What am i - WIP - 52

What am i - WIP - 52, originally uploaded by James D Thompson.

This is the final look for the room, a few more textures to change (mainly the green part of the wall to the left) but im happy with the rest and the lighting so ill be signing this part of very soon :)

Another reason to use Digital tutors

If you ever did need another reason to use digital tutors here's a prime example. I was having trouble scaling some muscles with my rig so I posted a question on there help forum to see if anyone knew. At first I was just expecting no one to answer or at best a small comment or link to something but not too long after posting, one of the DT staff actually went out of his way to create a small video tutorial on how to do it. Its this quality of service that relay distinguishes digital tutors from other tutoring services.


Ask DT - scaling maya muscles? from Digital-Tutors on Vimeo.

What am i - WIP - 51

What am i - WIP - 51, originally uploaded by James D Thompson.

Using dynamics is helpful even if its not used in the correct way. Here i needed to attach this power unit to the robots chest, however I didn't want it to deform so i couldn't skin it the same way i did the chest. Also couldn't just parent it out use geometry constraints as it wouldn't stick to the mesh and when the spine is animated it would detach.

So i used Maya hair :D. Maya hair works by having dynamic hair attached to the mesh with hair follicles; the follicles are a small node that sticks to a surface using its uv information. So i made one hair follicle, deleted the hair as i didn't need it and just parent constrained the power unit mesh to the follicle. This way it follows along with the mesh perfectly with no deformation even-though the chest is deforming :D.

Road Runner 3D: Coyote Falls

Superb animated short "Coyote Falls". I saw this a few months ago as the intro to the film "Cats and dogs 2". At first I thought "oh god they've jumped on the 3D bandwagon" not knocking 3D but I just think some classic 2D cartoons should stay in that medium. However after watching it I was surprised as to how well they have kept it to the original and this opens up a whole new area of 3D where more cartoon style over the top deformation is possible. In the past its been hard to get this sort of cartoon animation due to restriction in rigging, If you want a 2d character to stretch and grow multiple arms at the same time you just need to draw them but in 3D you need the integrate them with the rig and the characters mesh and make them all work together. However in recent years we have seen more of this 3D over the top cartoon animation like Presto and Bob, Bob is literately a blob with 2 arms but the stuff he can achieve is awesome and fun to watch :). With the advances in 3D animation it seems this sort of rigging and dynamics is becoming more available so hopefully in the future we will see more of these amazing animations :D

What am i - WIP - 50

What am i - WIP - 50, originally uploaded by James D Thompson.

Finishing the blocking out the animation.

Just by adding a simple rig to the main camera has helped a whole lot with the camera animation, trying to get nice arcs between shots can be hard when animating from one pivot point. In this shot the 1st camera arm lifts the camera up, the camera handle rotates to track the robot, then the main controls is slowly moving along the floor which has given quite a nice camera movement :).

The actual camera for the rig is just numbs curves parented together to make something like an actual film camera tripod on a track.

pmG Dare To Share $10 CG Software Challenge

pmG Dare To Share $10 CG Software Challenge

Digital Tutors January winner

WIP - Ornamental Ball - 08, originally uploaded by James D Thompson.

www.digitaltutors.com/forum/showthread.php?25301-Jan11-Contest-Winner!

So chuffed that my entry won the January competition :D

What am i - WIP - 49

What am i - WIP - 49, originally uploaded by James D Thompson.

Rigging is a different type of art.

Im using referencing so im able to animate and update the rig as i please in a different file :).

It was hard to skin at first as the separate polygon object have to have seamless paint weights where they meet, otherwise they would separate when animates giving gaps.

Ive also been using Muscles but for the most par ive been sticking with the normal skinning. However for small parts that sit on the end of each muscles ive used the muscle skinning, this makes it easier for the smaller parts to follow along with the muscles instead of setting up a load of set driven keys and constraints.

The muscles on the neck were tricky as you cannot use muscle weights and skinning weight together, you have to convert to one. the problem was that the chest using a joint based spine so it must be skinned to joints, so to get around this i attached some joints to the muscles and have them skinned to the chest as well. This way the muscle drive some joints that drive the mesh so avoiding muscle weights :D

There are quite a lot of joints in the shot above but not all of them are used for skinning. Things like the spine has a set of driver joints, these are joints that drive other things to make the rig work but shouldn't be used to skin with.

blend test

blend test, originally uploaded by James D Thompson.

Just a HD blend-test for showing some models in wire-frame. might include this as a turntable render for my show-reel.

Cheers for the comments

When posting work and tutorials on here and you-tube it often feels like throwing a pebble into the ocean and not really making much of an impact. However for checking my Google mail (which I don't check often) iv just found some nice feedback from people who read this blog and watch my tutorials. Cheers for the feedback im glad I can help and im happy you take the time to read and watch my videos, ill try make some more soon :)

Dean's complete rig

Dean's complete rig, originally uploaded by James D Thompson.

Character by Ilze Kolosovska, I'm just doing the rigging :)

This is the final rig for Dean. He was a bit awkward as his limbs are small and chubby so it was essential where the joint were placed on his legs and arms.

The rigs main functions include IK to FK arms, stretchy arms and legs and a stretchy n-spine. The screen shot on the left shows the entire rig with all its components (no including node based systems) and the shot to the right shows what the animator will actually see so the rest is there just hidden working behind the scenes.

WIP - Ornamental Ball - 05

WIP - Ornamental Ball - 05, originally uploaded by James D Thompson.

What am i - WIP - 48

What am i - WIP - 48, originally uploaded by James D Thompson.

I decided to merge the whole thing as it makes it look more realistic. From doing this I had to correct the topology but now I'm happy as it looks quite nice and clean and ill be able to use it in other projects.

as the heart is going to be removed from a character i dint want to make it too complicated to al the different vain and arteries all converge to a main port.

I have a few designs for what holds the hears, mainly a fluid filled sack but at the moment im still not sure

What am i - WIP - 47

What am i - WIP - 47, originally uploaded by James D Thompson.

Starting on one of the main props, the robot/human heart.

I was tempted to use a free model for the heart but i decided to give it a go and make it myself. I thought it would be harder than it actually was so hopefully ill have it finished soon. The idea is that its a human heart hooked up to some mechanical and electrical systems. It will be used when the robot realises it wasn't original his and decides to remove it and give it to another robot, sacrificing himself.

At first i was going to have some sort of glowing iron man fully mechanical heart but as the story has changed slightly i decided to make it a real hear, also i think this will strengthen the emotions as a real hear seems more of a symbolical sacrifice than a fake one.

What am i - WIP - 46

What am i - WIP - 46, originally uploaded by James D Thompson.

Ah, dynamics can save a lot of time. For some props iv used dynamics in order to get a quicker and more realistic result. One example of this is where the wire's dangle from the ceiling, instead of modelling each wire or using curves, i simply used maya hair, added gravity and set it to collide with the floor and other props, then used the hair curves to loft along.

In the example above, this prop isn't the main focus so i didn't want to spent too much time making it, its just to hint there's a body underneath. So i made a simple human figure, made a plane the size of the cloth and used the nCloth dynamics for the cloth to collide resulting in a quick and easy cloth prop. After this I can still add some more details with the sculpt geometry tool but ill then delete the history and past it into the main file so its just a polygon mesh object with no ncloth.

What am i - WIP - 45

What am i - WIP - 45, originally uploaded by James D Thompson.

This is a render of the new props to see if they need any changes. Some look a bit bland as they don't have any textures yet.

Im quite happy with the lighting so far but i still might dim it down a little, the medical light doesn't have any lights yes,its just a surface shader glow, so i might dim that area down so most of the light is emitted from the medical light. I might also try adding -light, using programs like unreal engine 3 when you add a light with an negative intensity it removes light from that area, not sure if it works in Maya though.

Another method I might try out is light linking. This is a way of setting what the light can actually illuminate (by default its set to everything), so for example i could have some lights on the floor that only illuminate the ceiling, this way the walls stay the same and the lights don't effect a character walking over them but they can help illuminate the roof and fake a large amount of secondary illumination that you would get with using final gather.

What am i - WIP - 44

What am i - WIP - 44, originally uploaded by James D Thompson.

Just a wire frame shot of the new layout and props. I will be adding more props in the area and some more details soon.

The little black dots scattered around the scene is the map vis of the global illumination . These dots tell me where the GI photons are going and areas they might be too many or too little.

What am i - WIP - 43

What am i - WIP - 43, originally uploaded by James D Thompson.

As the story has changed, so has the atmosphere of the room.

I've made a few more key props and will be texturing them soon. So far there are only 7 lights, 5 for the ceiling and 2 from the window and hole in the wall. I've set up the lights with global illumination as it reduces the render time considerably. This render only uses global illumination and no final gather.

I've now got more time and a better idea of what happening in this animation so hopefully ill be able to get a lot more done :)

Oliver rig - WIP - 07

Oliver rig - WIP - 07, originally uploaded by James D Thompson.

Hi, this is a wip of a rig I'm creating for Ilze Kolosovska, the character is 100% her's I'm just doing the rigging :)

I've started with the arms and legs and setting up an IK FK switch for them both. Also ill be making them stretchy limbs and spine :D.

Hopefully ill be able to include this and some other rigs I'm working on in my individual project.

Ilze's work : www.flickr.com/photos/sniegasunc

Sneaky Russian dogs - Facial animation

This is the final version of my facial animation :D