tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25346462660947022542011-12-21T22:52:54.934-06:00∞ Discussion and Notes on Scripting and Animation ∞Seanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08606616680171043224noreply@blogger.comBlogger291100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2534646266094702254.post-40857052900449622892011-12-21T22:33:00.003-06:002011-12-21T22:46:16.123-06:00

So I've run into some free time having now finished some work on our home, and wanted to take a stab at the 11 Second Club competition for this month. I'll post it here once the voting for the competition is over. I don't know if there would be any issues if people associated this entry with me before voting. So check back in early January to see it.I decided to try out the Morpheus Rig (Morphy)

Seanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08606616680171043224noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2534646266094702254.post-92608333149138742011-03-15T19:28:00.010-05:002011-12-21T22:52:54.944-06:00

I'm so excited about P2 finally being announced, as its the first title I've worked on to do so. Therefore, I'm going to keep updating this post with fun new goodies once they've been posted elsewhere on the web. I won't talk about, confirm or deny any questions asked about the game, nor does my posting them here constitute an affirmation in any way. So don't bother to ask any

Seanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08606616680171043224noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2534646266094702254.post-76234294152683157572011-03-14T09:50:00.006-05:002011-03-15T20:11:32.916-05:00

Here's a link to the official announcement from Bethesda.This is what we've been working on as of late. Its really exciting to actually be able to name the project we've been pouring so much effort into. So, keep a lookout, there's going to be good stuff coming!BETHESDA SOFTWORKS ANNOUNCES PREY 2 Sequel to Award-Winning Prey to be Available in 2012

Seanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08606616680171043224noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2534646266094702254.post-17960752842419569512010-10-05T19:18:00.007-05:002010-10-06T22:31:30.915-05:00

I know its been a while, but all has not been forgotten. Life has just been nuts lately. But, some progress has been made with the "softIK" solution for Maya. I came across a website from a couple years back (which makes me feel really dated) that had this ability functioning. Sadly, it was in Japanese, so all I could actually glean was the example file they sent. So my next plans are to go

Seanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08606616680171043224noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2534646266094702254.post-76765982554977592652010-05-24T13:25:00.007-05:002010-05-24T13:41:56.422-05:00

So, I've been hearing a lot about 'Soft IK' lately and have decided to try and give a solution a go. The general idea behind it is to give the functionality of the IK Chain this behavior:(Pic from http://www.xsi-blog.com/archives/108)More specifically, the behavior of the bottom chain. I'm going to base it on some of the solutions presented in Jason Schleifer's Animation Friendly Rigging DVD set

Seanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08606616680171043224noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2534646266094702254.post-32705999511428745052009-09-29T13:25:00.004-05:002009-09-30T09:27:22.390-05:00

I've been doing some research into upcoming games recently to check out any new approaches to animation pipelines and conceptual ideas. I began looking into the next installment of the Splinter Cell series: Conviction. In it, they talk about a new gameplay mechanic called 'marking.' The premise is that Sam Fisher can survey enemies and environmental elements while concealed in the shadows, and

Seanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08606616680171043224noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2534646266094702254.post-48078215079345456582009-09-17T15:49:00.006-05:002009-09-17T15:56:47.814-05:00

I found this site linked to from Josh Burton's blog today. There are some absolutely beautiful pieces of animation displayed here. It is definitely worth a look if you have any interest in animation whatsoever.On a side note, I always find pencil tests so beautiful. They seem to have so much more emotion and action than the final cleaned up stuff.Pencil Tests

Seanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08606616680171043224noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2534646266094702254.post-30385169225575624092009-09-15T11:13:00.002-05:002009-09-15T11:18:03.044-05:00

Is coming out on the 18th. Spread the word, it looks like its going to be a lot of fun. At least, I'm looking forward to it.

Seanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08606616680171043224noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2534646266094702254.post-73057121912584150572009-09-02T10:22:00.003-05:002009-09-02T10:38:03.106-05:00

I just read an interesting entry from Keith Lango's blog. It's dealing with the 'controversy' that arose surrounding the movie Avatar, which is being directed by James Cameron. Someone on the production said,"Our goal on this movie was not to replace the actor, it was to replace the animator. If you think about it, what a great actor does and what a great animator does are antithetical to one

Seanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08606616680171043224noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2534646266094702254.post-76228371952435250462009-09-01T14:40:00.008-05:002009-09-01T14:48:54.995-05:00

And while poking around Gobelins' site, I found this short. It epitomizes the idea that a great short can come from the simplest idea, executed masterfully. Check it out.Inka Bola

Seanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08606616680171043224noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2534646266094702254.post-82368129788545337902009-09-01T14:27:00.005-05:002009-09-01T14:33:52.199-05:00

If you haven't heard or seen Oktapodi, its definitely time you were introduced. I found this movie a while back, and it blew me away. Its a student film from Gobelins. I recently went back to the site to see if they'd updated anything, and found out that it had been nominated for the Best Animated Short this past year. It has apparently won a slew of other awards as well. You should definitely

Seanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08606616680171043224noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2534646266094702254.post-81125573416225744562009-08-31T16:54:00.006-05:002009-09-01T09:10:13.083-05:00

I'm sure you have probably heard by now. Disney just bought Marvel for $4 billion. That's a pretty chunk of change. Here are some links if you want more info:MarvelDisneyAssociated Press

Seanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08606616680171043224noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2534646266094702254.post-35094846554971890912009-08-28T16:08:00.006-05:002009-09-01T14:50:31.985-05:00

I came across this picture recently on Mark Behm's site. I really like all his stuff, but for some reason I was really taken by this image. My mind immediately jumped to try and fill in this little guy's story. The mood is amazing, and I think it illustrates just how much you can say about a character with a single pose.

Seanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08606616680171043224noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2534646266094702254.post-31244947773296221522009-08-26T13:49:00.005-05:002009-09-01T14:51:39.610-05:00

If you've never heard of Glenn Vilppu, and you're into animation, then its about time you get introduced. Glenn is an amazing figure drawing instructor that emphasizes body language, attitude and gesture over realism. This makes him an ideal teacher for animators who are all about the action. I had the pleasure of taking one of his courses while I attended SCAD. My drawing skills increased

Seanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08606616680171043224noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2534646266094702254.post-26646950056588554912009-08-26T13:36:00.004-05:002009-08-26T13:45:08.531-05:00

I just came across this article, thought it seems to be about a month old now. Its an interview by Animation World Network (AWN on my links to the right) with Travis Knight, who is now the studio head at Laika.I had the opportunity to meet some of the other awesome artists, including Henry Selick, when I was part of their Project Backpocket summer internship a few years back. So, I always have

Seanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08606616680171043224noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2534646266094702254.post-55020925500165958342009-08-25T15:47:00.007-05:002009-09-01T14:51:58.807-05:00

If you haven't heard of it, Kiskaloo is a little comic created by Chris Sanders, the creator of Lilo and Stitch. Its an awesome little strip. The humor is spot on, and the characters are adorable. Sadly, it hasn't been updated in quite some time. He's been busy working on a couple movie titles with Dreamworks if I'm not mistaken. If you get a chance you should definitely check it out.... and of

Seanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08606616680171043224noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2534646266094702254.post-61879035749456831962009-08-20T14:51:00.005-05:002009-08-20T15:00:13.681-05:00

Alright, so, I have to come up with a rigging pipeline for tank treads. This will be a bit tricky and interesting, but good. I've been doing some research on different forums, which all give basically the same solution: Attaching Geo to a motion path, and using time or some attribute to drive the uValue of the motionPath node. This seems fine and good, and can yield the necessary results, but

Seanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08606616680171043224noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2534646266094702254.post-70268052339265804192009-08-20T14:51:00.004-05:002009-08-20T14:59:41.677-05:00

I came across this site from one of the forums I peruse daily. It has a lot of good basic MEL documentation, including different types of flow control, how to access attributes, etc. Check it out if you're just getting into MEL Scripting:http://www.robthebloke.org/

Seanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08606616680171043224noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2534646266094702254.post-74594971195715930732009-08-20T14:25:00.017-05:002009-08-20T15:00:31.086-05:00

I just came across a nice new spine setup on CGTalk, by 'mberglund'. You can find the main part of the tutorial here: Awesome Spine Tutorial I took his basic setup and added a bit more to it. I put some squash and stretch in there, and a cool mid-spine controller to really let you push the arch of the back's curve. So, go through his tut, then pic up mine from where he left off.*edit: He just

Seanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08606616680171043224noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2534646266094702254.post-81866617545655507192009-08-20T14:23:00.011-05:002009-08-26T09:31:19.142-05:00

One of my latest work creations came about after reading through a post-mortem on Ratchet and Clank. But, it will only be a valid solution, if the characters you're animating are going to remain in the same place...so, animating over the origin in Maya or Max or what have you.It consists of a simple window, in which you can input the desired walk or run speed of a character, and the distance in

Seanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08606616680171043224noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2534646266094702254.post-21443971625727425612009-08-20T14:23:00.010-05:002009-08-20T14:58:23.701-05:00

I'm going to go ahead and throw this post out there as something to come back to as I experiment. I've been trying to find a unique solution for creating a bendy limb rig. I'm shooting for something similar to Christopher Crouzet's rig, which I mentioned here. I want something to create and maintain a smooth tangent curve over the length of the limb (let's say leg in this case), instead of

Seanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08606616680171043224noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2534646266094702254.post-51298381870251494862009-08-20T14:23:00.009-05:002009-08-20T14:57:43.024-05:00

Wow...so inspiration and creativity abound! I've been looking around the web lately to find interesting solutions to rigging conundrums, and I came across a couple of amazing TD reels. I had seen one before, but just decided to write about it now. The two guys I'm talking about are Victor Vinyals and Christopher Crouzet. I'm pretty sure you can find their stuff on youtube as well, but I wanted to

Seanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08606616680171043224noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2534646266094702254.post-31062904711172407622009-08-20T14:23:00.007-05:002009-08-20T14:57:11.777-05:00

So, I love my job...and my employer. I came across these dvd's by Jason Schleifer, Head of Character Animation at Dreamworks, on 'Animator Friendly Rigging.' I love a lot of the stuff Jason's done in the past, and thought I'd talk to Human Head about getting a few. In total, all the videos would come to about $300, so there was no way I could get them on my own. But they didn't even bat an eye...

Seanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08606616680171043224noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2534646266094702254.post-37458592852614509032009-08-20T14:22:00.002-05:002009-08-20T14:56:40.843-05:00

I had the awesome opportunity to go to GDC 2008 in San Fransisco this year. My primary task for going was to look into the possibility of utilizing Motion Capture for Human Head (HH). I checked out a bunch of different systems to see which would best fit our needs. So that was a lot of fun, running around the expo playing with toys and the like. I've never really worked with Mocap before, so I'm

Seanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08606616680171043224noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2534646266094702254.post-27979141038256649142009-08-20T14:21:00.006-05:002011-01-02T15:55:10.322-06:00

In this section, I'm going to keep some general notes on MEL and how it works. These are things I slowly discovered through trial and error, or shortcuts & explanations I picked up from forums. Hopefully these will be of some use.∞ Operators ===========================================================$x++ // adds 1 to the value of $x, and makes $x that result.$x-- // subtracts 1 from the

Seanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08606616680171043224noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2534646266094702254.post-58806867494273604152009-08-20T14:20:00.003-05:002009-08-25T12:56:03.721-05:00

For your reference and mine, I'm going to use this post to list common MEL Errors that I get, and to what exactly they were referring. Hopefully this will give you some kind of reference on things to look for in your syntax.Error | Cause:∞ "Invalid call to gmatch" | String functions such as 'gmatch' and 'match' are picky about declaration types, so you should explicitly declare the the variables

Seanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08606616680171043224noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2534646266094702254.post-46425035765386413692009-08-20T13:41:00.015-05:002009-08-20T14:57:59.171-05:00

So, here's the ribbon spine I rigged up quickly based on the Fahrenheit DVD's. I used their basic technique for the construction, but since my version of Maya doesn't have hair follicles, I used rivet constraints instead. I don't think I can go into much detail of how they did that due to copyright infringement, but here's a pic of some additional joints I made:If you can follow along from the

Seanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08606616680171043224noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2534646266094702254.post-40206480460219907592009-08-20T13:40:00.004-05:002009-08-25T12:52:35.631-05:00

So, work has been a bit slow lately as we're waiting for some concept and modeling work to finish up, so I've been exploring some new rigging techniques and general MEL knowledge.If any of you are familiar with Sean Nolan, he had posted some info on his site about a ribbon spine setup that can rotate beyond 180° and a skin sliding/deformation setup that is joint-based, meaning it will work in

Seanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08606616680171043224noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2534646266094702254.post-38681605466481869572009-08-20T13:39:00.001-05:002009-08-25T12:53:13.079-05:00

So, I'm currently employed as an animator, thoughI dabble in MEL, at Human Head Studios, in Madison, WI. Its a video game development company hidden away in the eternal frozen tundra of America's Dairy land. They're credited with creating Rune and (most recently) Prey to name a few titles.My primary responsibilities there are character animation, rigging, etc., but I've also developed a few tools

Seanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08606616680171043224noreply@blogger.com0