williamgaylord

This should be very interesting. Animating characters with missing parts can be a great way to learn how to get more expressiveness out of the remaining parts. Hands can express a surprising amount of emotions. Bill Gaylord

Nice work! Especially if you make the adjustments suggested so far. If you need ears, I've made two models available...one regular, one pointy. If you want to try making your own, I've also posted a picture of a sample mesh you can use as a template. Ears Bill Gaylord

Yes, thanks! I was going to ask you about that myself. A very interesting technique. Bill Gaylord

One pointer that might be helpful. I've seen in most rigs, most of the constraints are gathered into an on-off-pose called "constraints" which lets you turn them all on or off from one control. How is that done? Bill Gaylord

Such a gathering would largely be for the benefit of "newbies". I'll prod Colin some more to see if we can get something going again. Bill Gaylord

Nice work, Melissa! Look forward to seeing the Jig. I see you are in Alpharetta, GA, or there abouts. I live in Stone Mountain, GA. Colin Freeman works at IBM in Atlanta. We used to have an Atlanta AM User's group a while back held at Colin's workplace every so often on a weekend. William Sutton lives in Chattanooga, TN, but used to join us here in Atlanta. There are a number of others in the area who used to attend. Colin and I have been discussing the possibility of getting it started again. Bill Gaylord

Here is the TSM2 bone setup I added today. I used the builder utility to add just arm and leg bones. Then I added a main vertical bone up the middle of the head/body. This bone is parented to the arm bones and the body mesh is assigned to it. Facial control bones are children of it, too. The second, smaller vertical bone is parented to the hip bones and legs. This will be constrained to the bigger bone using "translate to" and "orient like" constraints. Only the roll of the smaller bone will be independent. That way the hips will stay attached to the plane of the Marshmallow's bottom, but the body/head and arms can be rotated about the axis of the bigger bone (roll) independent of the hips and legs. This should give me the "lazy susan" like relationship I'm looking for. Bill Gaylord

Here is a front view shaded wireframe of the Marshmallow. Bill Gaylord

That is so cool! The background looks like Shaggy might be out in the Egyptian desert with Howard Carter digging in the Valley of the Kings..."Oh man! Where did they go? Wait...now I see them..." Ever watch the Red Green show? Have you seen the black and white "home movie" adventures with his goofy, accident prone friend Bill? These old film effects would be great for something similar done with AM. This would be great for some of my Marshmallow Safety Films. Bill Gaylord

OK. Here they are for anybody that wants to use them. I would encourage you to try to make your own, based on some of the help and examples posted. It would be a good excercise! Ear Model Orc Ear Model Bill Gaylord

Joakim, since you have an orc in the works (very well crafted, by the way), here's a pointy orc ear...Once I figure out how to best post them, I'll make these ear models available for anyone who wants them. Bill Gaylord

I finished his facial animation rigging and now I'm ready to add the rest of his rigging. Here are the basic requirements: 1) Since he has to torso, waist, or hips, his arms must travel with his body/head. 2) Since he has no waist, to turn, his body/head needs to rotate as though his bottom was a lazy susan. 3) The top part of his legs above what serve as his hip joints need to behave like they are attached to the bottom of the "lazy susan". When the body turns the legs need to stay put, rather than traveling with the body. (This is one reason I did not attach the leg meshes to the body/head mesh.) Other than these special requirements, he can be rigged like a normal character with arms and legs. I'm thinking that two bone--one with "translate to" and "orient like" constraints to the other bone-- would be basis for satisfying these three requirements. One would control the rotation of the head/body and the arms. The other (with the constraints) would be parented to "hip" bones for the uppermost parts of the legs. Now, my question is how this would relate to rigs like Anzovin's TSM2 and the AM2000 rig? How my I go about this? Bill Gaylord

And here is the unmarked picture of the flattened mesh... Bill Gaylord

Here is the picture showing the shaped ear mesh with corresponding markings: Bill Gaylord

Here are three pictures that y'all can use as references. Two show the flattened mesh and the shaped mesh, with highlighter markings to help you visualize how splines in the mesh relate to the shapes of the ear. The third is the flattened mesh itself you can use as a template to try your own. I did not bother to add the anatomical names of the various ridges and depressions of the ear, but I did indicate the major ones with arrows and highlighted edges to give you clues about them. Note that the upper half of the outer edge of the ear curls around the top and then down into the main depression in the middle of the ear. Note also how the upper/inner edge of the main depress starts near this curl and wraps around the lower half, raising up in two protruberences that roughly face each other at the bottom, and a larger "y" shaped ridge that curls around the inside of the upper half. Study the pictures and you'll get the basic idea how the flat mesh relates to the final shape of the ear. You can use the "clean" picture of the mesh for a rotoscope for building your own as "an excercise left to the student". It's a good practice. The magnet tool and the lasso select tool are very handy for pulling and pushing select groups of control points to shape the ear mesh. Some of you spline wizards might actually notice ways to improve the mesh. Feel free to do so, especially if you share your "wiz"-dom with the rest of us! Later I may turn this into a more complete tutorial. The best approach is to build your own ears once or twice and then just copy and tweak them for new character models. Bill Gaylord

I bet you could. It takes a bit of determination and patience mainly. And some time studying real ears and photos of ears. The main challenge is learning how the ear spirals and folds into itself. You have to look at it from many angles to really understand how it is shaped. Then I would recommend drawing out a flattened mesh. I'll try to flatten out this ear's mesh and highlight some of the key splines. I spent at least a couple full days drawing a flattened mesh with colored pens to work out the basic mesh (lots of tries before I got to something workable). Then I put together the mesh in it's flat form based on the drawing and then pulled it into shape. I changed the mesh a bit here and there once I got it into the basic shape. Then I studied other fine examples like Yves Poissant's ear posted above and Mark Strohbehn's ear that I posted a reference to. I printed them out and drew flattened meshes as best I could figure theirs went together to learn from their examples. Then I went back to mine and made further improvements (still not as elegant as theirs, I would say). I still see some ways I could improve it. I think with a little work we could come up with a tutorial. I think with a tutorial to help, it would be a real boost for many folks to see that they too can tackle this challenge! Once you work through a realistic ear, you'll certainly have more confidence to tackle other body parts. Bill Gaylord

OK. Here it is patterned after real life...ear hair and all! Bill Gaylord

Oh man! I forgot the ear hair! I'll have to rectify that oversight! Ear hair should be easy with AM's new hair. Bill Gaylord

Some more tweaks to the ear model. Added the ear canal, which actually led to a more elegant mesh around the ear canal. I think once I finish tweaking the mesh, I'll flatten it out to make a template folks can use as a guide. Guess some day I should make a head to go with the ear. Bill Gaylord

Nice work Yves! I am learning a lot from these fine examples. One thing I am experimenting with is the idea of laying down a flattened ear mesh first, then pulling it into shape. The advantage is that you can more easily see how to minimize the number of patches and still get the smooth, nicely proportioned curvatures you want. It may be more of a teaching tool than a practical way to build an ear. The way the ear spirals and folds into itself makes it somewhat hard to understand, since from any viewpoint much of it is hidden by its own bends and folds. Another reason I am interested in accurately modeling the ear is the fact that I do binaural sound recording. I built my own "dummy head" microphone, making casts of my own ears. (Don't try this at home folks! You have to know what you are doing or you can wind up rupturing your eardrum trying to get the mold out of your ear! Don't try this at home!) I'd like to use a CG ear model to have a set of rapid prototype detachable ears made that would allow me to easily change the microphone capsules. You can see "Bob" my binaural microphone and listen to some of my binaural recordings at My Binaural Recording Web Page . Thanks so much for posting this example again! Bill Gaylord

I know it's not as attractive as an "onion butt", but here is an update on the ear. Tweaked it to improve the shape. The periphery where it would attach to the head needs to be simplified quite a bit to reduce the number of patches and splines to attach to. Mark, I have to say your ear has a much more elegant mesh to it. A lot of us would appreciate a tutorial showing how you put it together. Bill Gaylord

Here is my not so elegant attempt to create an anatomically accurate human ear (still a work in progress). Man! The human ear is a real puzzle to model! I would venture to say it has got to be the most difficult body part to model accurately. My hat's off to Mark Strohbehn and others who have shown us such beautiful examples! Bill Gaylord BTW, Ken, I like your toe design.

Wow! I am impressed with how well the cloth behaves! Especially the collision detection. I don't see anything poking through at all as earlier versions of cloth were prone to do. Are there tweaks in the cloth setup that simulate things like air resistance? Bill Gaylord

That cloth behaves so well! Man, AM is AMazing! I really look forward to animating with such cloth. John, your experiments give us unusually creative glimpses of the potential AM has. Bill Gaylord

I love the format. Sort of like sequential art with animation! Very fascinating. Look forward to seeing you develop an new project based on this approach. Dhar, you probably need to add the Divx player: Divx free download... Bill Gaylord