Wednesday

Drawing Hands! Mini-Side Track.

Just found this VERY useful hand tutorial online whilst stumbling.

http://www.tomrichmond.com/blog/2008/12/18/drawing-hands/

It's SO useful it's useful to the word useful!  I can see this being helpful for artists, riggers and animators.  Check it out.  I give it a thumbs up.  (Hello puns!)

Tuesday

MotionBuilder - FCurves

So I was struggling with MotionBuilder's AMAZING workbench.  Excuse the sarcasm.

I managed to find a video which simplified the proceedure with FCurves and layers (although I can't get it to display like his...  AH WELL!) It's useful none-the-less.

Wednesday

MotionBuilder.

So we've started advanced tech. volume 2 now, learning a new software under the name of MotionBuilder.

It's pretty much motion capture software to animate with, which in industry is a big plus if you can learn it.  Although giving it a go over the pass two days, I can see it's going to be a NIGHTMARE!  But having spoken to Phil (new lecturer from Blitz Games!) he knew a guy called Stephen Sloper (click me!) who did an amazing walk cycle and short animated sequence in MotionBuilder which I truly find inspiring.

I'm hoping it'll inspire others as much as it did for me.  Stephen is also a rigger like myself, so seeing his capabilities of animating smoothing in this software makes me feel like I can do the same! :)

Monday

Turnaround research

So as well as working on smaller projects for my final major, including a VFX film and various collaborating work for other people, I'm also working along side a small gaming company.

Unfortunately I can't give off too much details due to copyright but I will be rigging several characters within the game concept using UDK engine which is quite exciting.  For the time being I've been given the challenge of making a turnaround of one of their characters.  I'm finding it pretty difficult as the only images they have of said character are silhouettes of a 3/4 view coloured version as well as the final coloured version.  So it's pretty hard to grasp the character's concept but hopefully it shouldn't be too difficult.

I've had a look online for any tutorials on creating turnarounds.   So far this is a pretty good side for identifying height and length measurements.

Located here! (click me)

Also, mini edit too; Found this link for a bit more turnaround inspiration!

Click here!

Wednesday

Clusters in Spline IKs.

Not sure if I've posted this up already...  but two times is better than none!



Nice way of setting up controllers for spline IK setup.

Monday

Maya hair and fur.

So I've found an interesting video to get me in the mood for this week's learning curve regarding hair and fur.



Nice huh?  Hopefully I can get my head around Maya and Max's hair/fur system and generate a nice result with hair and fur.

Muscle Test in Maya



And here's the final outcome, after a week of learning!  I need to speed up...