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

Beast Facial Setup

Finally finished this. Still some refinements to be done, but I'm moving on for now. Will revisit it again when I have time towards the end.


- Joint/Cluster-based
- Pseudo skin sliding
- 3 levels of animator controls

Moving on to body skinning/muscle setup.

Beast Rig WIP 2

Second WIP.

- Auto IK/FK matching/switching

- No-pop space switching for Hand IK controls

- Reset Rig function

- Select/Deselect All Controls

- Mirror Selected Controls/All Left to Right/All Right to Left

- Flip Selected/All Controls

Moving on to facial next.

Exclusive First Episode Clip of Clone Wars

IGN showing an exclusive first episode clip of the Clone Wars TV series. Our episode! :)

Cartoon Network trailer on Clone Wars

Starts airing in US on October 3rd. Eager to see how's the reaction to the TV series, which is what the studio at Singapore worked on. :)

Beast Rig WIP 1

Yup revisiting the Beast model again. This is part of the Muscle Rig project that I've been wanting to work on for quite some time now.

Body rig's completed. With Picker Interface as well.

- IK/FK Stretchy Limbs

- Ribbon Spine (Twist from both ends)

- Ribbon Neck (Auto-twisting with head rotation)

Here's the WIP:

Next up:

- Script for no-jump IK/FK switching

- Script for no-jump IK Hand space switching

- Mirror/Flip Pose

Activity Update

Been really busy recently at work with the upcoming new season and various rigging development and issues to attend to.

Helping a friend with his short film at home too, rigging his 5 main characters. Once they are done, I will be posting snippets of it here, subjected to his approval of course, which I'm sure he will have no problems with that. In the midst of rigging the characters, I have been organising my scripts and tools at home, and re-writing my auto-rig tool. By the end of it, I believe I will have a solid set of tools for my rigging needs.

And after that, it will be back to my to do list again:
- muscle rigging
- mechanical facial rigging

Long Overdue Facial Rigging WIP

Just realise I have not posted this to my blog yet. It's a long overdue video of the CGTalk Unofficial Facial Rigging Challenge. It's sort of an idea that I've been wanting to explore further: Mechanical Facial Rigging.

Clone Wars theatrical trailer's out

It's been a while since I updated this space. I have been really packed with lots of stuff all these while, from taking up new hobbies, to getting more and more responsibilities in my job.

On a side note, here's what I have been working on for the past 1.5 years:

















The theatrical release trailer of The Clone Wars is out! Movie's showing in US on 15th Aug 2008. Even though the parts we did are not actually in this theatrical release, it is still exciting to know that all the hard work we have put in is going to be publicly shown soon. :)

Watch it here.

If you are interested in the HD quality trailer, get it here.

Stay tuned for the actual screening of all the episodes on Cartoon Network starting this Oct!

Hyper-real Facial Rigging 2

Spent some time reading up and researching on the muscle line of actions on the face that are necessary and sufficient to achieve good facial animation. Build the facial GUI for these controls too. Here's a screen cap so far:

Hyper-real Facial Rigging

Gonna spend some time on the CGTalk Unofficial Rigging Challenge 2 on a hyper-real facial rig.

Did a few things:
- Some basic setting up of head/neck/eye joints
- Simple rigging of the eyes via aim constraints
- First pass skinning of geometry to the head, neck and jaw joints



Ideas:
- Since it is a hyper-real rig, I will be tuning my rig towards pseudo-muscle setup.
- Idea is to have a base head that is blendshaped to the actual renderable head, with all the rigging and extra stuff done on that base head. So the actual head will be "clean".
- Rig will be entirely made up of joints. Will add in some blendshapes if time allows.
- There will be a facial interface beside the face made up of curves for the controls, with on-face controls to fine tune the face if needed.