Mac 'n' Cheese - Making of

Check this out people, this is suberb! The magic of twist deformer! Awesome Work :)

How Wings Work

In this video the presenter goes over how bird's wing work in detail. This is a really good resource to see how the bird's wing is articulated!

Reverse foot rolll with maya nodes

Check out this rigging tutorial by Marco on setting up a reverse foot setup using maya nodes unlink using traditional set-driven keys or expression! Kinda long video but he did a good job explaining ;)

iPad GUI with 3DSMAX

Check out this cool test video by Iker showing an ipad touch screen GUI to control the facial rig in 3dsMax. Iker mentions that he used TouchOSC and Motion Capture controllers on 3DSMAX to create an interface that allows the user to set expressions on the character using an iPad!

Love Birds ;)

Check out my little video on little love birds in action! The video was captured with Samsung Galaxy SII.

MutantLand

Awesome short by Tippett Studios!

Le Building

A funny Short film by Olivier Staphylas for his final thesis project at the French animation school "Gobelins". He is currently Head of Animation at Dreamworks!

Check out the making of this amazing short below... The technique used in the short to create a blend of 2D and 3D is really cool. The rigs are really nice to look at :)

multi layered body and facial rig

Fantastic super cartoony ~ multi layered body and facial rig demo by Ehsan H.M! No wonder it took him 31 days to rig :)

Manar Al Tawam - Reel 2010

Very impressive work by Manar Al Tawam specially for the reason that he worked on all of the components!

The Look of 'Rango'

Behind the scene look at the unique look of ILM's first animated feature, Rango! Really nice insight on how the actor's performance (e-motion) were captured to bring out the CG act. This should be one of the most atmospheric animated movie and in the video we can get an in depth glimpse of how it was realized.

Sense of Flying

This should be terrifying and fun at the same time! He is gliding too close to the ground and the tree tops. I should say gliding on the edge! Awesome ...

Planet of the Apes Party Fun Time

Awesome fan video for the original Planet of the Apes by Brad Hasse!

Really nice edits, the dance cuts and moves ;)

Trigonometry

Trying out some procedural animation based on math expression and equation! Check out this cool site to get in depth ideas and introduction on Trigonometry. Try to use them to create some cool rig and animation...

Here is a really informative PDF on Technical Animation by Carie Sullivan!

Body Mechanics Reel by Manish Shakya

Here is another fine piece of character animation reel for advance body mechanics by Manish Shakya! The video is a bit choppy though, guess it's some codec or frame-rate issue on vimeo...

Walt Disney Papers

More papers and publication from Walt Disney! More Cool Stuffs. Check them all out, really wonderful and useful resource materials for all artist alike :)

Walt Disney's ElasticSkin

Walt Disney's ElasticSkin presented on Siggraph 2011. Cool stufff! Check it out :)

Originally Posted by Siggraph 2011 Paper

We present a new algorithm for near-interactive simulation of skeleton driven, high resolution elasticity models. Our methodology is used for soft tissue deformation in character animation. The algorithm targets performance through parallelism using a fully vectorized and branch-free SVD algorithm as well as a stable one-point quadrature scheme on a hexahedral grid.

Here's a video-demonstration
The PDF paper
And some tech notes!

Making of Joker

This is cool, the music and the making! Check out the commercial below :)

The 11 Second Club Blog

Check out the 11 second club blog for more insights on animation related posts, articles, talks and references!

TedX talk from Jason Schleifer

Inspirational speech and presentation by an awesome rigger and animator, Jason Schleifer!

Making of Alice In Wonderland

Check out the making of Alice in Wonderland!

Hair creation and grooming tutorial

Nice technique implemented in this video tutorial by Tarkan Sarim on creating very fast and easy Maya workflow to generate maya curves for complex hairstyles!

Species Training

Check out the training videos by Exocortex Species on character setup in softimage using sculpted models from zbrush. Feel free to go through all of the videos...

pose2shelf

Really useful tool to store poses to shelf by Eric Miller! Saves your time to store poses :)

12 Drawings a Day - 12 Dessins par Jour

12 Drawings a Day - 12 Dessins par Jour by Denis Chapon!

During 3 years (2008-2011) i have been drawing 12 drawing of animation every day, it make one second of film. I had no plans what so ever before starting the first drawing. And then, each of the folowing days, I took the 3 last drawing from the day before and kept on animating. I use a none erasable pen, and drew on the back side of used A4 paper.

Making of a 3D horse

Making of a 3D horse rigged with Maya Muscle by Saad Chlyeh of Mammoth Studio. Really nice job with the muscle and deformation. However, one note that can be improvised is the muscle jiggle at scapula - humorous region, it's a bit too jiggly!

Giordano Animator Blog

My good old friend Mr. Giordi just got himself landed on the wonderful world of blogging. We hope our master Marco giordano will add more content every day! Feel free to check out his blog...

Extracting Facial Shapes

Ok! Here comes my latest mini tip and tutorial on how we can extract facial shapes from existing facial rig to quickly and efficiently create facial rigs! The video also covers on setting up a quick brow rig driven by facial deformation.

Cheers :)

Ruffle- ICE feather system demo

A quick demonstration of the main features of the Ruffle feather system by Jonah Friedman. Pretty cool stuff!

Simple Character Rigging

Check out these video tutorials by Brave Rabbit. Good stuffs to give you a Head-Start in rigging. Go through all the videos on vimeo :)

Mighty Antlers

Mighty Antlers short from the animation workshop. Nice work on the fight scene and visuals!



Making if Mighty Antler by Sune Reinhardt, student at the animation workshop.

iAnimate.net 2011 show reel

Latest iAnimate.net showreel. Really nice and awesome dialog presentation and performance. Enjoyed it!

2D Puppet Rig

Rig created in After Effects with Puppet Tools! Really coOL...

Zero Out Selected Controllers

I find this little script really handy. It's coded by a good friend of mine, Jay Grenier. The script is used to zero out or reset all the keyable attributes on the channel box. Check it out here!

November Mountain Range!

Himalayan range seen from the window of my home on a fine "cool" November evening ;)

Bean ~ Cartoony Vehicle Setup

Here comes Bean, the cartoony vehicle character featured on the menu for my online rigging workshops (The pupPetEEr's Lounge). The course deals on creating a feature animation ready, fully Car - Toony, squash and stretch integrated, bendy and deformable vehicle rig with an intuitive and expressive facial setup!

Cheers :)

Facial Rigging - FIB Project

Check out this cool demo on facial rigging by Ricardo Jost Resende! Really expressive facial setup derived from nice sculpts and simple UI. It's fun to watch :)



He mentioned that this is his first facial rigging looking at Stop Starring book by Jason Osipa!

Tejo ~ Smash Animation Test

In this video you can watch Tejo jumping off a bridge and smash landing on the ground below!

Animation done by Manish Shakya :)

Gears of War 3 Rigging Reel

Gears of War 3 rigging reel by Jeremy Ernst. He mentioned that he was the only character TD working for the entire project. Really impressive job and a good share by him :)

Check out his post at techartist.org!

Rigging Tutorials by Adam Mechtley

"This video provides a technical explanation of how aim constraints work. The purpose is to develop an understanding of fundamental ideas that power more advanced rigging solutions."



"This video provides an explanation of how to create an effective twist structure for a forearm using an aim constraint. The result is compatible with IK and FK animation, and is not subject to Gimbal locking."

Useful and informative video tutorials by Adam Mechtley!

Rudy Racing Pig Reel

Quadruped rigging reel for the pig character from "Rudy - The return of the Racing Pig" movie by Nico Sanghrajka.

CORAL app

This is really cool. An open source app for making your own tools by interfacing with C++

"Coral is a new kind of 3d software that is not designed to solve a predefined set of problems, instead it gives you simple building blocks to create your own effects and pipeline solutions."

Check out all the videos!

Making of IMMORTALS

Making of IMMORTALS by Tippett Studio. Really cool CG live action integration! CG wounds are greatly exagerated, intense gore violence lol :D

Here is the new link!

Alfred Auto Facial Rigging Setup Tool

An in-house tool for facial rigging developed by Alfred Imageworks for there work Freestyle2 The Movie. Simple setup with intuitive joystick based controllers rigged in a matter of minutes; implemented for games :)

Check it out!

Brave Trailer

If you had the chance to change your faith! Would you?

I LOOK & MOVE

This is great! Imaginative stop motion, reminds me of JUMPER :)

Hand Roll Tutorial

Tutorial on setting up a hand roll system by Jeremy Ernst. Useful setup to articulate hand pressing or pushing against a surface!

Magnus ~ Making of

"An old train travels through landscapes, to get to an ancient city". A blend of art and technology to bring the imaginary world to life! Check out the making of video below as well.



Magnus is our master degree and full CG movie, made at ATI.

Facial Animation Test by Janimation

Facial mocap animation and rig test done by Janimation!

Mr. BallBot "The Transfomer Concept"

A quick concept art that I sketched up for my new upcoming workshop on Transformer setup!

Mr. BallBot transforms from a spherical ball into a bipedal robot, therefore the name goes Mr. BallBot. The concept is still a work in progress and I am constantly figuring out new ideas. The idea is to keep everything simple and subtle.

Well the sketching part was fun now comes the time to start modelling which is going to be fairly technical. Once the modelling is done, I will be posting a 360 turntable video prior to rigging!

I am already excited to see BallBot transform and come to life :)

Stay tuned folks The Transformer Workshop is coming soOn ... well not that sOon :P

Shadow Rig by Martial FONTAN

Check out this unique rig! Very Flexible and intuitive design for a shadow character. Really liked the way the head, facial and finger controls are setup-ed on 3D geometry and later projected onto 2D shadow :)

Free Rig: Malcolm Rig

Malcolm Rig from AnimSchool is now freely available for download compatible for both Maya and Softimage. Try it out! It's fun :)

GTA V Trailer

Simply Colossal!

Making of Nissan Skyline Transformer

Very good insights on making of a transformer animation! You can try out similar techniques to make your very own Transformer :)

Making of The Smurfs

Very informative and interesting video showcasing the breakdown and making of Sony Pictures Imagework "The Smurfs" movie. See how the 2D characters are brought to life!

Workshop Assets

A compilation image for some of the assets used during the training purpose! Check out The pupPetEEr's Lounge webpage showcasing some new training workshops for Workshop ON Demand. Cheers :)

Rigging Survey

The above image has nothing to do with this post, it's just a bit of a humor I say!

Like any other form of art and technology, rigging is constantly evolving. As a character rigger need to adapt to evolve. What I think, is keeping stuff simple and organized! We shouldn't miss out reference (live, image, video, etc), after all rigging or building a puppet is a way to mimic the natural organic or inorganic world as close as possible and this includes a study of art and building tools to ease the workflow.

A proper naming convention, structured rig hierarchy, directory structure, skeleton layout and orientation (understanding the anatomy) are some of the crucial factors. Creating a clean, fast and functional rig in time demands a clean rig layered with base rig, deformation, automation and dynamics as needed and art directed.

Rigging being a bridge between modelling and animation; during production, there tends to be some back and forth between each departments that deals with aritistic and technical changes and it's a challenge for the rigger to keep the flow and this includes efficient workflow, tool building and referencing. Working closely with modeller, animator and every other department is vital to deliver better output. There will be many challenges and hurdles, as a rigger we need to stand up to it and that's how we learn and avoid problems.

Cheers :)

Pigeon Rigging by Wesley Schneider

Bird rigging demo by Wesley Schneider. Lovely character design and beautiful rigs!

Pythagasaurus

Go ahead oh mathematical one!
Very small brain indeed ...
Funny :)

New Müller ad 2011

Indeed a Wonderful stuff!

Animation The Transformer

Ever wondered what it takes to bring the inanimate robot to life that transforms. A glimpse into Animating and Expressing the Transformer by Matt Miller. Click Here...

Making of Diablo 3: The Black Soulstone

Behind the Scenes look at the Making of Diablo 3: The Black Soulstone Cinematic at BlizzCon 2011 by Blizzard. A lot of work goes into making these cinematics! Pure Awesomeness :D

Key Points on Animation!

Useful points and key notes/quotes to keep in mind and follow during animation...



1. Rhythm, Timing, Beat & Spacing ~ Pattern, Texturing, Timing!
2. Learning drawing is vital!
3. Anticipation ~ Every movement in animation should have! Anticipate force being applied...
4. Arc ~ Every single thing in body should have!
5. No overshoot, No energy ~ exaggerate first and then pull it back until it's fit with animation (Don't be afraid of exaggerating too much)
6. Focus on PRINCIPLES ~ Staging, Posing, Anticipation!
7. KISS ~ KEEP IT SIMPLE Stupid!
8. Contact Frame ~ Right before and after the energy applies, foot touches the ground, legs stretch. Look out for contact key poses!
9. Video Reference ~ Cool motion, we could get the acting that people can't think of consciously. Push things more, search what makes animation unique!
10. Graph Editor ~ Be careful about the gaps between keys. Smooth out until the keys are faded out. Ease-in and Ease-out!
11. At least 3 frames are required to let audience see what it going on the screen!
12. Heavy ball takes a lot more frames to stop. Root is the heaviest part of the body!
13. Every frame should be able to tell a story. Posing is very important!
14. Polish TILT, RHYTHM, TWIST!

P.S. Notes assembled from a Romit studying at PIXAR :)

Maya UI Layout Elements Codes

Layouts determine how all the UI elements in a window should be placed. All menus and windows you see in Maya are created in MEL using specific UI commands such as layout, slider, field, button, etc!

There should be many cases when you must be wondering or getting frustrated to figure out the right UI element or layout? For this reason Matt created a really useful resource on documentation for UI elements so that we can pick the right one without much of a hassle. Click Here for the PDF documentation! Here is the original post from Tech-Artist.org.

Also check out this documentation on creating MEL UI Layouts. Useful resource for UI creation. :)

Guillaume Hoffmann - Rigging Reel 2011

Nice rigging reel by Guillaume Hoffmann. Facial setup seems very intuitive and fun to work with!

Auto Rig Tools Workshop

A new Workshop ON Demand has been added to the Menu!!!

"Auto Rig Tool workshop will focus on creating a fully customizable bipedal character rig using automated tools. Using these tools one can setup a character rig in a matter of minutes with just a click of a button saving both time and resources to deliver quality rigs. The workshop includes setting up an interactive user interface to create and connect custom rig set for body parts such as head, torso, arm, leg and finger. Tools are created using MEL."

Please check out The pupPetEEr's Lounge webpage for more info!

Cheers :)

HEPHAESTUS // short film ~ Fund Raising

Hephaestus is a short film directed by Alexander Curtis. The short follows the story of Hephaestus, an aging robotic soldier who finds new purpose in the care and protection of a young girl, Kaylee. But when the duo find themselves trapped in a war-zone, Heph must venture on to the battlefield once more.

Currently the short is running a campaign to raise some funding for the volunteer project for resources such as music, software and food!

Being a part of the rigging team I assisted on creating Kaylee, the lead character's hair and goggles setup as a volunteer support! Please feel free to support the movie and the talented artist by making a small donation :)

Facial Animation Basics

A step by step tips on creating fast and quality facial animation by DJ Nicke! These tips and techniques are really good resource for not just animators but also riggers to create quality, interactive animation friendly facial rigs that delivers what the animators are looking for! More tips on animation...

Tracker system by Igor Stefanovic

Technical study of a realistic hand. The setup is based on tracker system by Igor Stefanovic currently working as a Character TD at DreamWorks Animation. Below you can check out the demo on implementation of the tracker tool on a full body setup.

This setup seems to be different from the traditional corrective shape, pose-space deformation or muscle based deformation. It seems like the setup is a bit like an intelligent set driven key (kind of) or some history dependent math connection applied on individual joints or controller binded to individual mesh component for smooth fleshy and realistic articulation. This is simply a really big milestone on rigging tools for realistic deformation. A good share by Igor, awesome job and deserves two thumbs up!

Beyond Black Mesa

A short Independent fan film Inspired by the Half-Life Video Game series directed by Brian Curtin. Simply Superb but again Acting could have been a little better!

I have always been a big fan of the Half-Life games, played every chapter, prequel and sequel! Watching this movie makes me feel like being a part of the game, short of flashback of the atmosphere, the look, the sound and the stuffs like the little health pack and so and so :)

More info and Behind the Scenes!

The Blue Project, Dan Roarty (3D)

CGChoice Award Winner Portrait by Dan Roarty for "The Blue Project". I really liked the realism! Check out the post over CGSociety for information and techniques that he applied to create this fine piece of art.

Crowd Simulation Using Expression!

Here is a 4 part video tutorial on creating crowd simulation using MEL and expression by Autodesk. Check it out! Useful tips, tricks, ideas and resource :)









Click here to download the asset file used in this tutorial...

Sintel ~ Facial Setup Overview

An overview of facial topology , shapes and setup for the lead character from the "Sintel" short movie. Check it out, it's a good resource for any package :)











Additionally feel free to check out other video resources by Ponder Studios.

Squash and Stretch (Part 1)

 

Useful post on Squash and Stretch by Mark Kennedy.

"One of the first concepts you hear about when you're studying animation is "squash and stretch", which is the idea that living forms (and certain types of inanimate objects) have a certain amount of flexibility and that they change shape as they move around under their own power, react to external forces or change expression."

WWF ~ We are all connected

Very true and very nicely done!

Anime Looks Cute Rig Reel

I find this rigging reel by Cheng Yining cute! Really liked how the texture maps are being played around to give those cartoony anime cry baby looks...

dpAutoRigSystem v2.0 by Danilo Pinheiro

Here is a nice demo on a freeware python based modular auto rigging tool by my friend Danilo Pinheiro on creating customizable rig. Support him by using, troubleshooting, feed-backing and mentioning the tool and his works!

You can download the tool from his blog!

The Art of Puppetry

In this video, the puppeteer plays a double role as a rigger and an animator to bring the puppet to life. Think of those strings controlling the puppet to be IK Handles! :)

Looney Tunes Smears & Multiples

Really cool 3D smears and multiples references from Looney Tune animated short "Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner" by Josh Carey!

Source Link!

Tools based on Osipa by Liu

Automated tools demo for facial setup based on blendshapes created by Liu derived from Jason Osipa style joystick based blendshape driven facial setup. This could be a good reference for anyone trying to recreate Osipa style setup quickly and efficiently using custom tools.

Anamaris Cruz Animation Demo Reel

Check out the latest animation done on Sinka by Anamaris Cruz. Nice customization, animation and style! Love to see Sinka coming to life :)

Useful Tips/Techniques on Rigging a Bird/Feather

Ever wondered what it takes for a bird to fly!? Simple, it's the wing.  :)

I have managed to find some nice links on creating a fairly realistic wing and feather setup similar to what you might have seen on the gorgeous birds of RIO! Well of course, you can implement similar technique keep constructing and manipulating. The idea is to understand the technique, stuffs like what is going under neath the hood.

I will keep updating this post with more resources so stay tuned!

~ Stumbled upon these two wonderful sites/blogs by Nakyoung Kim and yukfoo.net, sharing the ideas, tips, techniques and tools to create a bird rig, mainly focussing on the wing and feather system. 

~ Paule from Pen Production have some more insight on similar looking setup using spline based controllers. 

~ Check out this link on creating a good looking bird wing setup by Henrik Englund :)

~ Nice tool created by Ismail to setup a bird (wing/feather) rig!


~ This is a really good resource to see how the bird's wing is articulated


More Useful Links:
http://www.jackals-forge.com/tutor/tut1.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jUKOMGKfOM&feature=related
http://www.3dtotal.com/ffa/tutorials/maya/bird_tutorial/bird.asp
http://www.hartworks.net/blender/jared/

Looney Tunes Rigging Reel by Josh Carey

Josh Carey, Head of Rigging at Reel FX Creative Studios and co-founder of Rigging Dojo, has made an awesome, eye popping Rigging Demo Reel for Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote, two of the most popular Looney Tunes characters of all times. Really loved how the 2D cartoony style has been brought to life on to 3D platform!
This was Reel FX’s submission to the VES Awards for Best Overall Achievement in an Animated Short. Josh Carey was responsible for Supervising all Rigging on the Project as well as doing several of the Rigs, Tools, and Workflows needed to achieve the Crazy Looney Tunes Character Rigs.

Mini-Course Mentoring @ Rigging Dojo!

Teaching is truly another form of learning for me! Recently I conducted a little mini course at Rigging Dojo, sharing some of the ideas, tips and techniques for creating a Dynamic Rig! During this time, I was very pleased after receiving all those cool feedback from the students. I would like to thank Brad "The Founder of Rigging Dojo" and the entire Rigging Dojo team including the awesome students for this wonderful interactive opportunity. I really had a wonderful time :)

Amazing Moves!

I had to post this; such awesome robot dance moves! This guy is amazing. I am thinking how hard will be to actually do an animation similar to this including the character setup ;)

Maya/Rigging: Dealing with Double Tranforms

Sometimes double transforms can trip you up right out of the box, sometimes they don't become apparent until you try to "package" your rig under some Master Control node. This video talks about some common situations where you'll find these issues and some simple fixes to deal with them. A video by Zeth Willie!

Spaceman!

What does it feel like to fly over Planet Earth! Notice the city lights and the lightning thunder.

Sculpting Anyone!?

Check out these cool sculpting videos by James Van Den Bogart on vimeo! Awesome works :)

Dynamic Goodness #101

Here are some dynamic goodness worth sharing! Check out the video tutorial on creating hair system based dynamic rig :)

Cheers

Meet Höbö!

Look at this, simple, smart, bouncy, cartoony ... fun to play with character rig named Höbö! I just checked it out and this looks sweet, seems like a comeback of Barbapapa! The character is designed, modelled by Ozan Civit rigged by Gökalp Gönen! Höbö is recruited by Animation Scout founder Ugur Ulvi Yetiskin.

TEJO ~ Muscle Simulation

A little while I posted a link about a WIP image of  TEJO rig! Now here it is, the beast is finally alive. Muscle simulation done using Maya Muscle. Animation was done by Manish Shakya, currently graduating from Animation Mentor! Cheers :)

Recent Flicks!

Updates to The Animal Kingdom!
Taken with Galaxy S II :)

Flickr Library!

SRB ~ Eye Factory "Grab It, Cheers"

Hey Folks,

Just uploaded a little tool for everyone to play with. The name goes "Eye Factory", yes "Eye Factory" for creating a quick, intuitive eye/eyelid rig based on joints. Well, the tool won't skin the geometry so, you will have to work out on a good skinning for proper deformation. Once the tool runs, it's just a matter of connecting the attributes with a nice UI of your own, and walla you are done with a fairly realistic, could be cartoony looking eye setup with automated fleshy eye features, intuitive - regional eye blinking and more. You can always dig in and see what's going underneath the hood. Fairly simple little tool, test it, try it, share it and like it ... Cheers :)

Below is an image showing some important guideline for using this tool :

You can download the tool from CreativeCrash. Click here for the link!

If you feel like learning how the setup works, I have a quick video tutorial at your disposal!



Happy Rigging/Animating ... Feedbacks, queries and comments are most welcome :)

Sculpting The Face - Webinar with Ryan Kingslien

Recently Image Metrics hosted a facial sculpting and anatomy webinar with ZBrush Workshops founder, Ryan Kingslien. Ryan is one of the industry's most sought after artists and it was a pleasure to hear his take on how to tackle learning facial anatomy. The video is hosted/presented by Ryan Kingslien and Jay Grenier. Check out the video below.

Sculpting The Face - Anatomy & Form

Mario Bros on Violin!

Something fun to watch, and play "The Mario Bros" with live Violin playback!

Porto Seguro - Dinheirinho Rigging

Simple straight forward, cartoony, funny rig demo of a Banknotes character; yes a Dollor Bill Character by Wesley Schneider. Totally creative and stylized character design. Worth watching it!

TEJO ~ Muscle Setup Snapshot

A little WIP snapshot for TEJO, the character from the Muscle Workshop. This beast is coming to life soOn ;)

Character TD Demo - Kaylee Rig

A video demo by Jonas Avrin (@Jawabiscuit) featuring the Kaylee rig which is provided by Alex Curtis, director of Hephaestus, soon to be released. It shows techniques provided by Autodesk's Animator Friendly Rigging series by Jason Schleifer. Special recognition goes to Image Metrics' proprietary facial rigging tools for the automatic setup of the control rig for the face! I worked on the goggles and hair setup. Many thanks to Jonas for the mention :)

Reference! Reference! - Free Animation Database

Check out this cool site with tons of free animation reference libraries http://www.referencereference.com/. Title says it all!

Rise of the Planet of the Apes :: Production Focus

CGSociety talked to the leads at Weta Digital about their work on 'The Rise of the Planet of the Apes'. VFX Supervisor Chris White gave some brilliant insights about the creative workflow.

You think too much & feel too little!

Probably the greatest speech ever by Charlie Chaplin presented with a blend of visual documentary. The speech is a part from one of Chaplin's greatest movie ever "The Great Dictator" where he played a dual role of Hitler as "Hynkel" and a poor barber!

VIKING RIGG ~ Alex Angelis

Yet another very beautiful and neat rigging reel for a lovely character design. Alex is a self taught rigger and he mentioned in his comments that it took about a month of his free time to create this rig! I really enjoyed how he have setup-ed simple looking, flexible finger and foot controllers. The real neat job was done on the facial with Osipa style joystick controller UI and a layered secondary on mesh "sticky controllers". Nice job ... worth a watch :)

Tejo 360 Turntable!

Here is a 360 degree modeling turntable video of "Tejo", the muscular creature for my Muscle Setup workshop! I had to work out a nice topology and edge flow maintaining the muscular anatomical volume of the character. Let's see what this beast is up to with all those brute muscle! Gonna be FUN ;)

Troll Hunter VFX

Some video demos of "Troll Hunter VFX" work that I really liked and wanted to share. Outstanding job done to bring out the hyper-realism for the character!

Hephaestus Animated Short Film Work "WIP"

Directed by Alexander Curtis and produced by Joshua Brock and Paige Day, comes an animated short that I luckily got to work on as a Character Rigger. I did rigging for Kaylee's hair and goggles with the supervision of my good friend, Jonas Avrin. Kaylee is (one of the) lead character for the short! Stay tuned folks, the movie should be out and public in a few months time. Till then feel free to watch and share the reel below. You can find out some cool color renders of the film in Alexander's animation demo reel :)

Facial Motion Capture R&D

Hi there everyone! It's been a little while since I blogged something about myself ;)

Here is a little R&D video of facial MoCap animation. I really wanted to do a MoCap animation for a long time, specially from the moment I watched "The Rise of the Planet of the Apes" movie in the theatre (was an awesome movie). The MoCap animation demonstrated in this video is optics based. I used my mobile phones video camera to record the facial expression footage. Facial markers or stickers used for tracking process were glued to my "skinny" face :D



Anyways ... a little bit of research work that I did during my weekend! Hope you guys like it :)

P.S. The idea, tips and techniques applied in this video is a part of my online rigging workshop for Motion Capture Facial Setup!

More Info : http://puppeteerlounge.com/

Really interesting read blogged by Jonas : http://www.jonasavrin.com/2011/08/16/indie-facial-performance-capture-rd/

Character Development and Rigging for Facial Animation Part 1

Really neat tips and tricks demo on layered joint based facial rigging by a good friend of mine, Mr. Jonas Avrin!

"This demo illustrates the steps taken to develop a character from concept sketches to finished facial rig in a simplified format.  This is an actual rig I developed with the use of proprietary rigging tools in Maya utilized daily at work so I’m not going to demo those tools.  However, future installments will incorporate the use of tools that I have written and that you can use to aide the building of complex facial rigs such as this, and include overviews of more advanced rigging techniques.  I would also like to break the process down into chunks to really go into more detail about things you should be thinking about if you are trying to rig a face.  This is an ongoing process so stay tuned, I have lot’s of useful tips to share."

Worth watching ... more parts coming.

Frame by Frame

Awesome site for frame by frame study of animated sequential images from various animated films!

Frame by Frame

Tim Ridgarde Showreel

Nice rigging reel showing rigs and tools used on James Bond: Blood Stone game by Tim Ridgarde.

TIJI "COLOUR"

This is beautifully brilliant! Story is well played with sketch & color.

Gulp

This is by far one of the best and spectacular stop motion animation I have seen :)
The film has broken a world record for the 'largest stop-motion animation set', with the largest scene stretching over 11,000 square feet.

Mac 'n' Cheese

This is freaking awesome! lolz :D

Ormie "The Pig"

This is Super Funny & Cute at the same time! I really enjoyed the animation which is superbly crafted, acted and yet is pretty experimental :D

More Info!

Unleash Your Fingers

Really awesome Tutting and VFX commercial for the latest Samsung Galaxy SII. I got one of these a week earlier :D

Rise of the Planet of the Apes - Weta Featurette

Featurette video showcasing some of the workflow pipeline from WETA for "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" movie. WETA has really broken through the mo-cap technology by shooting capturing motion outside of a studio. Awesome job as always!

The Animator Prepares: Unique Workflow to Make It Magical

Stumbled upon an interview post at youanimator.com about animation preparation and workflow by Peter Nagy. Good read and the workflow presentation video is a good reference for every animator.

HippyDrome's Videos :)

Useful and inspirational video focusing on for articulation or rigging by HippyDrome. Good One :)

Modelling for Articulation!
Intro to Articulating the Face!
Articulating on 3 Curves!

Twist Joint Setup Overview :)

I have seen people and previously me myself using twist joint setup (usually while rigging forearm twist) using the good old rotational weighted constraints or direct rotational connection with offset values to give even twisting. It works great for straight aligned joint rotated or twisted in just single direction for example rotate X, but once you start rotating in all direction which we all tend to, some thing weird happens, something not so good that is known as flipping. This flipping behavior is the result of GIMBAL LOCK! Well then, that is a major issue.

Basically, the flipping can be avoided if we stay out of rotational constraints or connections. I am going to show two methods on how this can be achieved.

1st Method (Aim Constraint with Up Vector) : The first method deals with setting up a joint twist using the power of aim constraint. The twisting of each joint is controlled by World Up Objects, which are basically locators re-positioned on top of each joint. Once the locators are moved, the joint twist evenly without any flipping. Check out the images below for detail!

2nd Method (Spline IK with Up Vector) : The second method is pretty straight forward. Create a regular spline IK on a given joint chain. From the advance twist option, make sure that World Up Type is object Up (Start/End). Just like the aim constraint, the up locators are used to setup the advance twist for the entire joint chain. Again, check out the images below for detail!

Therefore, both of the method shown above can be applied for creating a non - flipping GIMBAL LOCK friendly twist setup which can be applied for regular forearm twist or whatever. Spline IK Advance Twist doesn't seem to work very well with mirrored joint, in such case just re-root the mirrored joint chain so that the end joint becomes the parent (Maya Bug). I hope this post could be useful to you, let me know if you have any concerns. Cheers :)

P.S. here is another cool alternative for no flipping twist by Cedric Bazillou. He used a custom Quaternion based Aim Constraint node to achieve the result. More info can be gathered from his blog!

Yet another cool post by Keil Figgins "Forearm Twist: An Animation Solution". Good read!

Portal 2 :: Game Production Focus

Portal is by far one of the most addictive and fun game! The Valve guys have delivered a strong answer to gamers wanting an extension to the Portal world. With a bunch of progression shows and video breaks, CGSociety talks to Project Lead Josh Weier and a couple of the talented Valve artist team to describe their process for Portal 2.