Polar Bear, Polar Bear...

[brainmuffin]

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

 

 

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.

[johnl3d]

Nice rig and Bear

[3DArtZ]

Damn.... great work on the rig!

[Gerry]

Yeah, that rig is sweet! Very smooth around the hips when the back legs move. Maybe post some renders of your hair problem. But really nice work overall so far!

[robcat2075]

Looks good.

 

btw, TSM2 does have the option of either kind of legs on both the front and the back legs. It's on the "quadruped" tab.

[Masna]

Great job on the rigging!

[John Bigboote]

Yupp! Impressive work! 12 hours rigging? Not bad at all. The yellow tinge in the hair is sorta weird, but what do I know of polar bears?

[brainmuffin]

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.

 

[brainmuffin]

Okay, I took some of the yellow out. There's still a little, but it's a lot closer to polar bear white.

 

[John Bigboote]

Cool! Are you using the Muhair hair shader?

[brainmuffin]

Yup, it's MuHair. I had to turn the specular properties way down, and it still may be a bit too shiny for me. But it still looks better than the other shaders.

[itsjustme]

Very cool, Lazlo! Good luck on the project!

[brainmuffin]

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:

 

 

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.

[Gerry]

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!

[heyvern]

I have a small side project involving a "Grizlar" bear... a polar/grizzly hybrid. I suppose you wouldn't care to share that rig? Just the rig. It is fantastic.

 

-vern

[brainmuffin]

Vern, you can have the whole bear if you want. just the rig is no problem. I'll post it later tonight.

[John Bigboote]

Cool walk. Why does it make me thirsty for a Coke? There is a bone gone wonky in his middle back...

[brainmuffin]

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

[Kamikaze]

Brainmuffin,

 

Thanks for sharing your rig, I want to take a look at it and see if I can take in a few or hopefully much more rigging tips for my Deer...

 

Mike