3DArtZ

any chance of an mpg or mov version. Still divx challenged! Mike Fitz

Hi Parlo, I think you basically described what I was talking about very well. When I work on lip shapes I keep a couple of things in mind for my own work. I'm sure that everyone that reads this will have an opinion but my take on the lip synch is this... the mouth is very lazy when it comes to forming every syllable. So, the mouth takes great effort to make a definate shape with strong syllables and glides through as much as it can. Like the word "Don't". I would approach this word as 2 things being animated... the mouth and the tongue ofcourse. What is the most powerful sound in this word... it is ownt of dont. So, the mouth would start with either the O or W for the lips and the tonge would handle the tonge pose for the D. finishing off with Taaa of the T in "Don't". This would be the lip shape/tongue pose for C,D,G, K, N, R, S, TH, Y AND Z. No matter how you approach it, it's difficult and I'm not sure what one has to do to get comfortable with working through the correct lip/tonge poses. But Like I said, I think its coming along well, just keep at it Mike Fitz

First of all, I think that this is coming along great! The model looks sweet, the colors and the lighting look very nice to me. the lip synch however seems to be really off the mark. The mouth just seems to be moving and only the strong sylables are being hit. Inbetween them it just seems floaty to me. Maybe it's the camera angle? Mike Fitz

Well you definately will have many great sound bytes to use!!!

Looks real good! I'm Rick James B%tch!!!!! Mike Fitz

Model looks well built, but I'm really curious about the elbow joint. Why do you have 3 splines connecting like that to one control point? Mike Fitz www.3dartz.com

Joe, I think it's looking good! Hard to say what you need to do being that you are not finished, so I don't know what you have lined up to work on. But at this point, I'd say it looks like its almost ready to go, no? Good looking model too. Maybe post a wire frame for us to see as well. Mike Fitz www.3dartz.com

try and post .mov files or mpgs if you can. More people will be able to see your work. Mike Fitz www.3dartz.com

Wow, great to see the behind the scenes controls you are using for your face. I used a very similar idea for McKnuckles face set up, I called it a face cage. Basically a lot of aim at, scale to reach constraints controlling the strechyness of the characters cheeks. then just used smartskin for lip shapes. It gave me great freedom how extreme or not I wanted to make the face pose. Initially I wanted to make a tute on it myself, until some dingdong decided to fight the idea of tutorials for the community. After seeing this inspirational stuff from Victor, who knows, maybe people will rise to the informational pedastal! Thank you for posting that picture Victor Mike Fitz www.3dartz.com

I believe that the test went off without a hitch!!!!!! I am really looking forward to seeing this project unfold. Please keep us posted!!!!! Mike Fitz www.3dartz.com

Hey that was kinda fun!!!

Hey Rodney, I'll do my best to ans. the questions you have....[ Stitching..... I still go point to point, I don't really realy on stitching for anything, although it could be something that i'm just ignoring? Value of Smartskinning.... I use smartskin only on lipshapes. Having it as a feature to use if you need it for joint touch up is great,but I don't think I have added smartskin to a characters joints in over 2 years. Joys and pain of lip synch - the pains, setting it up, having it look horrible after you've takent he time to set it up. Joys - watching the character convince you that it is actually speaking. Once all the lip shape targets are created, making lip sych seems to be very easy in A:M What I took from rigging keekat..... I must have worked on keekat 8 different times. When I first was given Keekat, the mouths modelled position was open, in a smile. So I had to remodel the mouth to be closed and then remodel the smile into one of the pose windows. By the time I had officially finished working on keekat, I had smartskinned him 4 or 5 different times. It became painfully apparant to me that smartskining joints was just a matter of positioning control points around the joint in a circular pattern, which ultimately lead to the Cog design of fan bones. Fan bones handle any/all angles. Back then smartskin would look good only if you kept it on one of the axis. Like x-0,y-0,z-45. Any combo of the 3 would produce bad results. I'm told that that has been fixed today, but I don't know. I use cogs to handle joint rotations. The short of what I learned from Working on keekat.... Things don't have to be perfect when working in character set up for animaiton. Meaning, getting little muscles rippling and making things look exactly like they do in real life, to me is not that important. And those little effects would probably go un noticed if someone were watching an animation that they had no control over as far as being able to watch it over an over again like we have with movie files. Like I'm sure if we had the ability to constantly pause and rewind animations in the movie theatre we'd find errors or things tht didn't look perfect in the movies. So don't get too caught up in making things pefect.... get caught up in making things so that there are no glaring mistakes. Mike Fitz www.3dartz.com

Also with keekat.... The person who set up his latest rig, as far as I can tell, was me, Mike Fitzgerald. I did rework the mesh a little bit in some areas, put the smartskin in and set upt he lip shapes. Mike Fitz www.3dartz.com

Wow, looks like youve worked on some really interesting projects! Keep us posted Mike Fitz www.3dartz.com

Hey Justin, thanks for the reply. I just saw your friend for dinner clip, it was spot on!!!! Anyhows, I see all the stuff your talking about with the clip, but as it stands it's over and done with. Ol Miss WidowMaker is currently being reRigged, so any future clips will have your comments in my head while animating! Later Mike Fitz www.3dartz.com

Hey Justin, long time since I've seen some of your stuff, and I think this is some "on the money" stuff! I mean everything to the eyeballs drifting off while the character is in thought, to the hint of the cockeyed smile. Really good Mike Fitz www.3dartz.com

Looks just like the one I got at home! Great job! You would think that there might be an antiliasing issue with this sort of detail/highlights/tight lines, but I can't detect any. Nice! Mike Fitz www.3dartz.com

Thanks again sterling. As far as the Her model.... she has the auto cg feature in the rig. You can animate her without the hips being effected by the foot targets by turning off the auto cg pose. I don't remember exactly what it was called but it should be able to find it in the pose/relationship list with the model. I never liked auto cg, one should be able to find the models center of gravity with out that feature. Mike Fitz www.3dartz.com

Hey DarkLimit - thanks for the reply! edit - I just checked your gallery out, pretty amazing work on your end. Do you ever post these for the A:M forum? Mike Fitz www.3dartz.com

Hey Sterling, thanks for the reply. I actually rigged the "Her" model but I did it back in the 8.5 to 9.0 days, so I can't really vouch for it's performance at this point. I also did a lot of reworking the mesh because it was an absolute mess in some areas. Which brings me to a good thing to remember when modeling, don't overdo it on the splines, too many is a bad thing for animating. Thanks Mike Fitz

if you use an mpg or mov file you'll probably get more responses.... not all mac people can view the avi files Mike Fitz www.3dartz.com

How about posting mpgs or mov. Not all mac people can see the avi files. Mike Fitz www.3dartz.com

Hey Mike, thanks for the reply! Those are some great question about the character, I'd like to ask her myself, but I'd probably get the business end of her thunder sticks! thanks Mike Fitz www.3dartz.com

Hey Rob and Ross, thanks for the reply! She certainly does have a big pair of...... thighs Mike Fitz www.3dartz.com

Jim and Stephen that was just fantastic!!!!!!! That will most likely be me tomorrow at my home towns irish parade!!!! Really, that was just so good! Mike Fitz www.3dartz.com