Hulkey Face Modeling WIP 3

Left to right: Smoothed version, Base Mesh

Face more or less done. Gonna model the ears, inside of the mouth and hair now. Probably going to do some facial rigging tests to test the topology before moving on to the body.

Hulkey Face Modeling WIP 2

Defined basic edge loop flow in the face.

Hulkey Face Modeling WIP 1

Just defined the basic shape of the head.

Some Maya Python Tips & Tricks

Some useful information I found online. Thanks to all these helpful people on the net! ;)

From http://riggerman.animationblogspot.com
Ryan Trowbridge has pointed out a faster way of computing the deformations:
Most (if not all) of the devkit examples set the points positions one by one while iterating the mesh points, but this method is slower and since our deformation isn’t neighbor dependent or anything like that, we can set the points position all at once using MItGeometry.allPositions ().
In his own words: “The problem with this is that when the node goes to deform, it is iterating through x amount of vertices and each time it iterates it updates the scene using setPosition() So a 10,000 vertice mesh is updating the scene 10,000 times (…) The reason this one is faster is it get all the vertices and sets all the vertices at once“.

Well, to do this we need to create a MPointArray object to store the information we need. This line goes before the iteration loop:

allPoints = OpenMaya.MPointArray()

Now, inside the loop we can replace the setPosition line for this one:

allPoints.append(point+normalVec)

This will insert each point value in the point array object, so we can pass on this big list all at once to the final command, that goes right outside the loop:

geomIter.setAllPositions(allPoints)

Maya API docs demystified for Python Users

Final Hulkey Design

Think this is more or less what I want now, thanks to comments from all my friends:

Tweaked the proportions a little: Made the head smaller to make the body feel larger, less blocky legs, maintained the blocky hands and feet, a little more curvy now instead of the totally box-like figure before, and legs are now shorter compared to the body.

Next up, face modeling.

Still exploring Hulkey designs...

Hmmm due to comments from a friend, still continuing to explore the shape and proportion of Hulkey. Comment was that the one I had before is too blocky, which is kinda true as well.

If I wanna go cartoony, might as well try and experiment more. Here goes:

Face model sheet with some test expressions

Somehow Hulkey doesn't look too good with any other expressions except being angry. :)

Hulkey body model sheet up

Not very well done, but at least something to start with. :)

Hulkey Rig Wishlist

Body Rig

• IK/FK seamless switching (context menu?)
• Stretchy Soft IK (python plugin or rig)
• Multi-purpose math node (python plugin)
• Volume Preservation
• - Muscle plugin/joints
• - Skin wrap deformer (python plugin)
• > One skin wrap to multiple surfaces (NURBS or polygons)
• > Paintable weights
• - Pose Space Deformations
• > Rewrite poseReader in python
• > Rewrite PSD in python?
• "Sculpable" layered body deformations
• Simple secondary animation on hair using "delay" python node
• Cloth sim on pants

Facial Rig

• Adaptable Facial Rigging tool
• Pseudo "skin-sliding" joint-driven facial rig that adheres to director-approved shapes/look
• Facial GUI in Maya
• Sticky lips
• Take note of necessary controls under the eyes for more facial movement
• Pupil dilation
• Ability to shape eyelids (3 joints to control surface of lids?)
• On-surface controls? Direct face manipulation without controls?
• Teeth translation controls
• Remember to have upper lips down and lower lips up instead of just lips in shape
• "Sculpable" layered facial deformations
• "vert snap" deformer node to stick overall body to the face alone

Tools

• Rewrite AutoRig tool with interface (Mel or pyQT)
• Customizable Character UI (Mel/pyQT/HTML)

Fresh Start - Hulkey

Been a while since I update this. Wanna start a new project again: Hulkey

First, some links to facial modeling/edge loops:

http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a84/Monkey_Knife_Fight/EdgeLoop1.jpg

http://www.digitaltutors.com/forum/showthread.php?p=35554

http://student.vfs.com/~3d68max/wip.html

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_67UBjbW3Mho/Stn5oGMttJI/AAAAAAAACLk/ZZeVp4nydKg/s320/topology.jpg

http://arildwiro.com/tutorials/tutorials.html