Rhino Beetle:Rough Render

                                     

My first rig of finals is complete! I am overall very happy with it! Jacob Ford did an amazing job on the animation! Features include rfl feet with working toes. Space switching on the hands and feet so that the animator does not need to move them much when the character is flying. Space switching on the arms so that you can pull them off and such. simple facial rig. IKFK arms with fk and attribute driven fingers. The wings have both independent controls and are expression driven so that the animator does not have to animate wing flap, he/she needs only to turn on the attribute that drives the animation. IK legs, independent clavicles and hips. I am very happy with the out come of this rig.

Thank you Jacob Ford for the animation

Thank you Tre Vital for the model

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Rhino Beetle: WIP: Wing Test

Update on my RhinoBeetle: I have done some work on the wings. I fixed them so that they look like they open up more naturally. I connected the controls using multiply divide nodes and added a master wing control that will control both. Both wings can be moved individually. I also wrote a sin expression for the wings to flutter that can be turned on an off with an attribute.

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Muscular Study: Maya Blend Shapes Test

For my finals classes, one of my assets is going to be a generic male model. I am working to make it so that it have realistic muscle deformation. I am experimenting with with maya blend shapes and looking into working with maya muscles. I have been researching like mad to find good reference for muscle deformation, everything from work out videos to myself standing in a mirror. On this test, I have focused on the bicep and tricep.
Model by Andrew Hwan

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Facial Rig: WIP 03: Mouth Set Up: Weighting Test

I have been working on preparing my assets for the rest of finals. For month 2 of finals, I am working on a facial rig. Here is a quick clip of my test of my mouth set up. I am using the head of Astro Girl from the Rigging Forum. I am planning on using a mix of joints and blend shapes. But for right now I have just joints driven by multiply/divide nodes set to different values based on the position of each joint. I am planning on creating sticky lips and using blend shapes to fine tune the shapes.
model by: Shane Bouthillier

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Rhino Beetle Rig: Test 01

A quick video of the rig I have been working on this month. It is a very nice model of a rhino beetle modeled by Tre Vital. This a was a very tedious rig due to the model having four arms. I will have to come up with a script to allow me to create attributes faster. This rig has four IKFK systems because of its four arms. Each hand has fk fingers that can be hidden and driven by attributes the icon on top of the wrist. I used orient constraints and visibility swaps for the IKFK switch so that when it is switched back and forth the wrist can be controlled using one icon. As for the feet I used a reverse foot lock system to give me my foot motions. For the face I used a simple joint based rig for the eyebrows and eyes, and I still have a lot of tweaks and blend shapes I need to make before it is complete. Please let me know what you think, critiques are alway appreciated!

-Aaron  

                                                    Click Here For Video!

Spy Animation Shot02 Passes

In my class this month, we are not learning anything new, I am fine-tuning my skills as an animator and  working to produce two shots for a short movie that we will put together at the end of the month. I was assigned shot two and five out of twelve. In shot two, spy bugsy, is attempting to reach a window that is too high for him. I had to animate him trying to reach the window.

(please note that there are about 5 to 6 different revised versions of each pass)

pass 01 - Blocking  

pass 02  - Breakdowns

pass 03 - Clean Up

Particle Simulation In Houdini

For this project, I decided to be a little random and give a turtle a shower. To do this, I used Houdini's particle emitter to simulate a shower and a model of a tortoise set to be a static object. This project seemed  to take me a ridiculous amount of time. I think mostly because my lap top isn't powerful enough to handle such a heavy load. This was not my favorite project.