is more complete, it'll update it with a progress shot.
Learned about shaders:
A friend has been giving me introductions into shader language for games - specifically HLSL (high level shader language) and render monkey. In the meantime, I've been picking up linear algebra to improve my 3D math, which will hopefully aid me in my scripts as well.
I now understand the difference between pixel and vertex shaders, as well as the various elements within those shaders that are required to render a frame. While this learning is ongoing, I don't know how applicable these skills will be in the final project, but they are certainly helping me with my general understanding of 3D.
(Discovering that XYZ was linked to RGB was a satisfying breakthrough! No more guessing which means which in 3D space!)
The project and the new method of evaluation!
An initial version of the judgement criteria has been drafted. I have a lot of thoughts on this to write down, mostly in consideration of art, tech and the delicate balances that have to be considered when judging art. I hope to write a fuller post on the conclusion of this later on, in a more general post. Needless to say, it's not easy to put technical art in a box. I've been trying to ask around within the community for opinions, but it's something I must also discover for myself!
As always, onwards and upwards - here we go!
Okay, so since submission I've done the following:
- Character development has advanced again, this will be detailed below and goals will be made
- The project, and specifically objective 2.0 has been modified to suit the aim a lot more appropriately - clarified down there a little
- The beginnings of the judgement criteria questionnaire has been written up
- Expert candidates have been contacted
- Have began learning about shaders, also detailed further in the post
- Feedback has been received on my initial proposal
- Feedback has been received on second proposal
First of all, some quick modelling was done to get the composition of the scene set out. Here is the character in relation to the creation and the corresponding layout of the final scene below.
The creature was explored some more, this was more along the lines of something I wanted, but it's still needing finalised at this point.
I also created some quick thumbnails to explore character costumes before taking it on to the final stage of the finalised model sheet.
 |
| Character clothes thumbnails to rough out design |
 | ||||||
| Final Model Sheets |
 | |
| Zbrush Front |
 | |||
| Zbrush Side |
Now it's completely on to sculpting and building out the model, while using subtools to create the cloth. I will create the skull separately and import it into the final model to be attached via the rig. The horns, clothes, and other details will be added as subtools, then retopologised.
The character is currently being sculpted, but I do not feel comfortable showing it as it currently is in the blog, when the sculpt is more complete, it'll update it with a progress shot.
Learned about shaders:
A friend has been giving me introductions into shader language for games - specifically HLSL (high level shader language) and render monkey. In the meantime, I've been picking up linear algebra to improve my 3D math, which will hopefully aid me in my scripts as well.
I now understand the difference between pixel and vertex shaders, as well as the various elements within those shaders that are required to render a frame. While this learning is ongoing, I don't know how applicable these skills will be in the final project, but they are certainly helping me with my general understanding of 3D.
(Discovering that XYZ was linked to RGB was a satisfying breakthrough! No more guessing which means which in 3D space!)
The project and the new method of evaluation!
An initial version of the judgement criteria has been drafted. I have a lot of thoughts on this to write down, mostly in consideration of art, tech and the delicate balances that have to be considered when judging art. I hope to write a fuller post on the conclusion of this later on, in a more general post. Needless to say, it's not easy to put technical art in a box. I've been trying to ask around within the community for opinions, but it's something I must also discover for myself!
As always, onwards and upwards - here we go!
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