Finishing up
This is my last post, the animation is finally complete, I am really pleased with it. It has taken a considerable amount of time and effort but the end result was definately worth it, it has taken almost eleven weeks to complete; about four weeks to model everything and four weeks to bone, rig and skin the character and about two to three weeks to animate, and i have had loads of fun animating. The modelling part was probably the simplest part of the process as I new what I wanted to deliver, wish i could say the same about the bones, rig and skin, I had no clue what I was doing and had to follow some of the video tutorials here:
http://www.3dhaze.com/tutorials/char_model/index.html
This site was a really, really good resource for rigging the model and would definately recommend this resource to anyone thinking of creating bones and rigging the model properly. If I had had this information at the beginning of the course I would have probably flown through that stage, but alas I did not. I would like to have had more time to animate as I did not add the celebration section, I just had to scrap that part and make Travis do another trick instead. Anyhow here is the final animation with some funky music by the Dead Kennedys that Travis insisted on playing.
Thursday, 6 May 2010
Monday, 3 May 2010
Post Seventeen
Nearing the end...
This module is closing to an end and the animation is nearing completion, I have completed fifteen seconds of animation so far and will have the completed movie in a day or two, this module has been quite fun although very time consuming, with a load of late nights and early mornings to get everything sorted. It has been very enjoyable, and most parts of the character creation process went well, I have learnt so much in a very small amount of time, although some parts like the rigging and skinning were very frustrating. The animation process was a very fun part, making my model come alive as I tried to give him a personality of his very own. I set out to have my character bail, do some tricks and celebrate, and although I am still trying to make him celebrate the other parts are more than complete, render times were very long almost an hour and a half for every three seconds, it was using mental ray and ray tracing but with only one light and it still took a long time. But for the lengthy time I am very happy with the outcome, the reflections on the floor, and the crisp look is more than I could have ever hoped for.
Here is a video showing the (almost complete) animation.
This module is closing to an end and the animation is nearing completion, I have completed fifteen seconds of animation so far and will have the completed movie in a day or two, this module has been quite fun although very time consuming, with a load of late nights and early mornings to get everything sorted. It has been very enjoyable, and most parts of the character creation process went well, I have learnt so much in a very small amount of time, although some parts like the rigging and skinning were very frustrating. The animation process was a very fun part, making my model come alive as I tried to give him a personality of his very own. I set out to have my character bail, do some tricks and celebrate, and although I am still trying to make him celebrate the other parts are more than complete, render times were very long almost an hour and a half for every three seconds, it was using mental ray and ray tracing but with only one light and it still took a long time. But for the lengthy time I am very happy with the outcome, the reflections on the floor, and the crisp look is more than I could have ever hoped for.
Here is a video showing the (almost complete) animation.
Monday, 26 April 2010
Post Fifteen
Animation
Ok long time no post, so here goes; animating this character is getting slow, it is taking about twenty four minutes approximately for one second of animation, plus the hour or so setting the scene, I definitely underestimated the time spent on doing this part of the project. I have about five seconds worth of clips that I am happy with, there are some areas of the character that have made this task very difficult to avoid such as the weird twisting in the elbow joints that spin the whole arm when the elbow is flexed, and his sleeves that just always seem to get in the way making collision a problem too. Finally the joins where the leg meets the shorts are a big problem and always poking through; so much so I have had to render two sided to save some headaches. It could have been avoided had I known what was going to happen when his legs bended at the modelling section; I could have just made a few more lines with the connect tool and hey presto fixed. Anyhow in the rest of this post I will try to explain the basics of what I am doing, we join the animation after Travis has fallen down its now time to pick himself up and carry on skateboarding.
To start the scene I am usually carrying on from the last scene so I need to reconfigure the timeline to show this and save under a new name, it becomes easier to undo this way. Down the bottom right of the UI I click on a button that opens the time configuration panel and in there I set the start and the end time in frames for this scene it will be 150frames to 180frames.
Before we start the process of moving the character take a look in the picture above; in the bottom left window I notice Travis’ shorts are poking through the floor, fortunately the camera I am using is already set up in the top left view port, and from this position we can not see that part of the leg, but it will need fixing. Travis is already getting up; his hands are on the floor pushing his weight up and his toes are against the floor suggesting the press up position, this makes getting up simple to do. I will try to move his knees up under his chest to a squat then let him stand; as I am going to sort this animation in premier I can split this scene into several one second parts
Usually I just jump right in, click the auto key and have a play with the movement so I will make no exception. There are a few things I always check, before moving a control object I make a keyframe this at least starts the animation from that point this helps if you haven’t moved a control part in a long time. I have only twenty ‘un-do’s so be careful of what is being done. And save regularly; there’s nothing worse then something happening with out a save to restart with.
I like to work in the front or back view and one of the sides, and the perspective and have sacrificed the top view for the camera, this shows me first hand what is being seen when it is moved, I also configure the render panel from time to time to just render a frame to see it in it’s glory.
Here I have given eight frames to let Travis get his legs straight for the bend and this has sorted out the short / collision problem too. Now then next seven frames will sort out his upper body too.
Ok half way through and a quick save! both feet will fly up to his chest and his knee joints will poke through his skin…aargh! As you can see Travis has a problem bending his knees, deformities appear, and I am quite annoyed that in order for the audience to see no abnormalities I can only bend his legs part of the way.
This image shows the one second animation with Travis half way completing the squat, before the next section I always like to render my scene to see if the animation worked.
It’s looking good! But one problem I see, it is the final push upwards just a little bit fast, so rather then go back and mess up the rest of the scene I can fix this when I edit the animation, I can cut that bit and slow it down, thus saving me a lot of hassle.
The next step is to reconfigure the time configuration panel to 180frames to 210frames and save the file under its new save name. Then jump straight back in and work his movement out. I should be that far enough off the ground to pull his legs up now, and then have him land on his feet and stand up. I will try for a fluid motion but let’s see where that gets us.
First thinking about it, I will swing the camera around the character to show the side view of him jumping to squat. Maybe this will look a little better, plus it saves the knee pokey bit problem in his legs being shown to the audience.
Ok all done its only been thirty minutes or so, I have completed the scene but am unsure on the camera so I copied the camera and made a duplicate and put that front on so now I render the scene and will see which render works best.
Ok first camera straight on to character and one problem I see is my characters feet after jumping; they are too slow and they don’t jump they drag, In the second render I should have fixed this, also I have sorted out the camera bob; camera should be good now, but we still have Travis’ shorts /knees/poke through problem. Unfixable at this stage.
Here is the render: (for final movie I will use alternative camera I think)
Ok long time no post, so here goes; animating this character is getting slow, it is taking about twenty four minutes approximately for one second of animation, plus the hour or so setting the scene, I definitely underestimated the time spent on doing this part of the project. I have about five seconds worth of clips that I am happy with, there are some areas of the character that have made this task very difficult to avoid such as the weird twisting in the elbow joints that spin the whole arm when the elbow is flexed, and his sleeves that just always seem to get in the way making collision a problem too. Finally the joins where the leg meets the shorts are a big problem and always poking through; so much so I have had to render two sided to save some headaches. It could have been avoided had I known what was going to happen when his legs bended at the modelling section; I could have just made a few more lines with the connect tool and hey presto fixed. Anyhow in the rest of this post I will try to explain the basics of what I am doing, we join the animation after Travis has fallen down its now time to pick himself up and carry on skateboarding.
To start the scene I am usually carrying on from the last scene so I need to reconfigure the timeline to show this and save under a new name, it becomes easier to undo this way. Down the bottom right of the UI I click on a button that opens the time configuration panel and in there I set the start and the end time in frames for this scene it will be 150frames to 180frames.
Before we start the process of moving the character take a look in the picture above; in the bottom left window I notice Travis’ shorts are poking through the floor, fortunately the camera I am using is already set up in the top left view port, and from this position we can not see that part of the leg, but it will need fixing. Travis is already getting up; his hands are on the floor pushing his weight up and his toes are against the floor suggesting the press up position, this makes getting up simple to do. I will try to move his knees up under his chest to a squat then let him stand; as I am going to sort this animation in premier I can split this scene into several one second partsUsually I just jump right in, click the auto key and have a play with the movement so I will make no exception. There are a few things I always check, before moving a control object I make a keyframe this at least starts the animation from that point this helps if you haven’t moved a control part in a long time. I have only twenty ‘un-do’s so be careful of what is being done. And save regularly; there’s nothing worse then something happening with out a save to restart with.
I like to work in the front or back view and one of the sides, and the perspective and have sacrificed the top view for the camera, this shows me first hand what is being seen when it is moved, I also configure the render panel from time to time to just render a frame to see it in it’s glory.
Here I have given eight frames to let Travis get his legs straight for the bend and this has sorted out the short / collision problem too. Now then next seven frames will sort out his upper body too.
Ok half way through and a quick save! both feet will fly up to his chest and his knee joints will poke through his skin…aargh! As you can see Travis has a problem bending his knees, deformities appear, and I am quite annoyed that in order for the audience to see no abnormalities I can only bend his legs part of the way.
This image shows the one second animation with Travis half way completing the squat, before the next section I always like to render my scene to see if the animation worked.
It’s looking good! But one problem I see, it is the final push upwards just a little bit fast, so rather then go back and mess up the rest of the scene I can fix this when I edit the animation, I can cut that bit and slow it down, thus saving me a lot of hassle.The next step is to reconfigure the time configuration panel to 180frames to 210frames and save the file under its new save name. Then jump straight back in and work his movement out. I should be that far enough off the ground to pull his legs up now, and then have him land on his feet and stand up. I will try for a fluid motion but let’s see where that gets us.
First thinking about it, I will swing the camera around the character to show the side view of him jumping to squat. Maybe this will look a little better, plus it saves the knee pokey bit problem in his legs being shown to the audience.
Ok all done its only been thirty minutes or so, I have completed the scene but am unsure on the camera so I copied the camera and made a duplicate and put that front on so now I render the scene and will see which render works best.
Ok first camera straight on to character and one problem I see is my characters feet after jumping; they are too slow and they don’t jump they drag, In the second render I should have fixed this, also I have sorted out the camera bob; camera should be good now, but we still have Travis’ shorts /knees/poke through problem. Unfixable at this stage.Here is the render: (for final movie I will use alternative camera I think)
Tuesday, 20 April 2010
Post Fourteen
Progress so far...
This area; the animation part is taking some time to complete, the skinning and rigging took too long to complete as I am a complete beginner in that area. I did however find some great resources through a thorough search that will be kept for future projects.
But getting back to the post at hand; I have less then three weeks left to complete the module and it has been a fabulous introduction to character animation and the results that i am getting (even though at the start) are quite brilliant to say the least, they are time consuming but very rewarding.
The plan is to have Travis Mcfee try to show off, bail; pick himself up, get up off the ground, do a walk cycle on the skateboard, then a trick or two then celebrate. It is a lot do do but I am just getting on with it, and check out these early renders! they are only a second each but they are coming out great.
This area; the animation part is taking some time to complete, the skinning and rigging took too long to complete as I am a complete beginner in that area. I did however find some great resources through a thorough search that will be kept for future projects.
But getting back to the post at hand; I have less then three weeks left to complete the module and it has been a fabulous introduction to character animation and the results that i am getting (even though at the start) are quite brilliant to say the least, they are time consuming but very rewarding.
The plan is to have Travis Mcfee try to show off, bail; pick himself up, get up off the ground, do a walk cycle on the skateboard, then a trick or two then celebrate. It is a lot do do but I am just getting on with it, and check out these early renders! they are only a second each but they are coming out great.
Tuesday, 13 April 2010
Post Thirteen
Skinning
In this post I get to skin my character, The first thing to do is to delete the turbo-smooth that I have added to my character in the modifier panel, putting a skin modifier over the top would be just stupid as there would be too many vertices to weigh and modify with the envelopes, also I have animated the control objects to move the bones so they stretch and do a simple walk cycle, this helps a bit when I test the envelopes later, as I can just run the test animation and see how the envelopes affect the mesh.
So with the mesh and the bones all ready to go, I select the skin modifier from the list and then under the parameters roll-out I click the add bones option and select all the bones making sure that only bones are selected for the skin.
The next thing to do is to select a bone from the list and click the edit envelopes option, the envelopes control which part of the mesh will be affected by the selected bone, red ares mean that 100% of the area is affected and blue areas are almost no affect, orange and yellow are somewhere in between, as you can see in the next image the spine bone envelope I have selected is affecting other ares of the spine, the arms of my character and even his neck, now there are a couple of ways I can modify the envelope to affect only the spine I have selected; I could move the evvelope but this is not the way really to do this as by moving the envelope and making is smaller, I am only making other envelopes bigger, the way to do this is to weigh each vertices and select the specific bones to affect the specific vertices, it takes some time but at least it makes sure all the vertices are being affected by the correct bone.
To weigh a vertices I must scroll down under the edit envelopes option and check the vertices box, then scroll down to the wrench like icon to open up the weigh vertices box.
In this image I have selected the vertices where the arm joins the body and as you can see from the weigh vertices box it is being affected by several bones; spine3, spine4, clavicle, upper arm and head. Now we know for instance that the head bone shouldn’t even affect this vertices, so from the box we select the head bone and click on the 0, this makes the head have 0% affect on that vertices. Now for this instance I will make the spine bones have 0% influence too, this will leave just the clavicle and the upper arm to affect the vertices. I will go 50-50 and then come out of edit envelope selection and move the wrist control object around and see how this affects the join of the arm to the body, I will add the turbo-smooth modifier back to the list of modifiers but I must remember to turn it off and select the skin and the envelopes when I want to change the weight again. The turbo-smooth was added because this is what my character will look like at the final render, it all looks ok so I move on to the next vertex. It is a long process, but all I have to do is one side of the body and then replicate the amount for the other side’s vertices. It has taken some time but I have a test animation and it all looks quite good.
Just before I post the animation I would like to point out something I have noticed, there are a few anomalies where the leg tries to poke through his shorts, and after much deliberation I have put this down to bad modelling technique, if the leg inside the shorts was lined up properly with his knee instead of up over the knee I would not be getting this problem, all I can do is try to limit the bend so it does not poke through, I have tried to fix the problem but I am so far ahead of the modelling process not much can be done about this problem and when I have tried to roll back to edit the vertices, the rig fails to work, the envelopes and the vertex weight is correct as far as I can see, so this is a shame but with clever camera angles, and limiting the bends of the knees hopefully the final animation will not show this. Without further ado here is the test render:
In this post I get to skin my character, The first thing to do is to delete the turbo-smooth that I have added to my character in the modifier panel, putting a skin modifier over the top would be just stupid as there would be too many vertices to weigh and modify with the envelopes, also I have animated the control objects to move the bones so they stretch and do a simple walk cycle, this helps a bit when I test the envelopes later, as I can just run the test animation and see how the envelopes affect the mesh.
So with the mesh and the bones all ready to go, I select the skin modifier from the list and then under the parameters roll-out I click the add bones option and select all the bones making sure that only bones are selected for the skin.
The next thing to do is to select a bone from the list and click the edit envelopes option, the envelopes control which part of the mesh will be affected by the selected bone, red ares mean that 100% of the area is affected and blue areas are almost no affect, orange and yellow are somewhere in between, as you can see in the next image the spine bone envelope I have selected is affecting other ares of the spine, the arms of my character and even his neck, now there are a couple of ways I can modify the envelope to affect only the spine I have selected; I could move the evvelope but this is not the way really to do this as by moving the envelope and making is smaller, I am only making other envelopes bigger, the way to do this is to weigh each vertices and select the specific bones to affect the specific vertices, it takes some time but at least it makes sure all the vertices are being affected by the correct bone.To weigh a vertices I must scroll down under the edit envelopes option and check the vertices box, then scroll down to the wrench like icon to open up the weigh vertices box.
In this image I have selected the vertices where the arm joins the body and as you can see from the weigh vertices box it is being affected by several bones; spine3, spine4, clavicle, upper arm and head. Now we know for instance that the head bone shouldn’t even affect this vertices, so from the box we select the head bone and click on the 0, this makes the head have 0% affect on that vertices. Now for this instance I will make the spine bones have 0% influence too, this will leave just the clavicle and the upper arm to affect the vertices. I will go 50-50 and then come out of edit envelope selection and move the wrist control object around and see how this affects the join of the arm to the body, I will add the turbo-smooth modifier back to the list of modifiers but I must remember to turn it off and select the skin and the envelopes when I want to change the weight again. The turbo-smooth was added because this is what my character will look like at the final render, it all looks ok so I move on to the next vertex. It is a long process, but all I have to do is one side of the body and then replicate the amount for the other side’s vertices. It has taken some time but I have a test animation and it all looks quite good.Just before I post the animation I would like to point out something I have noticed, there are a few anomalies where the leg tries to poke through his shorts, and after much deliberation I have put this down to bad modelling technique, if the leg inside the shorts was lined up properly with his knee instead of up over the knee I would not be getting this problem, all I can do is try to limit the bend so it does not poke through, I have tried to fix the problem but I am so far ahead of the modelling process not much can be done about this problem and when I have tried to roll back to edit the vertices, the rig fails to work, the envelopes and the vertex weight is correct as far as I can see, so this is a shame but with clever camera angles, and limiting the bends of the knees hopefully the final animation will not show this. Without further ado here is the test render:
Sunday, 11 April 2010
Post Twelve
Summary
In this post I needed to do some research on the rigging process for the upper body and conducted a thorough search in Google, the most in-depth tutorials I found were four quite brilliant ones and from them I have managed to complete the rig for my character. I will list these tutorials before trying to explain what happened for the rest of the rig.
Tutorials:
http://34bit.blogspot.com/2008/01/tutorial-ik-setup.html
http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/character-animation-skeletons-and-inverse-kinematics/
http://www.3dhaze.com/tutorials/char_model/rig.html
http://www.clevislauzon.qc.ca/arts/DOCXSI50/XSIPortal/de614853.htm
And now for the rest of the rig;
I wanted to place a gyro (control object) at the wrist to rotate the hand, move the wrist and move the arm too. To start with I created an IK chain from the upper arm bone to the palm bone, and then I aligned the position of the control object with the IK chain at the wrist of my character then linked the chain to the control object. Now my arm moves by using the control object at the wrist. But to make the hand rotate with the control object I will have to link the palm bone with the control object and this will break the IK chain already made, causing the control object not to move the arm.
To sort this problem out I will use an orientation constraint this will make the palm rotation match the rotation of the control object. This is a useful alternative to linking when linking is not at all possible. I just must remember to align the orientation of the control object’s pivot point with the palm bones pivot point.
To start with I selected the upper bone and selected animation > IK solvers > HI solver to create the IK chain and renamed it, and then I aligned the position of the control object to the newly created wrist IK chain. Now I aligned the orientation of the control object’s pivot point to match the pivot point of the palm bone, and then linked the IK wrist to the Control wrist object.
I selected the palm bone and chose animation > constrain > orientation constraint then clicked on the wrist control object and tested the procedure by rotating the control object, and the hand rotated too.
For the Fingers and thumbs I had decided to create some custom attributes for each of the fingers, a flex would have a number representation of -20, 0 would be the default hand position, 100 would make the fingers pose as if it were going to grasp an object and lastly 200 would make the fingers clench in a fist. With my fingers and thumb set up this way my hand should be able to do anything a real hand would.
To start this complex process I had to change the reference coordinate system to local, as all the fingers rotated on the y axis when set to local. I selected the wrist control object and added an attribute modifier then chose animation > Parameter Editor from the list, this opens a panel where I can edit my new custom attributes that I will use to move the fingers. I have made four custom attributes one for each finger, these will be called; CurlThumbL, CurlIndexFingerL, CurlMiddleFingerL and CurlPinkyL. Each has a range of -20 to 200, and after renaming each custom attribute I clicked the add button and closed the parameter editor when I was finished. These custom attributes show up now on the modifier panel when the wrist control object is selected.
The next step was to use the Reaction manager to set up the master and slaves and create states for the rotations of the fingers, to get to the reaction manager I chose animation > Reaction Manager. In the panel I clicked on the big black plus sign to add a master then I clicked on the wrist control object and chose modify object > attribute holder > custom attributes > CurlIndexFingerL from the pop-up box. The next step was to add the slaves; I selected the two bones that make up the index finger selected the’ add selected option’ from the reaction manager, then chose from the pop-up box transform > rotation > y rotation. This would add the y rotation track for both bones as slaves and creates the initial state with default values.
Now for the fun part; I select the wrist control object and pin the stack on the modifier panel so we can see the custom attributes that have been made all the time, I set the CurlIndexFingerL custom attribute to -20 and turned the create mode on, then I rotated the base finger back 10 degrees on the y axis and then clicked the create state button on the reaction manager. This creates a state for the y rotation for that finger.
The next state will be at 100 so I change the custom attribute integer to 100, rotate the base index finger back 30 degrees and then rotate the index finger tip to 70 degrees, this makes the finger move to a grasp pose. Now I click the ‘create state’ button on the reaction manager.
The last stage is when the finger will be in a clenched fist pose, so I set the custom attribute integer to 200, and rotate the base index finger to about 90 degrees so that the tip of the index finger is touching the palm of my characters hand and create the last state, and now turn off create mode and test. Just by changing the custom attributes integers moves the fingers pose from flex to default, and then grasp to fist. When all the custom attributes have been created (masters and slaves and creating states) animating the fingers should be really easy.
There was just a slight change in the way I did the thumb curl, as my own thumb is able to rotate in all directions, when setting up the slaves for the two bones that make up the thumb I added rotations on the x,y and z axis, thus making the thumb able to move in all directions.
The last part to rig were the shoulders, knees and elbows; I had copied the wrist gyro before hand as I had wanted one for the shoulders, once properly aligned positional to the upper arm bone in the hierarchy panel I click affect pivot only and align the pivot of the left clavicle both positional and its orientation. Then turning off the ‘affect pivot only’ option I link the clavicle to the control object.
To test I simply rotate the control object to move the shoulder, with this simple process the control object is the parent of the clavicle so it may be selected easier.
The elbows and knees are added to make these parts of the rig point in any direction should any twisting of the bones occur, I need to be able to make these move independent of the rest of the body. To accomplish this a small box was created in front of the elbow/knee and was renamed an appropriate control object name, the control object knee was linked to the control object foot to keep it near the character what ever he does. I then select the IK chain at the ankle, go to the motion panel, find the Pick target button in the IK Solver Properties rollout and select the knee control. This basically causes the joint between the calf and the thigh to point at the knee control all the time. The process was then repeated for the shoulder control objects.
The last thing to do is to create a box for him to stand on and name it body control object so moving the whole rig is made easy, this is done by linking the leg, and feet control objects to the body control object then testing the object by moving it; the whole hierarchy should move too.
This concludes the rigging process, which has been in-depth to say the least now I can get on with the skinning part.
In this post I needed to do some research on the rigging process for the upper body and conducted a thorough search in Google, the most in-depth tutorials I found were four quite brilliant ones and from them I have managed to complete the rig for my character. I will list these tutorials before trying to explain what happened for the rest of the rig.
Tutorials:
http://34bit.blogspot.com/2008/01/tutorial-ik-setup.html
http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/character-animation-skeletons-and-inverse-kinematics/
http://www.3dhaze.com/tutorials/char_model/rig.html
http://www.clevislauzon.qc.ca/arts/DOCXSI50/XSIPortal/de614853.htm
And now for the rest of the rig;
I wanted to place a gyro (control object) at the wrist to rotate the hand, move the wrist and move the arm too. To start with I created an IK chain from the upper arm bone to the palm bone, and then I aligned the position of the control object with the IK chain at the wrist of my character then linked the chain to the control object. Now my arm moves by using the control object at the wrist. But to make the hand rotate with the control object I will have to link the palm bone with the control object and this will break the IK chain already made, causing the control object not to move the arm.
To sort this problem out I will use an orientation constraint this will make the palm rotation match the rotation of the control object. This is a useful alternative to linking when linking is not at all possible. I just must remember to align the orientation of the control object’s pivot point with the palm bones pivot point.
To start with I selected the upper bone and selected animation > IK solvers > HI solver to create the IK chain and renamed it, and then I aligned the position of the control object to the newly created wrist IK chain. Now I aligned the orientation of the control object’s pivot point to match the pivot point of the palm bone, and then linked the IK wrist to the Control wrist object.
I selected the palm bone and chose animation > constrain > orientation constraint then clicked on the wrist control object and tested the procedure by rotating the control object, and the hand rotated too.
For the Fingers and thumbs I had decided to create some custom attributes for each of the fingers, a flex would have a number representation of -20, 0 would be the default hand position, 100 would make the fingers pose as if it were going to grasp an object and lastly 200 would make the fingers clench in a fist. With my fingers and thumb set up this way my hand should be able to do anything a real hand would.
To start this complex process I had to change the reference coordinate system to local, as all the fingers rotated on the y axis when set to local. I selected the wrist control object and added an attribute modifier then chose animation > Parameter Editor from the list, this opens a panel where I can edit my new custom attributes that I will use to move the fingers. I have made four custom attributes one for each finger, these will be called; CurlThumbL, CurlIndexFingerL, CurlMiddleFingerL and CurlPinkyL. Each has a range of -20 to 200, and after renaming each custom attribute I clicked the add button and closed the parameter editor when I was finished. These custom attributes show up now on the modifier panel when the wrist control object is selected.
The next step was to use the Reaction manager to set up the master and slaves and create states for the rotations of the fingers, to get to the reaction manager I chose animation > Reaction Manager. In the panel I clicked on the big black plus sign to add a master then I clicked on the wrist control object and chose modify object > attribute holder > custom attributes > CurlIndexFingerL from the pop-up box. The next step was to add the slaves; I selected the two bones that make up the index finger selected the’ add selected option’ from the reaction manager, then chose from the pop-up box transform > rotation > y rotation. This would add the y rotation track for both bones as slaves and creates the initial state with default values.
Now for the fun part; I select the wrist control object and pin the stack on the modifier panel so we can see the custom attributes that have been made all the time, I set the CurlIndexFingerL custom attribute to -20 and turned the create mode on, then I rotated the base finger back 10 degrees on the y axis and then clicked the create state button on the reaction manager. This creates a state for the y rotation for that finger.The next state will be at 100 so I change the custom attribute integer to 100, rotate the base index finger back 30 degrees and then rotate the index finger tip to 70 degrees, this makes the finger move to a grasp pose. Now I click the ‘create state’ button on the reaction manager.
The last stage is when the finger will be in a clenched fist pose, so I set the custom attribute integer to 200, and rotate the base index finger to about 90 degrees so that the tip of the index finger is touching the palm of my characters hand and create the last state, and now turn off create mode and test. Just by changing the custom attributes integers moves the fingers pose from flex to default, and then grasp to fist. When all the custom attributes have been created (masters and slaves and creating states) animating the fingers should be really easy.There was just a slight change in the way I did the thumb curl, as my own thumb is able to rotate in all directions, when setting up the slaves for the two bones that make up the thumb I added rotations on the x,y and z axis, thus making the thumb able to move in all directions.
The last part to rig were the shoulders, knees and elbows; I had copied the wrist gyro before hand as I had wanted one for the shoulders, once properly aligned positional to the upper arm bone in the hierarchy panel I click affect pivot only and align the pivot of the left clavicle both positional and its orientation. Then turning off the ‘affect pivot only’ option I link the clavicle to the control object.To test I simply rotate the control object to move the shoulder, with this simple process the control object is the parent of the clavicle so it may be selected easier.
The elbows and knees are added to make these parts of the rig point in any direction should any twisting of the bones occur, I need to be able to make these move independent of the rest of the body. To accomplish this a small box was created in front of the elbow/knee and was renamed an appropriate control object name, the control object knee was linked to the control object foot to keep it near the character what ever he does. I then select the IK chain at the ankle, go to the motion panel, find the Pick target button in the IK Solver Properties rollout and select the knee control. This basically causes the joint between the calf and the thigh to point at the knee control all the time. The process was then repeated for the shoulder control objects.
The last thing to do is to create a box for him to stand on and name it body control object so moving the whole rig is made easy, this is done by linking the leg, and feet control objects to the body control object then testing the object by moving it; the whole hierarchy should move too.
This concludes the rigging process, which has been in-depth to say the least now I can get on with the skinning part.
Sunday, 14 March 2010
Post Eleven
Bones or Biped?
I tried a biped and tried to position it into some varying poses as a skateboarder and soon realised the limitations and problem areas that would have arose had I chose to animate my model with this kind of rig. I chose to build the rig and try to understand the fundamentals behind the process.
Well this week has confused the hell out of me, I have rigged my model using bones that I have created myself, Ik chains created from scratch, using the reaction manager and adding custom attributes using the parameter editor, setting up masters and slaves and creating states, linking and aligning control objects, wiring custom attributes and then trying to find information as to why the wiring failed; all because of the controllers and the way they were set up on the default settings and then freezing rotations to split the controller into another controller to carry on wiring. It’s been technical to say the least. I have had to try to get to grips with these new techniques and try them out and try to understand the reasoning behind this and this has taken me some frustrating hours of ‘Why isn’t this working!’.
Although I am learning and do not quite understand it all, there are some complex areas that are just too heavy and time consuming so I have been simplifying the process as much as possible. I am using a wide range of tools in 3ds max; I am starting to see how my character will move, what its limitations are, Best of all are the control objects; these have been set up pretty sensibly to help with the animation at later stages, rotations and positioning should now be really easy.
In my next post I will try to explain how and why I have set up my characters arms, wrists and fingers and by using custom attributes I am able to move the fingers; so when I am animating my skater holding his skateboard I will not have to touch the fingers to rotate or position them as I will have already created the attribute to rotate the finger into pre-specified poses. This area has taken me some time because I hit many problems and just couldn’t understand what was going wrong because it was and is still so new to me.
I tried a biped and tried to position it into some varying poses as a skateboarder and soon realised the limitations and problem areas that would have arose had I chose to animate my model with this kind of rig. I chose to build the rig and try to understand the fundamentals behind the process.
Well this week has confused the hell out of me, I have rigged my model using bones that I have created myself, Ik chains created from scratch, using the reaction manager and adding custom attributes using the parameter editor, setting up masters and slaves and creating states, linking and aligning control objects, wiring custom attributes and then trying to find information as to why the wiring failed; all because of the controllers and the way they were set up on the default settings and then freezing rotations to split the controller into another controller to carry on wiring. It’s been technical to say the least. I have had to try to get to grips with these new techniques and try them out and try to understand the reasoning behind this and this has taken me some frustrating hours of ‘Why isn’t this working!’.
Although I am learning and do not quite understand it all, there are some complex areas that are just too heavy and time consuming so I have been simplifying the process as much as possible. I am using a wide range of tools in 3ds max; I am starting to see how my character will move, what its limitations are, Best of all are the control objects; these have been set up pretty sensibly to help with the animation at later stages, rotations and positioning should now be really easy.
In my next post I will try to explain how and why I have set up my characters arms, wrists and fingers and by using custom attributes I am able to move the fingers; so when I am animating my skater holding his skateboard I will not have to touch the fingers to rotate or position them as I will have already created the attribute to rotate the finger into pre-specified poses. This area has taken me some time because I hit many problems and just couldn’t understand what was going wrong because it was and is still so new to me.
Thursday, 11 March 2010
Post Ten
The Spine
For the legs I used shapes with custom attributes and reactions, this was appropriate as I wanted them to move through specific poses as they roll up for the walk, the spine however is less predictable, I need to be able to rotate the spine in any direction, and move the hands around as needed. It just wouldn’t make any sense to set up reactions for every possible arm or spine motion Instead I plan to use a control object and wire one value to another so the two parameters influence each other through the transform animation.
I’m going to use a gyro handle made from three circle splines and a line spline. You could use any object but this control object looks like it should be rotated. First thing to do is align the control object (gyro) to the lowest spine bone.
Now I need to link the bone spine to the control object. Now if I was to move the control object the spine should move or rotate too.
When I rotate my own spine I notice that the top sections of my spine move faster then the bottom sections of my spine. I would like to capture this same ‘double rotation’ for my rig, to set this up I will wire the rotation of the second lowest spine section to the control shape, so then when I rotate the control object the bone will receive the rotation twice, once from the wiring and once as the child of the bottom spine.
I select my control object, Right click the control object to get the quad menu and select wire parameters. This opens a popup menu and I can continue to select Transform > rotation > x rotation. Now I click on the second from bottom spine section and select Transform> rotation > x rotation from the pop up menu that appears.
Now a new parameter dialogue box appears and I select the rotation listing on each side and click the right arrow and the connect button to activate.
Everything should have worked but when I test the spine bone turns in the wrong direction taking the whole spine with it, and if I was to rotate the control object the spine rotates in all kinds of wrong directions something is definitely wrong here.
What is the Cause? Maybe the control object and or the spine have already been rotated? The wiring is adding up all the shapes rotations on whatever axis. This affects the bones local axis with the rotation. The problem did not occur with linking because I tested the link and that worked. The problem lies with the wiring.
To solve this problem of mismatched wiring I need the control objects local axis to match the bones and then any rotation will work. Although aligning pivot points will help it does not solve the problem. I need the spine bone to be affected in relation to its current orientation not its original orientation, same goes for the control object.
I need to freeze the rotation in its current state, and start animation from there. Alt + Right click to display the animation quad menu then choose freeze rotation. This splits the rotation track into two separate tracks named ‘initial pose’ and ‘keyframe XYZ’. The initial pose track holds any rotations I have performed up to now to pose the objects, and the keyframe XYZ will hold any transforms I do from now on.
If I align the pivot points, freeze the rotations then wire together the keyframe tracks the double rotation will work. Before I show how I did this I would like to talk about controllers, A controller is a method for specifying an objects transforms. (position, rotation and scale) The default controllers allow me to move, rotate and scale objects with the buttons on the main toolbar. Other controllers might control an objects position by putting it on a path and some controllers control an objects rotation by making it look at another object. To change controllers you must go to the motion panel and expand the ‘assign contoller’ panel then you can highlight a controller and select the ‘?’ button to choose another controller. The freeze rotation option splits the original rotation controller into two controllers. To save time in changing the default rotation controller to a list controller I will use the freeze rotation option to set up the double rotation through wiring.
So:
Select the control object, go to the hierarchy panel and click affect pivot only, click the align tool and then click on the spine bone. In the align dialoge box, turn off any positional align options and turn on the XYZ Align orientation options also make sure that pivot point is selected for both the current object and the target object and click ok then turn off Affect pivot only.
The next step is to make sure the control object is still selected Alt + Rightclick to get the animation quad menu and select ‘freeze rotation’ Then select the bone spines and freeze rotations on them too. Now right click the control object and choose wire parameters, the carry on selecting transform > rotation > keyframe XYZ > x rotation. Now click the spine bone and select transform > rotation > keyframe XYZ > x rotation. Now the dialogue box will appear and we select both the keyframe XYZ on either sides, click the right arrow and then ok.
Now we test and check that the spine works all ok. Now to repeat the process for the othe control objects that will control the other parts of the spine neck etc.
This conclude the rather confusing spine section, now on to the fun section the arms, wrist and fingers.
For the legs I used shapes with custom attributes and reactions, this was appropriate as I wanted them to move through specific poses as they roll up for the walk, the spine however is less predictable, I need to be able to rotate the spine in any direction, and move the hands around as needed. It just wouldn’t make any sense to set up reactions for every possible arm or spine motion Instead I plan to use a control object and wire one value to another so the two parameters influence each other through the transform animation.
I’m going to use a gyro handle made from three circle splines and a line spline. You could use any object but this control object looks like it should be rotated. First thing to do is align the control object (gyro) to the lowest spine bone.
Now I need to link the bone spine to the control object. Now if I was to move the control object the spine should move or rotate too.
When I rotate my own spine I notice that the top sections of my spine move faster then the bottom sections of my spine. I would like to capture this same ‘double rotation’ for my rig, to set this up I will wire the rotation of the second lowest spine section to the control shape, so then when I rotate the control object the bone will receive the rotation twice, once from the wiring and once as the child of the bottom spine.I select my control object, Right click the control object to get the quad menu and select wire parameters. This opens a popup menu and I can continue to select Transform > rotation > x rotation. Now I click on the second from bottom spine section and select Transform> rotation > x rotation from the pop up menu that appears.
Now a new parameter dialogue box appears and I select the rotation listing on each side and click the right arrow and the connect button to activate.
Everything should have worked but when I test the spine bone turns in the wrong direction taking the whole spine with it, and if I was to rotate the control object the spine rotates in all kinds of wrong directions something is definitely wrong here.What is the Cause? Maybe the control object and or the spine have already been rotated? The wiring is adding up all the shapes rotations on whatever axis. This affects the bones local axis with the rotation. The problem did not occur with linking because I tested the link and that worked. The problem lies with the wiring.
To solve this problem of mismatched wiring I need the control objects local axis to match the bones and then any rotation will work. Although aligning pivot points will help it does not solve the problem. I need the spine bone to be affected in relation to its current orientation not its original orientation, same goes for the control object.
I need to freeze the rotation in its current state, and start animation from there. Alt + Right click to display the animation quad menu then choose freeze rotation. This splits the rotation track into two separate tracks named ‘initial pose’ and ‘keyframe XYZ’. The initial pose track holds any rotations I have performed up to now to pose the objects, and the keyframe XYZ will hold any transforms I do from now on.
If I align the pivot points, freeze the rotations then wire together the keyframe tracks the double rotation will work. Before I show how I did this I would like to talk about controllers, A controller is a method for specifying an objects transforms. (position, rotation and scale) The default controllers allow me to move, rotate and scale objects with the buttons on the main toolbar. Other controllers might control an objects position by putting it on a path and some controllers control an objects rotation by making it look at another object. To change controllers you must go to the motion panel and expand the ‘assign contoller’ panel then you can highlight a controller and select the ‘?’ button to choose another controller. The freeze rotation option splits the original rotation controller into two controllers. To save time in changing the default rotation controller to a list controller I will use the freeze rotation option to set up the double rotation through wiring.
So:
Select the control object, go to the hierarchy panel and click affect pivot only, click the align tool and then click on the spine bone. In the align dialoge box, turn off any positional align options and turn on the XYZ Align orientation options also make sure that pivot point is selected for both the current object and the target object and click ok then turn off Affect pivot only.
The next step is to make sure the control object is still selected Alt + Rightclick to get the animation quad menu and select ‘freeze rotation’ Then select the bone spines and freeze rotations on them too. Now right click the control object and choose wire parameters, the carry on selecting transform > rotation > keyframe XYZ > x rotation. Now click the spine bone and select transform > rotation > keyframe XYZ > x rotation. Now the dialogue box will appear and we select both the keyframe XYZ on either sides, click the right arrow and then ok.
Now we test and check that the spine works all ok. Now to repeat the process for the othe control objects that will control the other parts of the spine neck etc.
This conclude the rather confusing spine section, now on to the fun section the arms, wrist and fingers.
Sunday, 7 March 2010
Post Nine
Creating the bones & rigging the legs.
In this post I will start to create the bones that will form to provide the basis for my character rig. To access the bone creation tools click systems-create-bones. In any view port I clicked once to create a bone then every time I click again another bone will be created, to finish the line of bones I right click and the nub is created, this ends the line or you can add bones later on from this nub if you wish to do so.
Once the line of bones has been created, I can modify the length width and size of fins, by using the Bone Edit Mode, found at animation-Bone tools. This will bring up a panel where you can modify all the necessary parameters. Basically the first thing to do was to line my character up in the top view port against the grid.
With my character lined up I started to create the pones for my characters legs, setting up the fins as I go, and making sure to rename all the parts so it makes selecting bones later on easily done. With one leg done I used the mirror tool in the bone edit mode, and created an exact copy, and renamed all the parts accordingly
The next part was to start to create the spine bones, all four of them, one for the neck and one for the head, name them etc. I started at the hips and worked up towards the head.One bit you must watch out for when doing it this way is that I need the spline and the legs to remain separate. When I start the spine it kept trying to connect to the bones already created, to work around this I created it a part behind the mesh then moved it into shape afterwards.
Again the fins are the hardest part to sort out, and require the most tweaking. Making sure the bone is wide enough and the fins widen it further, when I was happy with the outcome I carried on with the bones for the rest of the rig.
The arms came next, three sections for the arm, one for the palm and two bones and a nub for each of the fingers and thumb. I deleted the nub for the thumb as I won’t be needing it.
I will not be animating the hands much maybe only to hold the skateboard, if my character does a trick requiring him to do such a thing, so I tried to keep it all very simple. I used the mirror again to create the other side and renamed all the objects correctly as this will save time selecting the lot afterwards.
The final rig is complete. Now all that is left to do is setting up the IK chains; IK stands for inverse kinematics, this allows to control an entire chain by moving a child in the chain, an IK chain is a control object that allows manipulation of bones with the IK method. When it is created it appears as a crosshairs, it has special properties but if you were to click the modify tab nothing would show as most of the controls are shown on the motion panel.
Creating the IK chains for the feet; select the right calf and rotate the calf so it bends like a normal knee, this bend helps the Ik chain figure out which way it should bend, if I was to leave the leg straight it might bend in any direction unlike a normal human leg. Now select the thigh bone then choose animation > IK Solvers > HI Solver and select the right foot bone. This creates an IK chain, I created two more from the foot to the toe and the toe to the nub. Then I repeated the process for the other leg, then I renamed the IK chains to a more sensible name.
Now my chains for the legs are complete, I have 3 Ik chains for each of the legs. Now I must link the chains together, I select the first IK chain created the heel and chain to the ball, the ball to the toe and the toe to the nub and repeat the process for the other leg. To check they are all working in an hierarchy I can press the ‘h’ key to select an object and by checking the box display sub tree this shows the chains links have worked.
My legs have bones and IK chains animating my character at this stage would not be a good idea, to lift and bend well theres not much to it, but to stand on tip toes I would have to rotate all the chains individually and that’s just the leg parts, so I have decided to add a control object or two, this object would be customised to be able to move and rotate and bend the bones as they would in a human leg, it gets a bit complicated here but I managed to work the process out.
In 3ds Max one can use a box as a custom tool to do such a thing. To find the parameters to set the box up as a control object one has to navigate to Animation > Parameter Editor. This lets us connect the custom attribute to another value in the rig, First we need an extra object to control the rig, and shapes are a cool way to do this, they do not render so that’s one good aspect to consider and you don’t have to remember to hide it before rendering, in addition they use less geometry. I could use helpers such as points or dummies, but a box will be easier to create.
I have created a box underneath the foot and named it as the controlling object, copy it and position that under the other foot, and rename that one too. Now select the IKToe chain and link it to the box. Now I set the custom attribute to roll the feet. A range of 90 degrees will be used. In the parameter roll out for custom attribute I change the name to roll, set the float UI options range to 90 degrees and click add. Now on the modifier panel we can see the new parameter called roll.
Now I will use to reaction Manager to set up the Master and slaves, and the reactions for the custom Roll Attribute. I will try to explain this as best as I can but it can be rather confusing to start with, Choose Animation > Reaction Manager. In the dialog box, click add master then select the contrl box and then from the pop up menu select object, box, custom attributes, roll. Now select the IKBall and the IKToe and click the add selected and from that pop up menu select transform, IK goal, rotation, X rotation. This adds the two rotation parameters as slaves the first state has roll 0 and both chins in the rest position.
On the modify panel I pin the stack so as to show the roll parameter all the time, Now to create the reaction, one when the roll is 60 the heel will come off the ground and another 90 to have the foot in its fully rolled position. First thing to do is click the Create Mode in the reaction manager, then find the roll parameter on the modify panel and change to 60, then rotate the IKBall to 45 degrees then click Create state, then change roll to 90, rotate the IKToe to 80degress on the x axis, then rotate the ball back to 70 degrees to straighten the foot out, then click Create State. Turn off create mode. Now test the reactions by changing the roll parameter in the modify panel, if all goes well you should be able to see the foot roll smoothly as you change the roll.
This conclude this part of the Rigging process, in the next part I will sort some controls out for the spine, to twist and bend it, controls for the arms and finally the head, and hopefully when I have created these; moving, rotating and twisting the bones should be made easy just by moving the control objects I create.
In this post I will start to create the bones that will form to provide the basis for my character rig. To access the bone creation tools click systems-create-bones. In any view port I clicked once to create a bone then every time I click again another bone will be created, to finish the line of bones I right click and the nub is created, this ends the line or you can add bones later on from this nub if you wish to do so.
Once the line of bones has been created, I can modify the length width and size of fins, by using the Bone Edit Mode, found at animation-Bone tools. This will bring up a panel where you can modify all the necessary parameters. Basically the first thing to do was to line my character up in the top view port against the grid.
With my character lined up I started to create the pones for my characters legs, setting up the fins as I go, and making sure to rename all the parts so it makes selecting bones later on easily done. With one leg done I used the mirror tool in the bone edit mode, and created an exact copy, and renamed all the parts accordingly
The next part was to start to create the spine bones, all four of them, one for the neck and one for the head, name them etc. I started at the hips and worked up towards the head.One bit you must watch out for when doing it this way is that I need the spline and the legs to remain separate. When I start the spine it kept trying to connect to the bones already created, to work around this I created it a part behind the mesh then moved it into shape afterwards.
Again the fins are the hardest part to sort out, and require the most tweaking. Making sure the bone is wide enough and the fins widen it further, when I was happy with the outcome I carried on with the bones for the rest of the rig.The arms came next, three sections for the arm, one for the palm and two bones and a nub for each of the fingers and thumb. I deleted the nub for the thumb as I won’t be needing it.
I will not be animating the hands much maybe only to hold the skateboard, if my character does a trick requiring him to do such a thing, so I tried to keep it all very simple. I used the mirror again to create the other side and renamed all the objects correctly as this will save time selecting the lot afterwards.
The final rig is complete. Now all that is left to do is setting up the IK chains; IK stands for inverse kinematics, this allows to control an entire chain by moving a child in the chain, an IK chain is a control object that allows manipulation of bones with the IK method. When it is created it appears as a crosshairs, it has special properties but if you were to click the modify tab nothing would show as most of the controls are shown on the motion panel.Creating the IK chains for the feet; select the right calf and rotate the calf so it bends like a normal knee, this bend helps the Ik chain figure out which way it should bend, if I was to leave the leg straight it might bend in any direction unlike a normal human leg. Now select the thigh bone then choose animation > IK Solvers > HI Solver and select the right foot bone. This creates an IK chain, I created two more from the foot to the toe and the toe to the nub. Then I repeated the process for the other leg, then I renamed the IK chains to a more sensible name.
Now my chains for the legs are complete, I have 3 Ik chains for each of the legs. Now I must link the chains together, I select the first IK chain created the heel and chain to the ball, the ball to the toe and the toe to the nub and repeat the process for the other leg. To check they are all working in an hierarchy I can press the ‘h’ key to select an object and by checking the box display sub tree this shows the chains links have worked.
My legs have bones and IK chains animating my character at this stage would not be a good idea, to lift and bend well theres not much to it, but to stand on tip toes I would have to rotate all the chains individually and that’s just the leg parts, so I have decided to add a control object or two, this object would be customised to be able to move and rotate and bend the bones as they would in a human leg, it gets a bit complicated here but I managed to work the process out.In 3ds Max one can use a box as a custom tool to do such a thing. To find the parameters to set the box up as a control object one has to navigate to Animation > Parameter Editor. This lets us connect the custom attribute to another value in the rig, First we need an extra object to control the rig, and shapes are a cool way to do this, they do not render so that’s one good aspect to consider and you don’t have to remember to hide it before rendering, in addition they use less geometry. I could use helpers such as points or dummies, but a box will be easier to create.
I have created a box underneath the foot and named it as the controlling object, copy it and position that under the other foot, and rename that one too. Now select the IKToe chain and link it to the box. Now I set the custom attribute to roll the feet. A range of 90 degrees will be used. In the parameter roll out for custom attribute I change the name to roll, set the float UI options range to 90 degrees and click add. Now on the modifier panel we can see the new parameter called roll.
Now I will use to reaction Manager to set up the Master and slaves, and the reactions for the custom Roll Attribute. I will try to explain this as best as I can but it can be rather confusing to start with, Choose Animation > Reaction Manager. In the dialog box, click add master then select the contrl box and then from the pop up menu select object, box, custom attributes, roll. Now select the IKBall and the IKToe and click the add selected and from that pop up menu select transform, IK goal, rotation, X rotation. This adds the two rotation parameters as slaves the first state has roll 0 and both chins in the rest position.
On the modify panel I pin the stack so as to show the roll parameter all the time, Now to create the reaction, one when the roll is 60 the heel will come off the ground and another 90 to have the foot in its fully rolled position. First thing to do is click the Create Mode in the reaction manager, then find the roll parameter on the modify panel and change to 60, then rotate the IKBall to 45 degrees then click Create state, then change roll to 90, rotate the IKToe to 80degress on the x axis, then rotate the ball back to 70 degrees to straighten the foot out, then click Create State. Turn off create mode. Now test the reactions by changing the roll parameter in the modify panel, if all goes well you should be able to see the foot roll smoothly as you change the roll.
This conclude this part of the Rigging process, in the next part I will sort some controls out for the spine, to twist and bend it, controls for the arms and finally the head, and hopefully when I have created these; moving, rotating and twisting the bones should be made easy just by moving the control objects I create.
Monday, 1 March 2010
Post Eight
My Characters Profile:
Name: Travis 'Splinter' Mcfee
D.o.B: 14 July 1995
Hometown: San Jose, California
Hobbies: Skateboarding
Heroes: Rodney Mullen (pro. skateboarder)
Occupation: none still at school
Favourite bands: Suicidal Tendencies, Dead Kennedys.
Likes: Skateboarding, Socialising, Showing off.
Dislikes: School, Parents, Vegetables, Being told what to do.
Travis loves skateboarding, more then anything in his life, he loves showing off in front of his friends, but things do not always go his way and he often bails and hurts himself, his friends call him 'Splinters' because of this. When things do go his way he likes to make sure everybody knows it.
When he is not skateboarding he loves listening to his favourite bands and oftens hangs about down the beach. He hates his parents because they make him go to school and are always showing him up in front of his friends. One day he dreams of leaving home and becoming a professional skateboarder like his hero Rodney 'The Mutt' Mullen.
Post Seven
In this post I must research three films showing the type of animation I want to replicate for my character, I have chosen to animate my character on a skateboard, I would like my character to move around the stage doing tricks and avoiding obstacles that I lay before him, I want to show a running loop with one foot on the skateboard and one leg running pushing my skater forward. I would like my character to fall off his board when he attempts a trick, and I want my skater to jump and slide over the various ramps and rails I throw at him.
I have done some research of skateboarders and the way they move their bodies as they perform their tricks. The link below shows in slow motion various tricks off ramps and some 'ollies' skaters just doing tricks as they roll forward, this will definately help me animate the correct position of my skaters body.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VebNSP01hYg
In this next link you will find skaters falling over crashing, and generally hurting themselves. This will help me get my characters animation for a crash, but be warned some of the images have a cringe factor of ten, and some look like they really hurt.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-N4k49z3gHY&feature=related
This last link shows celebration, ok I know it isnt skateboarding one, but an american football touchdown celebration dance, it was probably the best one i could find but this video shows some whacky dance celebrations, which will do for my character when he accomplishes an extra hard trick.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fsxK4H1LIU&feature=related
That concludes the video research, in the next post I will create a fictional character profile for my character, which is based on the body language that he portrays.
I have done some research of skateboarders and the way they move their bodies as they perform their tricks. The link below shows in slow motion various tricks off ramps and some 'ollies' skaters just doing tricks as they roll forward, this will definately help me animate the correct position of my skaters body.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VebNSP01hYg
In this next link you will find skaters falling over crashing, and generally hurting themselves. This will help me get my characters animation for a crash, but be warned some of the images have a cringe factor of ten, and some look like they really hurt.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-N4k49z3gHY&feature=related
This last link shows celebration, ok I know it isnt skateboarding one, but an american football touchdown celebration dance, it was probably the best one i could find but this video shows some whacky dance celebrations, which will do for my character when he accomplishes an extra hard trick.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fsxK4H1LIU&feature=related
That concludes the video research, in the next post I will create a fictional character profile for my character, which is based on the body language that he portrays.
Sunday, 21 February 2010
Progress So Far
Week Five
This image shows where I am up to at the moment; I have completed modelling the low poly character, have set the lighting and the stage where i will animate my character. I have just a skateboard to model then all the modelling is complete. The next task ist to create, rig and skin the model to the bones so animation can begin. As I will be creating the bones from scratch this might take a week or two, leaving four or five weeks for the animation. I am keeping to my schedule that I set out for my self and am happy with the standard of work that I am creating. The future tasks are daunting but there are several tutorials out there in books and on the internet to sufficiently help with these tasks.
This image shows where I am up to at the moment; I have completed modelling the low poly character, have set the lighting and the stage where i will animate my character. I have just a skateboard to model then all the modelling is complete. The next task ist to create, rig and skin the model to the bones so animation can begin. As I will be creating the bones from scratch this might take a week or two, leaving four or five weeks for the animation. I am keeping to my schedule that I set out for my self and am happy with the standard of work that I am creating. The future tasks are daunting but there are several tutorials out there in books and on the internet to sufficiently help with these tasks.
Post Six
Creating the hair.
In this part I will be creating the hair; I will be making it with primitive objects, as this is a low poly character. In the top view port I create a sphere just bigger then the head, with a few segments and will be using the hemisphere option to only create half a sphere.
Next I select the curved polygons and bevel a new section so the hair will be somewhat away from the face.
This next image shows me selecting some random polygons and bevelling them down to create some wisps of hair.
Now I will select these polygons and extrude them down the back of the neck, to fill out the rest of my models hair.
Now comes the hard part moving the edges and vertices of the hair I have created to cover parts of the face. This part was hard because I could not rotate the hair in all the view ports. Time had to be spent correcting the move on the entire axis. My basic hair is complete, now to pick a golden brown colour.
And add a turbo smooth to finish it all off.
In this part I will be creating the hair; I will be making it with primitive objects, as this is a low poly character. In the top view port I create a sphere just bigger then the head, with a few segments and will be using the hemisphere option to only create half a sphere.
Next I select the curved polygons and bevel a new section so the hair will be somewhat away from the face.
This next image shows me selecting some random polygons and bevelling them down to create some wisps of hair.
Now I will select these polygons and extrude them down the back of the neck, to fill out the rest of my models hair.
Now comes the hard part moving the edges and vertices of the hair I have created to cover parts of the face. This part was hard because I could not rotate the hair in all the view ports. Time had to be spent correcting the move on the entire axis. My basic hair is complete, now to pick a golden brown colour.
And add a turbo smooth to finish it all off.
Post Five
The Head
The next part of the modelling process is the head and I am going to continue the box modelling technique and model the head from a box, I am adding a few segments to make this process a little bit easier.
The spherify modifier is added to shape the box like a sphere.
Unfortunately this has caused the object to show the edges of the box, the only way to turn this off is to try to add the object to s smoothing group, Smoothing groups are found at the face or polygon sub object level, and only affects the way the object is shaded or rendered it does not affect the shape.
Under the polygon sub object mode select all the polygons of the sphere and add them to smoothing group 1 in the polygon properties roll out section.
The first step is to try to shape the head in the left and front view ports. This is done in vertex mode, and I started to move, scale and rotate them till the basic shape was formed.
With the basic shape complete, I selected all the polygons at the back of the head in the left or top view port and in the ‘edit geometry’ roll out, clicked Hide Selected. This will hide the back section so I do not accidentally click on vertices and move or mess it up.
Now to create some features, In edge sub object mode, I selected edges for the eyes, and used the chamfer tool to create new edges to form the outline of the eyes.
Using the same process as before, select the edge for the nose and chamfer to create the outline of a nose.
And finally the same process is used for the mouth.
Now to move a few vertices around the eye to create an eye socket, I think I scaled the pairs of vertices down to create a nicer shape.
The next part was to depress the eye sockets into the head, so to do this I selected all the polygons that made up the eye, and bevelled them into the head.
All the time I was applying a turbo smooth and switching it on and off, checking how the final image would turn out, this helped my endeavours in the long run. So I did not veer off the route as it were.
Everything is looking great, There were a couple of vertices that I had to use the collapse tool on, these were near the corners of the eye. I do not know what happened but they are all fixed now.
This next image shows me cutting new geometry with the cut tool, this handy tool is found in edge mode roll out, I had to cut the edges to prepare for adding more detail to the nose.
To extend the nose, I selected the new polygons had cut, and added a simple extrude, in the polygon sub object mode
This next image shows the vertices I had been left with, there are far too many, and all getting quite complex, but 3ds max’s handy collapse tool soon sorted this out.
The next simple stage of my models head, is to reshape the nose in the left view port.
I selected all the polygons that make up the lips, and extruded them out, then in vertex mode, tried to reshape the mouth area, and at the corner of the mouth collapsed the vertices until some simple geometry was left.
My skater seems a tad unhappy, maybe he fell over. Further tweaking is required, the lips or mouth area is just not right. I feel this part will be a constant problem area that needs attention.
Here I start to add more geometry, I cut new edges and try to create a new loop around each eye and around the nose, I am trying to make edge loops that make deformation easier, This will ultimately make animation easier.
Constant tweaking and moving or vertices around the mouth and basic shape of nose and my model is somewhat better than it looked before, this is requiring time I do not have.
More tweaking and I am much happier with the result.
Selecting all the polygons I set them to Set ID 1 on the polygon properties roll out. I am selecting the various polygons to color them.
The four polygons that make up the eyes will be set to ID 2.
And the lips were set to ID 3. Then in the material editor, I selected the multi/ sub-object map and replaced the standard map with it. Clicked 3 to set the number of colours and found three colours and added them to the various ID’s. One for the skin tone, white for the eyes and pink for the lips.
To create a better eye, I selected the second colour in the Multi/sub-object material, changed the diffuse to gradient map, changed gradient type to radial and interpolation to solid. Then by dragging and adding new flags picked three new colours to make the eye, it did not show at first and I had to add a UVW map to the polygons that made up the eye and click view align and change the tiling and offset options in the material panel and move the material in the socket. Eventually it looks quite good for how easy the whole process was.
This concludes my low poly head, I will have to load my body and select the same skin tone for both models, and in the next post I will be trying to create some hair for my character, and merging the two files together and finishing my characters modelling so I can get started on the rig for animation.
The next part of the modelling process is the head and I am going to continue the box modelling technique and model the head from a box, I am adding a few segments to make this process a little bit easier.
The spherify modifier is added to shape the box like a sphere.
Unfortunately this has caused the object to show the edges of the box, the only way to turn this off is to try to add the object to s smoothing group, Smoothing groups are found at the face or polygon sub object level, and only affects the way the object is shaded or rendered it does not affect the shape.Under the polygon sub object mode select all the polygons of the sphere and add them to smoothing group 1 in the polygon properties roll out section.
The first step is to try to shape the head in the left and front view ports. This is done in vertex mode, and I started to move, scale and rotate them till the basic shape was formed.
With the basic shape complete, I selected all the polygons at the back of the head in the left or top view port and in the ‘edit geometry’ roll out, clicked Hide Selected. This will hide the back section so I do not accidentally click on vertices and move or mess it up.Now to create some features, In edge sub object mode, I selected edges for the eyes, and used the chamfer tool to create new edges to form the outline of the eyes.
Using the same process as before, select the edge for the nose and chamfer to create the outline of a nose.
And finally the same process is used for the mouth.
Now to move a few vertices around the eye to create an eye socket, I think I scaled the pairs of vertices down to create a nicer shape.
The next part was to depress the eye sockets into the head, so to do this I selected all the polygons that made up the eye, and bevelled them into the head.
All the time I was applying a turbo smooth and switching it on and off, checking how the final image would turn out, this helped my endeavours in the long run. So I did not veer off the route as it were.
Everything is looking great, There were a couple of vertices that I had to use the collapse tool on, these were near the corners of the eye. I do not know what happened but they are all fixed now.
This next image shows me cutting new geometry with the cut tool, this handy tool is found in edge mode roll out, I had to cut the edges to prepare for adding more detail to the nose.
To extend the nose, I selected the new polygons had cut, and added a simple extrude, in the polygon sub object mode
This next image shows the vertices I had been left with, there are far too many, and all getting quite complex, but 3ds max’s handy collapse tool soon sorted this out.
The next simple stage of my models head, is to reshape the nose in the left view port.
I selected all the polygons that make up the lips, and extruded them out, then in vertex mode, tried to reshape the mouth area, and at the corner of the mouth collapsed the vertices until some simple geometry was left.
My skater seems a tad unhappy, maybe he fell over. Further tweaking is required, the lips or mouth area is just not right. I feel this part will be a constant problem area that needs attention.
Here I start to add more geometry, I cut new edges and try to create a new loop around each eye and around the nose, I am trying to make edge loops that make deformation easier, This will ultimately make animation easier.
Constant tweaking and moving or vertices around the mouth and basic shape of nose and my model is somewhat better than it looked before, this is requiring time I do not have.
More tweaking and I am much happier with the result.
Selecting all the polygons I set them to Set ID 1 on the polygon properties roll out. I am selecting the various polygons to color them.
The four polygons that make up the eyes will be set to ID 2.
And the lips were set to ID 3. Then in the material editor, I selected the multi/ sub-object map and replaced the standard map with it. Clicked 3 to set the number of colours and found three colours and added them to the various ID’s. One for the skin tone, white for the eyes and pink for the lips.
To create a better eye, I selected the second colour in the Multi/sub-object material, changed the diffuse to gradient map, changed gradient type to radial and interpolation to solid. Then by dragging and adding new flags picked three new colours to make the eye, it did not show at first and I had to add a UVW map to the polygons that made up the eye and click view align and change the tiling and offset options in the material panel and move the material in the socket. Eventually it looks quite good for how easy the whole process was.
This concludes my low poly head, I will have to load my body and select the same skin tone for both models, and in the next post I will be trying to create some hair for my character, and merging the two files together and finishing my characters modelling so I can get started on the rig for animation.
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