Hulkey Body Modeling Done!

Think I will call this done for now. Don't wanna go overly detailed too since Hulkey is supposed to be cartoony. Sculpted his arms, legs and torso to define the shape and form of the musculature of the body without adding too much details. Now rigging can start! :)

Hulkey Body Modeling WIP 2

Defined the shoulders and back more now. Added in the actual head now plus the base mesh of the hands. Played around with the size of the head and I find that this looks best. What do you think?

Next will be adding the toes and giving the rest of the body more definition.

Hulk Rage

I just thought this looks amazing and wanna share:

Hulkey Body Modeling WIP 1

Super busy recently at work. Only managed to scrap a little time at night. Body so far...

Maya Python - smSoftIK plugin node

Finally had my first try at Maya Python API. Surprisingly (because I'm so used to the C++ way), implementing plugins using Maya Python API is really fast and easy. Took some time to get used to it, but really loving it now. :)

Demo of the softIK plugin node I created over the weekend:

• Reduce the "popping" of IK rigs when the joint chain straightens
• Ability to adjust and animate the soft limit
• AutoStretchiness already built into the plugin node, thus saving a bunch of multiplyDivide, plusMinusAverage or condition nodes in the rig

All thanks to the theory shared by Andy Nicholas!
http://www.xsi-blog.com/archives/109

Maya Python - Getting Points & Normals from MItGeometry all at once

From Adam Mechtley in Maya-Python mailing list:

Yes—it stores the result in the object you pass as a parameter, since it is passed by reference. As per my example:

meshIter0 = OpenMaya.MItGeometry(dag1)

points = OpenMaya.MPointArray()

meshIter0.allPositions(points, ObjectSpace)

# all the points are now stored in the points object

normals = OpenMaya.MVectorArray()

meshIter1.getNormals(normals, ObjectSpace)

# all the normals are now stored in the normals object

Hulkey Face Modeling Done!

Took a longer time than expected. After evaluating it further, I had to rework the face topology. Finally done with gums, teeth & hair as well. Gonna stick to this resolution for now to see how much deformation I can achieve before deciding to upRes it (which I'm guessing I probably will need to).

Just a note on my workflow. I am still planning to go with the joint-based facial setup, but first, I will be modeling all the defined shapes, and then match up the performance of the joint-based facial setup to achieve the modeled shapes. This is to emulate the actual production situation whereby all the facial setups of the character have to be "in-model", that is, approved and defined by the director (That is the reason why most production facial setups are still blendshape-based). To summarise:

1. Joint-based facial setup to simulate "skin-sliding" effect of the controls
2. Model actual blendshape targets to define the look and feel of the character
3. Make use of the blendshape targets as additional corrective shapes of the facial setup

Next step: Rough blocking of the body. Just wanted to roughly define the shape of the shoulders and neck first to lock down my face geometry.