Meindbender ~ Pirate

Here is a CGSociety production coverage for Meindbender Studio's Pirate! I really enjoyed the parrot rig demonstration. I loved the way they have created such unique and cartoony characters with a Stop Motion Claymation feel and art direction :)



Click Here for the link to the CGSociety coverage!
http://www.meindbender.com

SRB ~ pupPetEEr ToOls

Hello folks,

Here is a little technical demo of my custom rigging tools aka SRB ~ pupPetEEr ToOls!

Enjoy :D

Image Metric's Webinar Videos

For those who missed IM's amazing webinar video presentation or just want to recap the session, can visit Image Metrics vimeo page to get a sneak peek on all videos. You can also check out there state of the art facial rigging videos and other cool stuffs which includes tips and tricks as well.

Click Here for the video links :)

Red9 Studio Pack

Ok, here seems to be a neat little tool for speeding up animation workflow. This tool comes with a combo pack of Node Search utility and some Animation Tools. I am gonna play with this tool for my animation projects for sure! For me this seems to be a must have recommended tool for animation workflow. Thanks to the Red9 Studio for the share ;)

Download Here :)

Ghangzong "Himalayan" Sir

A little OFF Topic material again rather than the regular CG stuffs! Ok, here is a really remarkable person and a very good friend of mine, Binod! For the past 6 years he have been volunteering and  educating children and peoples living in  Dolpa (one of the remotest places in Nepal). Whatever he earns and make from  fund raising goes to establishing school in  Dolpa. He is know as Ghangzong Sir (Himalayan Dolpa Sir) by the local  community and praised by them. His  struggle, effort and spirit is still  unheard by lot of people so I helped him make a blog and a facebook group to share what he have in his mind! I wish him the  very best on his endeavors and more than willing to support :)

Click Here to visit his Blog. Whenever he get's some time off from his work he will keep us posted from his blog!

IM Webinar ~ Facial Rigging - Balancing Quality And Control- Part II

Ok here comes the 2nd part of the facial rigging webinar session conducted by Image Metrics. Joining Jay for part 2 of the facial rigging webinar will be Vladimir Mastilovic, Image Metrics' lead rigger and one of the most experienced facial riggers in the industry. Vlad and Jay will be discussing the different types of facial rigs IM has used over the years, both from a technical stand point as well as the methodologies behind their creation.They 'll also be taking an inside look at the facial rigs used in Crytek's Crysis 2, built by Image Metrics.

Looking forward to joining the webinar on 26th April @ 2:45 AM Nepal Time ;)

Here are the links on more info if you wish to join this wonderful webinars ...
Click here for IM Forum
Click here for Registration

CryENGINE 3 :: Technology Focus

Game Engines are getting more and more sophisticated ... pretty soon an entire feature film will be made out of it, I presume! CryEngine makes me CRY Out Load XD
Click Here & CRY!

Sucker Punch :: Production Focus

Production focus for a one of a kind, mind bogglingggg movie ... Click Here to proceed to the main post!

Making Animatable Pivot: Part 2

OK, here comes the 2nd part of creating an Animated Pivot by a good friend of mine. In this post he describes on how to actually go ahead on setting up a pivot controller with a bit of maths involved. The offset part is still a bit tricky and will be described in Maulik's up coming post :)

Click Here for the link ...

Sinka Momentum

Seems like Sinka is getting some momentum. I found this really interesting animation done by Justin Tan. The motion, body dynamics and expression seems really fluid. I like the snappyness ... really good job :)

Pokhara ~ Ghandruk Trek / Trip 2011

Ok, here is a little different topic; not the regular CG stuff but the nature! Recently I went on a treking trip from Pokhara to Ghandruk, which is about 300 KM west of Kathmandu. The breathtaking views and sceneries here are some of the best in the world. You can almost feel the gigantic Himalayas above your head with beautiful village and wild green forest. These places are what I would like to call heaven on earth ... the true Sangrila! I am looking forward to visit there again :)
Feel free to check out some of the snaps on my flickr page ...

Maya 2012 Startup Image

This seems like a new start up image for upcoming Autodesk Maya 2012. Looks familiar, doesn't it!? Very interesting ... hmmmm!

Unreal Engine 3 Trailer

This is insane ... just blew my mind! The next generation video game engines are becoming ultra real and sophisticated. I wonder pretty soon we will have full featured CG animated movies made from game engines ... really coOl, I am already waiting to play video games made out of this engine :D

Cartoon chicken discusses trending news stories

Ok, here is a new way of presenting news, interesting :)

Tron Legacy HOT Interview

When I watched the movie with 3D goggles on an amazing big screen I was like OMG ... this is breathtakingly beautiful with all those stunning artworks. I wonder how was this movie actually made, the blend of live action with CG environment was stunning. Anyways, I got some of my questions answered reading this awesome interview with the artist working behind the scene to create this one of a kind epic Legacy :)

Here is the link to the interview ... Click here to be mesmerized XD

Image-Metrics Webinar & Resources

Image-Metrics, worlds leading solution for facial animation in games, movies and commercial is conducting wonderful webinar session running from 4th of April. Jay, a very good friend of mine and rigger (technical artist) working at Image-Metrics is conducting this webinar.

I got an opportunity to grab a sit for this one of a kind webinar session fully dedicated towards facial rigging and facial animation using Image-Metrics proprietary software "Faceware". Faceware is an Über cool, state of the art technology for facial animation, and I think it is one of the best out there. Anyways, the webinar session is really informative and attendees can raise there hands for any questions, tips and suggestions. I am really looking forward for the next session which will deal with actual facial performance capture :)

Oh yes, for the link to the webinar session ... Click Here!

Also, peoples at Image-Metrics are very willing to share and see people benefiting from the rising CG community. Therefore, anyone interested can get there hands on their state of the art facial rigs and builds, which includes a collection of hybrid rigs for games and films!

So, what are you waiting for, get yourself a free rig from this link ... Click Here!

Finally, I want to thank the peoples and fellow friends at Image-Metrics for this one of kind meeting round up session. I hope that more peoples and studios out there learn from this and organize similar session for people like us and the community. I wish Image-Metrics and staffs working there a very warm best wishes and a big THANK YOU :)

Links:
Jay Greiner
Jonas Avrin
Image-Metrics

Squiggle Line Tutorial

Here is a really nice and handy little tutorial by Keith on creating squiggly cartoony line art render for your 3D image.
Here is the tutorial link on Keith's blog post :) Squiggle Line Tutorial

How to Animate a Rolling Cube

You will use the properties of a primitive cube’s pivot point to animate it rolling on its edges. This process will involve the use of the Channel Control window to make certain attributes keyable. Once they are keyable, they will be available in the Channel Box for you to set keys and edit their value. In this lesson, you will also use the Graph Editor to refine the animation curves to get exactly the kind of motion that you need.

STEP ONE

Place a primitive poly cube into the scene and scale it to X=2, Y=2 and Z=2.
Select the Move tool and place the front of the cube at 0 along the Z axis (Z=-1).
Press the Insert key to go into edit mode and then move the pivot point to the middle of the cube’s front bottom edge.
You may want to use grid snapping to help you position the pivot.
Now press the Insert key to return to the Move tool then move the cube to the origin. (Y=1)

STEP TWO

Select Display -> Transform Display -> Local Rotation Axes and Rotate Pivots. These icons will help you visualize these components as you begin animating the pivot.

STEP THREE

Select Window -> General Editors -> Channel Control and select the following non-keyable attributes:

Rotate Pivot Translate X
Rotate Pivot Translate Y
Rotate Pivot X
Rotate Pivot Y

Use the Move button to make them keyable attributes. They will now appear in the Channel Box.

STEP FOUR

With the cube selected, set a key for Z rotation at frame 1.
Go to frame 10 then set Rotate Z to -90 and set another key.

STEP FIVE

Return to frame 1. Select the Rotate Pivot Translate X, Rotate Pivot Translate Y, Rotate Pivot X, and Rotate Pivot Y in the Channel Box then use your RMB to choose Key Selected.

STEP SIX

Go to frame 10.
Open the Attribute editor and select the pCube tab.
Expand the Pivots section.
Expand World Space section.
Set World Rotate X Pivot to 2. You should notice that the pivot moves to the front of the cube. Now you can continue rotating the cube.

In the Channel Box, set a key for the Rotate Pivot Translate X, Rotate Pivot Translate Y, Rotate Pivot X, and Rotate Pivot Y channels.

Editing the World Rotate Pivot in the Attribute Editor affects these four attributes therefore they must all be keyed.

STEP SEVEN

Go to frame 20.

Set another linear key frame for a Rotate Z to -180. Set the World Rotate Pivot to 4 then set keys for the four pivot channels in the Attribute editor.

If desired, keep rotating the cube and moving the pivot using the steps outlined above. If you playback the animation at this point, the roll of the cube will not seem correct. You need to change the animation curve tangents for the pivot attributes.

STEP EIGHT

The incorrect motion is because the pivot point needs to stay in one location for 10 frames then jump to its new location.

    Open the Graph Editor.
    Select the four pivot action curves
    Select Tangents -> Stepped.

This will create the desired results.

Source Link :)

Understanding Animatable Pivot

Really useful and informative post by Maulik about understanding and creating an animated pivot system. He guides you through the logic and maths behind creating this system.

Basically if you ever tried creating an animated pivot control, you will notice that once the object has been rotated and it's rotatePivot point has been shifted and repositioned; once the  object get translated we see some weird transformation. These unwanted transformation can be fixed by calculating the offset values in the rotatePivotTranslate matrix.

To give you a better idea on this please take a look at this little tutorial post :)

Also, Maulik has been working on this offset solution to create a real time animated pivot which you can find in his blog. Below is the link ... and a big thanks to Maulik :)


Making Animatable Pivot

Animated Pivot in Maya

In this tutorial, I am going to show you two different methods to create a pivot control for animation. One more thing, Happy April FoOl's Day :D

1^st Method

• Create a locator and name it pivot. Create a polygon cube and name it object. Select the object and group it to itself and rename the group as negOffset. Make negOffset a child of pivot.

•  Now create a multiply divide node from the hypershade or just entering “createNode multiplyDivide in the mel script editor. Open the connection editor and load pivot in the Outputs  and multiply divide node in the Inputs. Connect translate of pivot to input1 of multiplydivide node. Make sure that the input2 of the node is all set to -1.

• Again, load the multiply divide node in Outputs and negOffset in the Inputs. Connect the output of multiply divide node to translate of negOffset.

• It’s done. Just select the pivot and move it to the desired position and rotate it. You can see that the object rotate from that pivot point.

2nd Method

• Create a locator and name it pivot. Create a polygon cube and name it object. Select the object and group it to itself and rename the group as offset. 

•  Open up the connection editor and load pivot in Outputs and offset in Inputs. Connect translate of pivot to rotatePivot of offset. Again connect rotate of pivot to rotate of offset.

• That’s it. Now just select the pivot and move it wherever you want and rotate it. The object rotates from that pivot point.

Conclusion : Both of these methods shows a technique to create a pivot control which can be animated. Note that once you have rotated and translate the pivot controller, there is some weird transformation (you can zero out the rotate in this case and reposition as you need ;) but this is totally natural which can only be avoided by creating a little script to reposition the offset. But I don't think it is necessary because I am pretty sure the animator will use the pivot controller based on the shot necessity and can easily manipulate it. Hope you enjoyed my little tutorial :)

Also, if you wish to know what I meant about the weird transformation stuff, it is basically something that is taken care of by putting some offset values in the rotatePivotTranslate attribute. You might want to take a look at the tutorial post below to get a good understanding about it!

How to Animate a Rolling Cube ...