Viza644: September 2010

For this 644 project I will be creating a face rig for my flying monkey character. The final product will be an addition to my demo reel, showing off the capabilities of the rig.

My focus on this project is to complete a facial rig with a broad range of expressiveness which is needed for Feature Animation.

My process will be to develop a facial rig system with a controllable GUI (hopefully scripted). The system will attempt to have direct controls(joints/clusters) working in conjunction with blendshapes. The blendshapes will provide a set of art directed targets that all animators would have access to, and ensuring all poses are consistent. Direct controls allow the animator to move past the linear transformations that are typical of blendshapes and provide the animator with more organic layered shapes. The downside is that it becomes more difficult for animators to match facial poses.

The best of both worlds is to have direct controls that work in conjuntion with blendshapes. A set of pre-modeled shapes that are art directed will supply broad global motion for character poses, and a series of direct controls will add deformation on top of blendshapes to achieve an organic free form layered animation.

Remaining Schedule:

Week of Oct 31 Basic Head and Face Joints, Eyes

Week of Nov 7 Continue Blendshapes

Week of Nov 14 Layer direct controls

Week of Nov 21 Tweaks / GUI control system

Week of Nov 28 GUI control system

Week of Dec 5 Rig Demo

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Monkey Face Rig

The goal of this project is to add a facial rig to my flying monkey. I am basing my facial references on gorillas and other apes. I want to keep this a realistic character opposed to a cartoony one. My initial intent is to use clusters instead of blend shapes. The final product would be a time based facial exercise. I expect this to be about 5 - 6 weeks.

Over the weekend I started adding the interior of the mouth, starting with teeth.

Reference:

http://williamcalvin.com/portraits/gorilla.htm

http://www.popgive.com/2008/03/pictures-of-shaved-gorilla.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnbKzDkZktQ&NR=1&feature=fvwp

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

preliminary bone diagram

Form, Content, Method

Form - For my project I will be creating character rigs for future use on a demo reel.

Content - This project is about successfully rigging two characters as well as props. The rigs will be used by Leticia in her Ski project.

Method - I will develop a script for a a biped cartoon rig that can be applied to both characters. The characters will be able to squash and stretch. I will work with Leticia to make sure that the rigs are suitable to perform the required animation.