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Hash, Inc. - Animation:Master

Polar Bear, Polar Bear...


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I've been busy with this. Roughly 24 hours modeling, 8 UV Mapping & Texturing, 12 rigging. Here's the result so far:

 

post-2085-1210380194_thumb.jpg

 

No matter what I've tried, I haven't been able to get the front legs to look right. I think I'm going to have to make them a separate group with their own hair system, so that I can control the density separately. I've been trying to hold off on that, because I don't want to re-groom, but I guess I I'll have to.

 

I built the rig myself, which wound up being easier than I thought. I couldn't use TSM because bears don't have the back legs of a quadruped, they have back legs like a biped. So, with some trial and error, I managed to come up with a decent rig. Mirror Bones & Mirror Constraints came in extremely handy. Here's a look at the rig in action:

 

Rig_TestA.mov

 

So, what I have left to do on this bear is: fix the fur on the front paws, create some face poses, and an HUD to control the poses, and that's about it. I'll probably do some more tweaking on the fur material, too.

 

Then I have another character to model, texture, rig and groom, and a couple of environments to set up.

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Thanks, everybody!

 

Robcat, you're right, I must've missed it the second time around.

 

I did learn a lot about rigging doing this. Basically, I just studied the Eggington leg on the ARM (That's a weird sentence) and based the rig on that. The spine in my bear is a variation, and there's a null that the first spine bone is aimed at. That's why it curls up when the hip is moved forward.

 

Polar bears have hollow fur. It's how they keep warm The yellow comes from a particular breed of algae that grows in their fur.

This bear is only slightly yellow. Polar bears can get very yellow. The pristine white polar bears like in "The Golden Compass" are a rarity.(But then so are polar bears in general...) It's possible that back when they actually had a habitat, the extreme cold may have kept the algae at bay.

 

I may fiddle with the fur some more, and try to make it whiter before the final rendering, though.

 

Here's an updated render with the fur on the paws fixed. It wasn't dense enough or long enough for my taste.

 

post-2085-1210472418_thumb.jpg

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Here's a rough animation test. I wanted to see how the hair moves, and how long it would take to render. (about ten minutes per frame).WalkA.mov

 

Here's a look at the project:

 

post-2085-1210544377_thumb.jpg

 

The plan is to update the print ad, and try for a 15 second animated spot. This is a personal projcet, I wasn't hired by Rumple Minze to do this. I just wanted to see if I could put together a professional quality project.

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That's a nice walk. I like the gut jiggle in there, lots of nice weight to it. A walk that loops would be nice!

 

The fur in the stills looks grainy or pixelated. The yellow doesn't bother me, I'd heard about polar bears' hollow hairs and algae, but thought it was more green. Looking forward to seeing how this whole thing shapes up!

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That's the constraint on the base of the spine. It points at a null that's above and behind the bear, to keep the spine curved. I'm still not sure it's right, but I'm not sure how to fix it. Maybe lowering the enforcement percentage will make it wobble less. I'm also not exactly happy with the knee controls.

 

Here's the bear, complete with the current rig, Vern. That way you can see how it's installed. If you have any questions, just ask. I'll post tna updates I make to the rig also.

 

BearRig.zip

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