vnavone Posted March 31, 2004 Author Share Posted March 31, 2004 Something was nagging at me while I watched the test anim on loop, and I couldn't quite place it. Then I realized what it was -- he looks a lot like Calvin. Yeah, I know. It wasn't intentional. Oh well, at least he resembles a GOOD character! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ross Smith Posted March 31, 2004 Share Posted March 31, 2004 That's the truth. I lived on those books. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vnavone Posted April 2, 2004 Author Share Posted April 2, 2004 Here is a link to the updated facial animation: New Head Test I've made some subtle changes to the shape of the head and have improved the cheek mass when he smiles. Compare frame 50 of this animation with the original: Original Head Test I'm still working on attaching the horns, which is coming along pretty well thanks to the Conform plugin. I'm also trying to iron out some pesky smoothing issues. There's a crease in the head that's particularly frustrating me because it looks perfectly smooth when I render it in modeling and action windows. Perhaps it's a lighting artifact of some sort? I'm using biased normals and Porcelain to smooth the skin. An example is attached below. You can see from the wireframe at the beginning of this thread that the mesh is pretty normal there. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zaryin Posted April 2, 2004 Share Posted April 2, 2004 (Dble Post) Sorry about that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zaryin Posted April 2, 2004 Share Posted April 2, 2004 I am surprised you even noticed that! Is this a pose or a running animation when you notice this. Mabe try running through frame by frame to see if a cp is pooping somewhere?... (just watched the animation and saw that it's in there). The adjustments to the head look great. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
robvmonte Posted April 3, 2004 Share Posted April 3, 2004 Noticed you added a tongue, makes it seems more life like. Good job! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dcnelson Posted April 4, 2004 Share Posted April 4, 2004 Hi Victor, Your new facial animation does indeed look better; I especially like the fuller quality of the cheeks. I do have another question which may seem like it has an obvious answer, at least it did to me until I started second guessing myself. You previously stated that, The points around the mouth are assigned to the UD bones and are weighted using AMweights to give them a nice falloff. This was a tedious process, and luckily version 11 will have the AMweights functionality built in. Now my question has to do with exactly which CPs are affected by the AMweighted falloff of a single UD bone? My assumption was (and is) that it is only those CPs that make up the spline that attaches to the mouth's CP to which the UD bone is assigned. And that none of the adjacent up/down splines are affected. (I really hope you can understood what I'm trying to say.) Is this in fact what you did? Thanks again, Dean Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vnavone Posted April 5, 2004 Author Share Posted April 5, 2004 My assumption was (and is) that it is only those CPs that make up the spline that attaches to the mouth's CP to which the UD bone is assigned. And that none of the adjacent up/down splines are affected. (I really hope you can understood what I'm trying to say.) Is this in fact what you did? Hi Dean, it sounds like you've got a good understanding of what I did. Just to restate: Each of the radial splines of the mouth has its own UpDown bone. A CP located right at the opening of the mouth is weighted to 100% (standard CP assignment in Bones mode) for its specific UD bone, and the CPs further down the spline are weighted to be affected less and less by this UD bone as they get further from the mouth. The neighboring spline CPs are not included in this weighting; they are only affected by their own unique UD bones. Therefore any radial spline of the mouth can be controlled explicitely without affecting its neighbors. The exception is at the corner of the mouth where a bunch of splines come together and I had to do some wacky hand-blending. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dcnelson Posted April 5, 2004 Share Posted April 5, 2004 Hi Victor, your restatement is quite clear. What you stated seemed to me like the way to go with CP weighting, but in my experimenting I could see that there were alternative approaches. So I thought I'd ask for the clarification. I also asked in part, because of the interest of others in your facial rig. I figured someone else may benefit as well from the CP weighting issue being clearly described. Thanks for taking the time and being willing to share how you did what you did. Dean Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
benzene Posted August 7, 2004 Share Posted August 7, 2004 Well, I don't know if one was amazed by the rendering of the martian head(excuse my poor english I write from france) but besides the animation and cute character it was really well lit, really cool. I don't know how you setup lights for such a result but that's really impressive, kind of Pixar styled lighting. Regarding the mouth, I tried many techniques before I saw messiah animator and their flexbones as well as painted weights in Ma...a. I got a look at messiah:animate samples on PMG website and it was my only source for making a fish character in 2002, but I didn't go really far at that time due to many...things of life. Oh congratulations for being a new father Mr Navone, that's a great moment that balances positively all the worst things in this world. again thanks for your kind and joyfullness Mr navone, as well as for your alien song Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CyberSpark Posted August 13, 2004 Share Posted August 13, 2004 Question? Can we do it in AM? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
benzene Posted August 13, 2004 Share Posted August 13, 2004 This model comes from Messiah:Animate , it's intended to expose muscular bones, I didn't really understand the difference between bone and Mbone but I think its in the way the bone squatches and streches regarding the movement of another bone. Remember in AM there is a constraint that is named Constraint to path, and another that is "translate to". If one is able to make a standard face rig that would be realistic enough then any set of face poses would be transferable to any character I think. well I am very busy with a website now but when I'll be done , probably in two weeks I'll give a try back to A:M with a 2002 model of mine, that was a fish with a very expressive face and big lips. I think this can be done only using bones poses and constraints. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pixelmech Posted May 2, 2005 Share Posted May 2, 2005 I'm going to give this rig a shot on a basic sphere head with a mouth. I've totally been avoiding the mouth area and speech - so much that my mini movie characters have NO mouths! Might as well learn to do it right. Me wonders if Victor has updated this rig at all.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bentothemax Posted May 2, 2005 Share Posted May 2, 2005 Wow . . . wow . . . wow Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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