shaunf

If I get a spare moment I'll record a tutorial if people would like. The setup is very much like Raf Anzovins facial setup except instead of doing the many up-down, and side to side lower level controls for each spline moving away from the face (VERY fiddly and time consuming...), I assign a single bone, and use cp weight falloff for each spline to ensure a gradual lessening of movement of the spline the further away from the face. I then create similar sorts of poses as with the Anzovin facial setup, with lower level and higher level controls. The bones make it MUCH easier to do, because the can be moved up-down, left-right etc and they work perfectly in relation to each other (and its much faster to create, as there is no individual tweaking of cps!!!). Also when animating its VERY easy to go in and tweak an expression using a lower level slider and expect it to work without screwing up your current expression. One of the other benefits of doing it this way is that the bones naturally follow an arc, so aesthetically I've found it looks much better than the standard cp slider movement which (unless you put in lots of keyframes to animate a curve) end up just moving in a straight line. IF I get a chance however, I'll record a tute. (No promises though. Its hard enough squeezing in my animation at the best of time. I write this at 6.30 on a saturday morning before anyone wakes up - baby included )

Great stuff! Very detailed work indeed.

Thanks for the comments and suggestions. Re: the eye movement, (aside from the already identified 'odd' movement at the word 'rank'), the idea was the she was talking to two or so kids sitting in front of her, so she started off addressing them (looking from one to the other), she then looked up and to the left almost rhapsodising about how happy she is that they might be dissenting giving her the opportunity to give them more manual labour, (the big glance to the left doesn't work, but I'll sort that one out). She then looks down at the kids she's talking to again, again looking from one to the other. I guess that doesn't come across very well? I'm still to put in the cheek movement (squinty cheeks, etc etc) and eyebrows. I'll work on that this evening. Thanks again for the suggestions. I appreciate it!

The voice over is Robyn Williams in Mrs Doubtfire. Hi J. Baker, I agree with your comments re: the eye movement, and had already thought it looked a little odd. I'll definately fix that one tonight. Thanks for the comments!

Thanks Sam, Thats great advice. I'll have a go and see how it works tonight.

Last night I did a small lip sync to test the rigging of my remodelled mother wren. It's not quite done (still need to do a little tweaking), but I'd be interested in peoples comments, suggestions etc. http://www.shaunfreeman.com/motherwren_sync.htm

Wonderful!!

Awwright! I've been waiting for you to fire up that project again. I remember you originally posting your demo reel stuff and being interested in that short film project. I'm looking forward to seeing it develop

Hey Hey!! We're all making bugs. I like it Graham. Perhaps to make the face more expressive, shift the eyes more to the front add some very basic pupils, and model in some very basic eyebrows. Its a fine balance. If you make it to human, it looks creepy, if you make it too bug like it looks odd. You're on the right track though I think.

Great stuff John. Your attention to detail is really nice and the bevelled edges of the models make a difference as compared to just peaking the corners. All the corrugations on the seat are modelled or are they displacement maps? (I now you have a passion for displacement maps... which is why I ask...)

Squish/spray my ant?? After all the work I put in??? I thought about texturing him properly rather than just using group properties, but he's such a small thing on the screen there's no real point spending much time doing that as it would go unnoticed. I have seen the Mantis Parable. I like the guys attention to detail, and his textures are quite special. Yet another inspiring animator to watch I reckon!

Hi everyone, Well, the school holidays end and so does my productivity. Before I get back into the nitty grity of teaching students, I thought people might be interested in the latest 'character' to use the term loosely. There is a little test animation on the below link http://www.shaunfreeman.com/ant.htm I rigged this guy by hand using Billy Egginton's setup, as it seemed easier given he has SIX legs? It took a while, but I am happy with the result In any case, peoples thoughts or comments would be greatly appreciated!

The bone structure is very straightforward. Its just a straight IK chain of bones, with two bones per segment of the caterpillar. As I'm not really going to have her doing much more than munch on leaves, (that may change...) there's not much point putting in a complex constrained bone structure. I'm not planning on getting her to walk really (basically due to the complexity of the constraints setup I would need to use, so the problem doesn't really crop up). If anyone had any thoughts about how to constrain a caterpillar easily however, I too would be interested in knowing about it, as I wouldn't mind having her shuffle along a branch if it was quick and easy... Re: the caterpillar type, its based on the pupae of a Hercules Moth, one of the largest moths in the world with a wing span of ( I think) about 24 cm. I picked it because: 1. Its Australian, and I'm setting the film in Australia, hence I needed an Aussie species 2. Both the caterpillar and the resulting adult are absolutely spectacular, and hence conducive to good viewing! BTW, I've finished the adult moth also, and I'm quite happy with the way she turned out. I'll post a little clip of her shortly if people are interested. Re: specularity, Vern summed up pretty well. They tend to be velvety looking animals rather than slimey looking... And for the record... she's not going to be munched by any of my birds...

Great stuff Parlo! Very crisp animation!

It reminds of that film 'fantastic voyage', and the bugs and critters they had to deal with inside that guys body! Nice work John...

Thanks for the compliments Jim! Re: the caterpillar, he is going to be more of a real caterpillar, and is more to set the scene of the film than anything else. He has an important function, but its not crucial to the main storyline... The modelling and texturing took a little while. The actual rigging of the caterpillar only took half an hour or so. No smartskin at ALL!! I basically added the bones, increased the cp falloff for each bone, right-clicked in the modelling window and selected 'compute all cp weights'. Once I'd done that the caterpillar was ready to go! I'm LOVING these new cp weights and the control they give you!! OOOhhhhh yeah!! Gotta love the school hols!. Thanks for taking the time to comment peoples!

Its just lights. The basic lighting setup from the default choreography plus John Hendersons Skycast program (can't say enough good things about it!!)

If people are interested I've posted some stuff on the latest model I have created for my short film project. Click here to have a look at the model and download a short test animation Any thoughts or comments would be welcome!

RIghto, here's the same animation rendered in shaded and wireframe mode. Its a little small, but you can make out the individual bones I think. Tell me if its not clear and I'll render out a larger one. http://www.shaunfreeman.com/animation.htm Modernhorse, its really not that bad. It looks messy but only because there is one bone assigned to each spline in the mouth. Hence, lots of bones. Actually constraining it to move with the jaw, and also creating poses getting the correct movement for different lip shapes was not that much of a problem...

Thanks Paul! With regards to the above, I stuck that little quiver in as I saw myself doing it when I was trying the clip out in the mirror and I thought it looked more realistic when I had it in. Although I used Victors ideas, due to the different shape of the head and mouth I had to adapt the idea a fair bit ffor it to work. If people are interested I'll post the same clip with the bones in view so you can see what they are doing?

Nice work so far Parlo! I'm looking forward to the lip sync. BTW, how did the other clip finish up?

Previously I just used basic muscle motion poses. I did this by having poses for each spline, and then used these poses to create other poses which made up the mouth shapes. The downside to this is that you need to create poses for every conceivable mouth shape, and due to the additive nature of the poses, they may not necessarily work well together. Using bones and cp falloff, I can assign bones to single splines using the bones falloff (only available with v11.0, you can't assign bone falloff so specifically in the earlier versions of A:M) and it allows you to just assign bones using cp falloff. They then work in all directions.... up, down, left right. So that takes away a huge number of steps. It also ensures that they all work well together, so that when I use a number of poses at the same time, I can still get a uniform mouth shape. Thanks for the comments so far!

I've been following Victor Navone's development of his facial rig closely, and using a similar system have been able to rig my latest character much more efficietly than in the past. I've completed a small test (no laughing ..... after Victors effort I'm almost embarressed to post it...) with some detail on the bone structure on my webpage. Click here to go to my webpage, then click on the 'The Cuckoo, Animation' link. I'd be interested in peoples thoughts.. Cheers

Maybe have him with his hands clasped, and use fingers to emphasis key moments by opening and closing, rather than moving his hands around as they are currenltly? Just another thought. BTW the lip syncing is GREAT!

MY WORD thats creepy!! I love it!! It looks terrific so far. My first impression is that the initial hand gestures are a little 'soft' (can't think of another word). Their movement might look better if they establish their position earlier rather than floating that way (just a thought, don't listen to me if you think I'm talking rubbish). In any case, I REALLY like the character! ALl you need now is some sinister lighting, and you're set.