Photos from Jiri!

Some of the beautiful scenery that I managed to capture on my way to Jiri. Wishing you all an amazingly creative and beautiful 2013 :) :)

Charlie Facial Expression Sheet

Here is a quick facial expression sheet for "Charlie" by Sachina Shakya. Want the rig to be super fun to work with, extremely flexible with cartoon like deformation and of course animator friendly! This is gonna make me busy for a little while :)

Charlie features in Cartoony Facial Setup and Facial Acting workshop!

Aaron Holly Interview

A video featuring Aaron Holly giving an interview regarding character rigging and the industry.

Keith Lango Animation: Going dark...

Recently I was doing my routine round up of animation blogs and websites. I came across a post by Keith Lango, who is a great animator and has been a blogger for a very long time, stating his blog post and all the online resources that he shares to the community will no longer be updated. So he mentions in his final post that he is retiring from animation blogging and online animation teaching.

I have been a great fan of Keith Lango and I thank him for all the hard work he have done, sharing his valuable knowledge to the online animation community. His blogs and videos will be a great resource for generation to come and remembered. I personally believe his online archive is an epic library!

I wish him all the best with his endeavors and thanking him for being a great animator :)

Check out his final blog post over here...

Mingquan(Charles) Zhou Cartoon Truck Rigging for AAU Spring Show 2012

Cartoon truck rig demo by Mingquan(Charles) Zhou.

Below is his rigging reel.

Personal project made at Framestore by Amaury Coljon

Very good lion animation by Amaury Coljon. Good body mechanics!

Facial Library ~ Alike production

Beautiful facial expression poses that are used by the animators as a reference for Alike production. Check it out, a good resource for all!

Facial rigging is always fun :)

Visit Alike production notes for more!

Lavazza a modo mio

Beautiful stop motion commercial and concept!

Making of N0X-2292

Making of N0X-2292. Outstanding modeling work not just artistically but also the technical parts featuring the mechanics of transformation and the intricate details the artist worked on, not just the high poly model but also on the real-time mesh for game.

Neus Gordillo Animation Reel 2012

Animation reel by Neus Gordillo.

Useful tips by marco d'ambros

RigTip on how to move a Skinned Joint by marco d'ambros.



RigTip on Maya collision system with matrix by marco d'ambros.

Garrett Eves Rig Reel 2012 (November) - Garrett Eves

Rigging reel by Garrett Eves showcasing some nice technical demos.

Open Animation Workshop Dec 2012 at Puppeteer Lounge

That's me entertaining the audience with Danny's fancy moves. Recently we conducted an interaction program, an Open Animation Workshop with students of Srijana Fine Arts college at Puppeteer Lounge. All of them loved watching cartoons, big animated movies and playing video games but very little of them actually knew how it was all made or created. During the open workshop I had the opportunity to enlighten the students on animation, I mean how a digital character is born and how we bring the character to life, the process from the humble bouncing ball to complex shots. The students had a great time learning from us. Makes me want to do these sessions more often :)

Check out the photo gallery here!

Online Open Rigging Workshop on “How to rig a Polaroid SX-70 Camera”

I am doing an Online Open Rigging Workshop on “How to rig a Polaroid SX-70 Camera” just like the one you see in the video below over at Puppeteer Lounge this holiday season. Come join me!




Sign up here!

Dynamic Rigging!? ~ Open "mini" Workshop

Namaste! 

Well this is one of the very first series or you can call it an experimental version of my so called Blog based "Open Workshop" which is not just a regular tutorial but a mini course!

In this session we will be talking about the amazing world of DYNAMIC RIGGING! Yes, you heard it right... So stay on the post people cause it's gonna be a big one :)

Preface!

I have always been fascinated watching cartoons and playing video games from my childhood. I am a real curios person,  always wanting to know how! How do they do that!?  Well that might be the reason I became a RIGGER! RIGGING is awesome; you get to create a digital  PUPPET … the very essence of an illusion of life! Well then let’s get back to the topic. The main focus of this course is Dynamic Rigging. Yeah, Dynamic + Rigging = More Rigging Awesomeness!

What exactly is Dynamic Rigging?

Rigging or setting up a character using the power of dynamics to simulate and match the needs of character design and articulation. It may also be considered as “Icing on the Cake” … to ease the workflow, simulate complex movements that may take ages to be done manually (Hand Keyed)! One of the most important principles of character animation is the Overlapping and Follow through Action. Using the power of dynamics layered on top of the existing rig, we can simulate such movements effortlessly. For example, we can use Dynamic Rigging to simulate the movement of an octopus’s tentacle, animal’s tail, overlapping motion for bird’s wing or a fish’s fin, simulate the motion of a vehicle’s suspension or tank thread, simulate bullet firing from a machine gun, simulate wardrobe and character accessories or use it to simulate muscle and deformation for body and the face and much much more!!!

So what will we be learning?

I will go over some of the different techniques and approaches for doing Dynamic Rigging, which includes an overview and utilization of Maya Hair Dynamics, Soft Bodies and nCloth. Will be discussing on how we can layer the existing rig with dynamics to create some nice follow through movements. Also, going through how we can setup a rig that blends between manual and dynamics setting smoothly. I will try to keep everything as simple as possible. 

Before we proceed, let's take a look at some of these interesting links:

• A personal demo of mine
• A little sculpting demo included!
• A reallu nice demo by “Manitou”; Dynamics on a vehicle suspension
• Free Rigs, check em out; break get and find out what’s going underneath the hood
• Tutorial
• Scrat Meets Girl, Look at the eye lashes ... OhhhoooOhhoo, yup of course the tail

P.S. Remember using dynamics does have its Pros and Cons. You won’t get real time feedback, dynamics tend to get slower with more complexity and often time unstable. Therefore, keep it simple and make a habit of saving your files :)

Fundamentals / Hair System #01 

People generally tend to see that the hair system is primarily used for stuffs like creating beautiful silky dynamic hair for render. But that is not the case, we as a rigging artist can use the power of hair system to recreate powerful simulation to drive complex animation. You can quickly create Hair on any given surface very easily. Just select the geometry (nurbs surface or polygon with proper UV unwrapped), go to dynamic menu set, click on hair, click the option box to create hair, make sure output is set to nurbsCurve and hit apply. That’s it! Run the interactive playback, move the geometry and walllaaa you have beautiful hair dynamics going on. 

Hair system is primarily based on these three components, these are:

1. Hair System Node: This is the control house connecting all other components with tons of attributes to play with.
2.  Follicle: Follicle is a like the root of our own hair. It attach itself to the geometry and follows the it’s movement. You can find the input curve parented to the follicle.
3. Curves: These are the driving forces, two simple nurbs curves. One of them is the input curve and the other is the output or dynamic curve. The output curve gives the dynamic simulation based on the movement and position of the input curve.

Other than the above component, paint effects are used for render purpose!

So then, how can we use the hair system in rigging in general! Let’s keep it to the basic shall we :)

Tip #01

Hair system dynamics is driven by curves, yes curves. With curves we can do tons of cool things, it’s simple and fast to compute. Like I said the hair system has two key components, the input curve and the output. Input curve drives the output curve. What if we want to simulate something like a waving flag, or a piece of wardrobe on a character’s body, may be a curtain, rope swinging or just a bunch of hair? Basically, the easiest way is to create a lofted geometry on the output curves. Just make a clean selection of all the output curves and create a loft. The lofted geometry due to the construction history will always follow the output curves and gives you a clean smooth simulation. The lofted mesh can then be used as a driver to drive the original mesh (cloth, hair, flag, shoe lace, pony tail, a bunch of flower, etc). Simply use a Wrap deformer on it. You can always go and tweak the setting till you are happy with the results. Let’s say if you want a wavy motion such as an octopus’s tentacle you can play with the turbulence attribute! Start Curve Attract and Stiffness are sometimes mistaken for same results but these are a bit different. The curve attract tends to match the output curve with the input curve the higher we go with the values, just like blendshapes does. Stiffness on the other hand is like rigidity, the higher we go the stiffer the curve is! Go along play with different settings.

Collision & Constraints (Fun!)

Oh yeah! These are fun to work with …

Collision is an important factor in dynamic simulation. For example, if you want to create a character’s wardrobe colliding with the skin beneath or self collision, you can simply assign a collision object to the hair system. You can add geometry as a collision object or use the hair dynamics native collision objects such as a collision sphere or a cube. Using native collision objects gives you faster and better results.

Constraints on the other hand are used to pin or transform a bunch of dynamic curve. For example, the rubber band constraint like the name states, constraints a bunch of selected curves so that they can be transformed as a whole.

You can always constraint or do some smart parenting on these constraint and collision objects as desired.

Fields (More Fun!)

Dynamic objects can be controlled by using different types of fields. You can find all of them under the Fields menu item for Dynamic menu set. For example, let’s say we wished to create hair (cloth) flowing through the wind (the character is driving on a motorbike), we can easily simulate such motion using the power of fields. You can quickly assign Air field for selected hair system node and ramp up or down the magnitude attribute to simulate such movements.

Fill free to play with all these fields and there settings, I would love to see you drive a wind turbine simulation using this ;)

Building Puppets 101 / Hair System #02

OK! So let’s dive into how we can create a rig driven by hair system dynamics. Like I have mentioned dynamics is driven by input and output curves! The cool thing is that we can create a dynamic curve out of any given curve. For example, just create a simple nurbs 3rd degree EP curve, select the curve and under the hair menu set just click on Make Selected Curve Dynamics. What you end up with is a brand new hair system node, a follicle node containing the input curve and a dynamic curve. Hit interactive playback and try moving the follicle or the input curve, you will notice that the output curve follows the movement with built in dynamics. You can change the setting on the follicle node for Point Lock as Base. The tip of the output curve is no longer attached to the input curve and now you can see nice follow through when played and moved!

Now comes the interesting part, I am sure you are all familiar with Spline IK. Well, when a joint chain is driven by a curve it’s called a Spline IK. We can create all sorts of interesting rig with this powerful tool. No doubt the most used one includes a torso rig or may be a simple tail rig based of Spline IK setup! One cool thing about Spline IK is that we can tell Maya to create a Spline IK based joint chain with the use of a manual custom curve. You can find the option from Spline Ik Handle Setting (Creation Menu), just un-check Auto Create Curve. Now why do we want to do this? Well we want to create a spline IK chain using dynamic curve! Yes the output curve …

Create a regular joint chain along the output curve, snapping each joint on each CV points is a good way to go. Now just create a spline ik chain using the output curve as the driver spline curve. Now comes the magic, with interative playback … try moving the follicle or input curve, you should now notice that the joint chain moves and deformes in relation to the output curve; there you go, you have a simple dynamic joint chain. As we know, joints are used for binding geometrys, try binding a simple cylindrical object to the joint chain. This technique can be applied for creating a tail for example, just parent the input curve to the main root of the character and you should be able to see some nice follow through, overlapping animation. Ramp up some turbulence settings and you get something like an octupus’s tentacles or some weird looking alien tentacles :)

Building a Control Rig / Hair System #03

Ok then, you might be wondering what if we can create a control rig to drive the dynamic joint chain. For now though, we can just select the input curve and move it to control the dynamics.
Well again, since the input curves can be bind to a joint chain; why don’t we just bind it or create some cluster driven setups. So, let us just duplicate the existing dynamic joint chain or may be recreate one. You can now name and call the new one to be input joint chain or the control rig. Simply skin bind the input curve to the newly created input joint chain. The input control joint chain can be moved, transformed and you should notice the dynamic joint chain try to match it. You can play with stiffness and start curve attract values to achieve a desired result.

There is a number of ways how you can drive the existing control joints. You don’t want the animator to be selecting the joints and keying right? So, you can simply create some FK driven control setup. Just constraint the joints using simple controller! OR if you want to leap a bit, let say if your animators want IK driven rig, you can always override the existing rig with another spline ik based controller setup for the input joints!

The layering goes as follows for a hair system based dynamic solution:

FK Controllers > Input Control Joints (Constraint to Controllers) > Input Curve (Skinned to Control Joints) > Output Curve (DYNAMIC) > Output Dynamic Joint Chain (Controlled via Spline IK using Output Curves)

OR

IK Controllers (Cluster Controlled) > Input Control Joints (Controlled via Spline IK) > Input Curve (Skinned to Control Joints) > Output Curve (DYNAMIC) > Output Dynamic Joint Chain (Controlled via Spline IK using Output Curves)

Using these principles and techniques you can create multitudes of dynamic rig; this is the simplest yet the widest applied method to create a dynamic rig. Go on; try yourself to create some tentacles or dynamic rope or mustache/beard, dynamic torso or body setup, bird’s wing and much much more!

Feel free to try these out, this could workout as an assignment for you!

I do have a nice little link to share with you all, check this out.

• This should cover on what I posted for today’s topic 
• Bird rig with hair dynamic joint 

Tip #02 / Procedural Overlay

Procedural animation is a term used to automatically generate animation in real-time, unlike predefined "hand keyed" animation. Procedural animation allows objects to be animated using a set of rules and procedures to create convincing results from relatively little input. Generally the rules are based on real world physics, expressed mathematically. Animation without a single manual key on the timeline could be also referred to as procedural animation. Generally it is used to simulate a wide array of dynamic solution as well as character animation. For example, if you wanted to create a rotating wheel that auto rotates with the movement of a vehicle, or may be vegetation swaying with the wind, or may be the movement of gears on a mechanical watch, etc.

The idea of this tip is to bring the power out of dynamic rig by layering it on top of an existing procedural rig!

I want to show you a simple example. Let’s create something to simulate the movement of a tail movement, totally automated!
To start with, we need to create a joint chain. Remember the more the number of joint, the more flexible the tail animation becomes.

So let’s think about it, what could be the best solution to simulate the movement of a wavy tail animation. We should all be familiar with Trigonometry from the high school years. Yup, trigonometry which involves sin, cos, tan, etc. Trigonometry is a branch of mathematics which deals with triangles, relationship between a triangles side and its angle.

Here are some of the principle equations:

sinA = opposite/hypotenuse = a/c
cosA = adjacent/hypotenuse = b/c
tanA = opposite/adjacent = a/b = sinA/cosA

sinA and cosA are inverse to each other.

sinA = 1/cosA
cosA = 1/sinA

Basically the idea of using sin and cos to drive a procedural animation gives you a wavy motion, rotation value along an axis that is to and fro oscillating motion. That’s exactly what we needed!
Looking at the Sine Curve equation:

y = a sin t

We can derive an equation based on the Sine Curve to generate the oscillating curve motion. The distance between the highest point of the curve from the horizontal line is the amplitude denoted by "a" and the distance between two highest point denoted by "t" is the frequency of the curve:

Joint Rotation = (sin (* time * frequency)) * magnitude
Joint Rotation (Inverse if sin) = (cos (* time * frequency)) * magnitude

So, we just need to feed these equations to create a new expression. From the expression editor, create a new expression with the use of above sine curve equation.

//Here $mag and $freq are float variables to store some values for magnitude and frequency!

float $mag = 15;
float $freq = 5;
joint1.rotateY = (cos(time*$freq))*$mag;
joint2.rotateY = (cos(time*$freq))*$mag;
joint3.rotateY = (sin(time*$freq))*$mag;
joint4.rotateY = (sin(time*$freq))*$mag;

So, now you should end up with a nice little wavy procedurally driven animation with the interactive playback. You can ramp up and down the magnitude and frequency value to see the changes.

Now, comes the part where it comes to create a dynamic rig. You should now be familiar on how we can do that! Basically we will be layering the hair dynamic rig on top of existing procedural rig.

The layering goes like this:

Procedural Joint Chain > Input Curve (Skinned to Procedural Joints) > Output Curve (DYNAMIC) > Output Dynamic Joint Chain (Controlled via Spline IK using Output Curves)

Go on test it out! The result should come out very interesting … :)

You could do all sorts of cool and crazy things with it! I applied the same techniques to create the Gold Fish Setup.

Example Scene File: I have included a maya scene file for this setup. Find it here: procedural_dynamic_chain.rar


Some links worth sharing:

• Personal demo on creating a procedural chain 
• Procedural rigging demonstration for a palm tree  
• More Info on Maths (Lot’s of crazy stuffs can be done with math) 
• Mathworld! 
• More on Sine Curve 
• Try applying some of these equations  
• Technical Animation by Carie Sullivan

Jumping Into the world of Soft & Rigid Body Dynamics 101

The world of Physics! This is where the laws of physics get applied; for example Newton’s laws of motion! Generally in any given software application the laws of physics can be categorized by Soft Body Dynamics and Rigid Body Dynamics. Both of these subject or tool set are used to simulate visually realistic motion. The key differences between these two are like the name suggest; soft body can change shape while rigid body are rigid. For instance in soft body simulation the distance between two points, vertices alter and change while for a rigid body it is always the same. For this reason soft body is used for simulating motion on deformable objects such as cloth, mud, face, muscle, etc while rigid body are suitable for rigid objects like simulating a rock falling off a cliff or a simple domino effect for a stack of cards!
We can enhance or achieve believable deformation and simulation by using the power of Soft and Rigid body dynamics into character rigging.

Tip #03 / Soft Body Dynamic Rigging

Dynamic Joint Chain via Soft Body

We talked about using the power of hair dynamics to simulate the motion of a joint chain! Similarly we can also use the power of soft body dynamics to simulate a dynamic joint chain. Both of these behave in somewhat similar manner!

We know that we can drive the motion on a joint chain by using a dynamic curve via the incredible Spline IK tool. We will be applying the same technique for soft body dynamics.

Remember when hair system dynamics was created we had an input and output curve. We will have to go ahead and create a similar looking setup!

Start by creating a regular joint chain, more the number of joint the more flexible it is! Create a simple 3rd degree EP curve along the chain. Now comes the part where soft body dynamics is applied on the curve. Soft body works on any given geometry including nurbs and polygon for simulating physical simulation based on particle system. You can find the soft body menu items from the dynamics menu set. Simply click on Create Soft Body option box. Make sure that the creation option is Duplicate, make copy soft and also check on Make non-soft a goal. Select the input curve and hit Create. This ensures that the input curve is duplicated; and the duplicate output curve is made soft i.e. dynamic making the output curve to follow the movement and match the position of the input curve! It is just like in hair system dynamic where we output dynamic curve tries to match the input curve. In this case though the input curve is called a goal or a target object.

Now, if you try to move the input curve with interactive playback you won’t actually be seeing any changes or simulation. We need to assign goal values to the particles to ensure an even follow through. Select the particle from the outliner and from the component mode select each particle and assign a goal weight from the component editor. The less the goal weight the softer the result you get while higher value gives stiffer result. Check out the dynamics by doing an interactive playback and moving the input curve, you should see nice soft body simulation.

It’s just a matter of assigning a Spline IK setup for the joint chain using the output curve as spline curve! Like hair system dynamics you can also assign different kinds of physical fields and dynamic constraints to play with. Start for example with a gravity field. Feel free to experiment with different setting. You can also assign a collision object from particle menu item for selected soft body particle system!

Try playing with goal smoothness and goal weight attributes from soft body particle shape node (Goal smoothness smooth-en the motion (Dampening); while goal weight behaves the same as start curve attract does for hair system). Also, to get some interesting effects to simulate turbulence or funky movement you can always connect the dynamic attributes to be controlled by custom math expression. For example;

//randomize the number between 0.5 to 1 and feeds into the goal weight attribute with change in time

goal weight = rand (0.5, 1)

Example Scene File: I have attached two maya scene files; which includes a dynamic joint chain and a funky chunky jelly like character using soft body dynamics. Try moving the control object with interactive playback:  softbody_dynamics.rar

Here are some of the links for soft body simulation:

• Tutorial on creating mud effect; use this technique to create the footprints by a character walking on a sandy beach! 
• Are soft bodies dead? Nope I don’t think so! 
• A plugin for maya to create wobble effect on geometry, not dynamic but something that can be used and implemented to create all sorts of rigging 
• Simulating musculature in Maya by Chris Evan 
• A tutorial on applying soft body dynamics to a character 
• All about Physics "Science"

PhysiX

I have used maya’s built in dynamics for a wide array of production environment. I have found out the tools to be user friendly and with proper setting and tuning you get a good result but however using complex simulation tends to be very hardware intensive with sluggish performance.

I have heard of nVidia physiX plugin for sometime; even got to play with it and I have to say it is pretty good and fast to compute at the same time. The integration of the plugin with nVidia’s own graphics processing unit brings magic.

Check it out!
Physx youtube page (Some really cool videos here)

Note: When working with dynamic simulation, please make sure to set the playback speed to play every frame!

General Notes/Summary on Soft Body Dynamics!

Soft body dynamics is used to simulate the motion for deformable objects. When an object is made into a soft body, a particle system is created, with one particle for each vertex (or CV). Each of these particles are set to a certain goal value which can be altered and animated. A goal is an object that particles seek out and cluster around the particles trying to align themselves with the vertices of the goal object. In simple words it is the weight/power value determining the ability of a dynamic body to deform. We can always use Paint Soft Body Weight or Component Editor to manipulate and simulate the movement of any part of a deforming object to be more dynamic or soft/rigid than other.  Something to keep in mind while creating a soft body is to use Make Non - Soft a Goal. By using, Duplicate, Make copy Soft and Make Non-Soft a Goal options when creating a soft body, you'll have a soft body that remembers its original shape and tries to return to it and is very useful if you wish to keep the shape of the deforming object intact. Fields and collisions can affect the geometry of the object with change in the position of particle objects to bring in changes in movement or animation. In general, soft bodies should be thought of as particle systems where the particles just happen to be joined up with triangles!

Tip #04 / Rigid Body Dynamic Rigging

Rigid bodies are objects that do not deform under collisions. What if we want to simulate a motion of non deformable objects such as a brick falling off a wall or a bullet firing off a gun or simulate the movement of body armor suit for a super hero character!

In this post I will be going through an overview, tips and techniques that can be implemented to create such physical motion which will add more life to a character being animated and the surrounding environment as well.
Rigid body dynamics can be applied to nurbs and polygon only!

Rigid body can be categorized into active and passive objects. Active bodies are objects that react to dynamics, such as fields and constraints while Passive bodies allow for collisions with active rigid bodies.

To create a rigid body, select an object and go to:
Soft/Rigid Bodies>Create Active Rigid Body
Soft/Rigid Bodies>Create Passive Rigid Body commands.

A general note that can be implemented on any dynamics object is collision layers. This is used to limit rigid body from interacting with other rigid bodies and greatly speeds up the dynamic simulation with lesser slow down or occasional crash! Make sure to use this attribute wisely from the rigid body settings.

You can assign different fields to create animation on a rigid body. For example, try assigning a gravity field and you should see the rigid body fall!

Interaction with other rigid body also causes animation!

Animating Rigid Body With Constraints

There are a number of dynamic constraints that can be applied on any given rigid object. To create a constraint, select any rigid body object and go to:

Soft/Rigid Bodies>Create Constraint>

Some of the constraints that are available are as follows. Remember, these constraints are powerful tools and can be implemented to create simple to complex physical movements! Use them wisely ;)
Nail: Used for maintaining a set distance between a point and the center of the rigid body; as if a rigid bar connected between the two.

Pin: Used for connecting two objects with a linkage.
Hinge: Used for simulating a hinge connecting two items to allow for rotation about an axis
Spring: Use for simulating elastic effect or spring like movement.
Barrier: Used for creating an infinite collision plane for any given rigid object.

Example Scene File: I have created an example file simulating the movement of a ball on a bat (Ping Pong ball and a bat) with elastic effect. The ball in the example file is a active rigid body while the bat and the collision plane are passive rigid body. A spring constraint have been applied to the ball to simulate elastic movements. The constraint node is parented to the bat which is a child of the control object. Try moving the controller with interactive playback :)
rigidBody_dynamic_batBall.rar

Also, similar technique have been applied on creating this rope bridge :  rigidBody_dynamic_ropeBridge.rar

You can apply similar principles to create a dynamic rig to drive animating requiring visually realistic physical movements! Try experimenting to create a ball bounce animation, for example could be a ping pong ball, tennis ball, football and a bowling ball. Just alter the values for the attributes in the rigid body settings such as for example Mass.

Some links worth checking!

• Active/Rigid Body Tutorial 
• A summary of Rigid Body! 
• Dynamic Rope Bridge example, pretty rudimentary but the idea is the same; try recreating something similar

THE FINAL CHAPTER “nCloth Dynamic Rigging”

OK! So the final lesion covers the power of nCloth dynamics. nCloth is normally used to simulate the motion of cloth or fabric. But this is not always the case. nCloth can be used to simulate a wide array of physical bodies ranging from water balloons to hard bodies like rocks by tweaking the altering the values on nCloth settings and nucleus setting. nCloth can also be used to simulate complex deformation on body including musculature and facial. This is usually achieved by layering the nCloth dynamics to the existing rig. nCloth can be applied to existing skinned or bounded geometry (any deformer applied) to create a dynamic overlay to simulate complex skinning, musculature, skin sliding or clothing objects!

nCloth can be applied to a selected geometry by hitting on Create nCloth from the nDynamics menu set. A passive nCloth collider can be applied to simulate collisions. For example try creating a simple polygonal plane and a polygonal sphere. Move the plane above the sphere. Apply nCloth to the plane and apply nCloth passive collider to the sphere. Apply a gravity field to the plane by selecting the plane and hitting gravity field from the Field menu item. Now just hit the interactive playback. You should be able to see that the plane falls down and collide to the collision sphere just like a piece of fabric falling on a table. You can further adjust the settings from the nCloth’s dynamic properties setting to enhance the behavior and the looks. Try going through some of the presets available such as airbag, water balloon, tshirt, silk, etc. Try going through the values and settings!

nCloth support a wide range of constraints and fields to control the animation and behavior of the deforming geometry.

Tip#05 “Input Mesh Attract”

This is a powerful feature integrated inside of nCloth. This is something which is similar to start curve attract in the hair dynamic system. For example, if you have a nCloth applied on top of an existing skincluster node applied to the geometry, you can increase and decrease the value of input mesh attract attribute from dynamic property to control the attractiveness of input mesh. This is very useful, especially for cases such as simulating musculature or facial deformation which are initially driven by rigged joints. Also, you can also paint the input mesh attract weight value just like doing a paint skin weight operation to control the attraction from Paint Vertex Weight option box!

You can download a simple file that I have creating for a wing rig using nCloth driven by input mesh attract attribute. To simulate the wing flying under air turbulence, a turbulence field has also been added. Try rotating the wing controller under interactive playback:  nCloth_dynamic_wing.rar

Similar technique can be implemented to simulate clothing and wardrobe deformed by animated character.

Some useful links for nCloth Dynamics:

• nCloth Advance Techniques 
• Maya Cloth Test "nCloth Setup" (Personal nCloth demo) 
• Demo on using nCloth for cloth and musculature; BTW nice character design 
• A bit advance tutorial on creating mitosis or splitting of cell as we have learned in Biology; Interesting read to practice 
• nCloth used to simulate muscle and skin 
• Tutorial on creating a balloon using nCloth

THE END

Please go through the scene files, go on and deconstruct them to see what's going underneath the hood. Once again thank you all and please feel free to contact me for any questions, queries, comments and ideas. I wish you all the very best :)

P.S. A special thanks to entire Rigging Dojo team for appreciating my work and giving me the privilege to share this topic over at Rigging Dojo.  

New Extreme Sport: Trampoline Wall. Christophe Hamel Demo 2012

Time for some extreme Body Mechanics workout!

Fernando Herrera - Game Animation Reel

Beautiful game animation reel by Fernando Herrera!

ncloth_rip_apart_v2

Evisceration using nCloth. No wonder nCloth is such a powerful tool.

Articulation reel: Toon work-out and tools integration in a deformation rig

This is pretty cool! A smart tool by Cedric Bazillou that seems to fix major deformation glitches :)

Check out his blog for more resources : http://circecharacterworks.wordpress.com

Wolverine Cartoon

Check it out! Fun cartoony version of Wolverine rig demo by a good friend of mine, Danilo Pinheiro.

MasterKandor's Mime - Modeling Timelapse

Modelling time-lapse by Sergi Caballer Garcia.

The Joker - Why so serious

"Why so serious"... one of the best facial acting and performance by actor Heath Ledger for Batman movie!

The Girl Is Mime

Here is good mime act!

ParaNorman - Playing as a Profession

I have to say that Paranorman is one of the coolest stop motion movie I have ever seen till this date. It's really amazing to see how the animators have captured the facial performance of the puppets. Anyways here is a cool little video that shows some of the behind the scene footage of the making of Paranorman or "Playing with Dolls", that's what the animators says!

Animation Show Reel ~ Winter 2012

Enjoy this little animation reel by Puppeteer Lounge's members. Hope you like it ;)

Join Puppeteer Lounge to learn character animation!

To Apply : www.puppeteerlounge.com/apply
More Info : www.puppeteerlounge.com/animation-workshop

Find Puppeteer Lounge on Facebook : www.facebook.com/puppeteerlounge

XRacZ Rigging Demo 2010

Rigging reel by xracz. Pretty interesting cloth rig!

Bonnie Animation Samples

Looking really nice! Go ahead and check out the rig. Great share by Josh Sobel for the animation community :)

Download Bonnie here : http://www.joshsobelanimator.com/

Houdini Blood Splash Hit Tutorial

Houdini Blood Splash Hit Tutorial by Ivan.Suarez!

Life of Pi: Grabbing the CG Tiger by the Tail

Interesting article on how Rythm and Hues captures the CG tiger to the big screen.

Read it here :http://www.awn.com/articles/visual-effects/life-of-pi-grabbing-cg-tiger-by-the-tail

Richard Maegaki 2012 ShowReel

Interesting TD stuff!

MAYA DEFORMER : MG_collisionBulge

Check out this collision bulge deformer demo by my good old friend Marco Giordano. He has mentioned that some of the tool ingredient will go open source for every one to use! Pretty cool stuff :)

Pantomime Acting!

Can you guess the comedy actor being caricatured in this shot!? --- Apply now and learn character animation from us! More Info : puppeteerlounge.com/animation-workshop

Parkour Flip

Body Mechanics exercise by Sachina Shakya.

Naturskyddsföreningen BTS

This is pretty amazing work!

Boxer Rig & Terminix "Sink" by Victor Vinyals

Really cool stuffs by Victor Vinyals!

Animation Workshop 2 Reel by Niroj Karmacharya

Student: Niroj Karmacharya
If you want to learn like Niroj, apply here : http://puppeteerlounge.com/apply
More Info : http://www.puppeteerlounge.com/animation-workshop
Find us on Facebook : http://www.facebook.com/puppeteerlounge

abAutorig 10 minutes overview

Quick demonstration on how to install and use abAutorig by  Olivier L.

Animation Workshop 2 Reel by Manish Gurung

Animation Workshop 2 "Body Mechanics"
Animator : Manish Gurung
More Info : http://www.puppeteerlounge.com/animation-workshop
Apply here to learn animation : http://www.puppeteerlounge.com/apply
Find us on Facebook : http://www.facebook.com/puppeteerlounge

Back Flip thumbnail

Thumbnail drawings and illustration are very important in character animation. One of our student does a really beautiful sketch for his Back Flip assignment :) --- Do you want learn character animation? More Info : http://www.puppeteerlounge.com/animation-workshop

Ben Head with Hair

Ben Head with Hair by Francesco Lupo.

PL Direction Boards :)

Anyone planning to visit us over at Puppeteer Lounge! Keep an eye out for these directional boards ;)


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Modelling Showreel by Elias Glasch

Nice modelling reel by  Elias Glasch :)
Website : http://www.eliasglasch.com/

Disassembled

Everyone has a bad day now and then! Funny short by Junaid Chundrigar :)

Character Animation Reel - 2012 by Hanna Abi-Hanna

Very nice 2D animation reel by Hanna Abi-Hanna :)

Epic (2013) Trailer

Looking awesome!

Destiny - Animation Short

Pretty interesting student short film.

Introduction to Set Driven Keys

A quick tutorial on creating Set Driven Keys by Pat Imrie.

Cheetahs on the Edge--Director's Cut

Check out this amazing video reference on quadruped. See how the Cheetah's head is all isolated and aimed!

Them Greeks...! Updates

Isn't she a beauty ;)


Great stuffs are happening over at "THEM GREEKs...!" projects. The team have successfully rigged all 27 character to Deformation Stage 1. The animators are all set to pull up their sleeves to bring the characters to life. A major milestone for a short film being made by artist around the world.

For more info and updates stay connected with "Them Greeks...!" Facebook page!

Nick Carpenter (San Jose, CA USA)-Animation does some fun animation tests with Grandma who was rigged by Suchan Bajracharya (Kathmandu, Nepal) and Steve Ross (Orlando, FL USA).
After all these years, Grandma still knows how to strut her stuff at the bars.

Rigging Reel 2012 by Gary Wee

Rigging reel by Gary Wee. Gary is an accomplished rigger and an animator. Enjoy!

Check out some of his works over here : http://www.gwpixel.net/

TRANSFORMER SPETSNAZ

Pretty cool transformer rig demo! This one does multiple transformation.

SergiCaballer - Mario2.0

Character & facial keyShapes modeling demo by Sergi Caballer Garcia.

Naiad Project: Release The Kraken (Final Rendering)

Kraken, the monster was rigged by one of my brilliant student Jimmy Gunawan for this beautiful shot!


CREDITS
Fluid Simulation: Mirco Paolini
Rendering/Shading/Lighting: Mirco Paolini
Modeling/Texturing: Umberto D'Andrea
Rigging: Jimmy Gunawan
Animation:Mirco Paolini
Compositing: Mirco Paolini

Making of Surreal CGI Short ShapeShifter

Check out the making of CGI Short ShapeShifter!

One Day

Check out this beautiful short film! Below is the making :)

Mike Klim Reel 2011

Nice animation reel by Mike Klim.

David Bryan Animation reel 2012

Animation reel by David Bryan featuring some really nice creature and animal animation.

La Ritournelle ~ Production Blog

Check it out!

A production blog for the short film we at Puppeteer Lounge are working on! The film is directed by our good friend Mr. Reza Dolatabadi and produced by Magnitude Films :)

La Ritournelle is an animated short film directed by Reza Dolatabadi produced by Fritzi Nicolaus and written by screenwriter Lucas Lanza and Reza. For the project Reza and Fritzi have gathered an international team of twenty young and talented artists from 9 different countries. These countries are: Great Britain, France, Italy, Poland, Argentina, Brazil, USA, Canada and Nepal. 

Follow Magnitude Film on Twitter to stay updated!

"BallBot ~ Transformer Setup" is now ONLINE!

So finally after months of research and development going over and updating the original concept art, here comes the final mechanical model for BallBot.

BallBot is featuring in Puppeteer Lounge's Transformer Setup Workshop. If you are interested in learning the art and science behind creating an actual transfromer rig come join us and ENROLL NOW!

You can download BallBot high quality wallpaper over at Puppeteer Lounge's Gallery page :)

TAMBOO ~ Concepts & Model

Compilation of some of the conceptual artworks and WIP character model for Puppeteer Lounge's upcoming short film “TAMBOO” !

Beside doing regular teaching stuff and client's work me and my fellow team members at Puppeteer Lounge keep our-self busy during our after hours and free time working on the film.

Feel free to like our Facebook Page to stay updated :)

"Park" animation test

Funny!

PL Animation Workshop 2 Reel ~ Sachina Shakya

Check out the character animation reel "BODY MECHANICS" by Puppeteer Lounge's Co-Founder and Animator, Sachina Shakya.

If you want to learn animation, Apply Here!
Like our Facebook Page :)

Out of Sight

A really beautiful short depicting a blind child's imagination. Must watch :)

PL Animation Workshop 2 Reel ~ Rajson Shakya

Student Rajson Shakya demonstrates what he have learn in Animation Workshop 2 "Body Mechanics"! Check it out :)

If you want to learn animation, Apply Here!

modo 601 - BallMan Rig Overview

Richard Hurrey explains and demonstrates the flexibility of BallMan rig that he rigged in modo 601 for Rigging Master Course.

Animated walks and runs

Great Stuff!

Bitseller Teaser

Looks promising!
More Info : http://genomaanimation.com/bitsellerblog/

LBrush deformation

Check out this video by Joseph Alter. Very good demo of musculature using corrective sculpts.

P.S. Study of anatomy is very important to visualize the creation of realistic and believable deformation for any organic character. This video could be a great resource for that purpose. Yes all the goodness comes outside the box in this case.

More info : http://lbrush.com/downloads.htm

Animation Workshop 1 Reel "Polished" ~ Manish Gurung

You must have previously reel by Manish Gurung. This is the latest and final version of the animation reel with a bit more polish and a good render to it spice up!

MechaCat - Rig Presentation

Nice mechanical rigging demo by  Jørn-Harald Paulsen!

I feel the lower portion of the mechanical forelimb could be a little bit for flexible to mimic the agility and movement of a real cat :)

Taare Zameen Par title animation

Beautiful stop motion title animation!

Storyboarding Minority Report: 3 scenes with soundtrack. 9min.

Great content on storyboard!

Video Games and the Uncanny Valley

Uncanny Valley! :)

WIP Hybrid Animation Test

Beautiful animation by trent correy!

YiyiWangDemoReel2012

Good reel featuring nice sculpts and visual development by yiyi wang.

Cheese Monster 30s commercial

CHEESE...pretty much everyone likes it!

Great Stuff  :)

The only thing I didn't liked is the CG human that the monster tastes in the beginning with red shirt/sweater!

Creation Platform: Muscle Simulation WIP

An overview of the new muscle system built with Creation Platform.

Facial Rig by Remy Terreaux

Check out the facial rig demo featuring really nice expression and proper articulation using 198 blendshapes by Remy Terreaux. 


Blend shape gamine by crayfish86

James Thompson - Masters rigging script project - Homology rigging

Flexible modular rigging system by James Thompson!

EQUILIBRIUM

I really loved the concept!

PL Animation Workshop 1 Reel ~ Manish Gurung

Animator Manish Gurung showcases some of his recent skills in animation that he have learned from Puppeteer Lounge Animation Workshop.

If you want to learn like Manish, apply here!

Qumarion mannequin input device

It's amazing to see how digital CG puppetry is evolving!

The Qumarion is a mannequin input device developed to simplify the manipulation and posing of human-like 3D CG models on screen.

More Info : http://www.diginfo.tv/v/12-0070-r-en.php

Maya Cloth Test "nCloth Setup"

Here is a quick test for cloth simulation using nCloth dynamics. There are still some stuffs that needs to be looked after but over all a good result.

The cloth simulation and animation is a part of Puppeteer Lounge nCloth Setup Workshop where we start from the basic cloth creation using nCloth up to a detailed instruction on tweaking and fixing cloth animation for character.

If you want to learn nCloth Setup, apply here : puppeteerlounge.com/apply

THE LAST OF US

Looks good!

JoeBowers Interview

Joe Bowers an animator at Disney goes over some of his shots in this interview.

Watt Rigging - Laruccia - (2012)

Cool rigging demo featuring a cartoony character with nice facial deformation and setup by Wesley Schneider.

The Cathedral

Most of you must have watched this short movie. If not you should check it out!

The Cathedral (Polish: Katedra) is the title of a science fiction short story by Jacek Dukaj, winner of the Janusz A. Zajdel Award in 2000; and of a 2002 short animated movie by Tomasz Bagiński, based on the story. The film was nominated in 2002 for the Academy Award for Animated Short Film for the 75th Academy Awards. The movie won the title of Best Animated Short at Siggraph 2002 in San Antonio as well as several other awards.

Justin Sklar Character Animation Reel 2011

I really liked the performance!

PL Animation Workshop 1 Reel ~ Niroj Karmacharya

Animation student Niroj Karmacharya showcases some of his recent skills in animation that he have learned from Puppeteer Lounge Animation Workshop.

If you want to learn like Niroj, apply here!

IOC ¦ All together now making of

The making of IOC ¦ All together!

Sucker Punch Intro Logo Breakdown

VFX breakdown for the Intro Logo of Sucker Punch. The simulation for rain, splashes and over all environmental elements are really well done.

Comparing the Cinema Camera & 5D Mk III

The details from the Cinema Camera is very impressive!

Animation Demo Reel 2012 ~ Manish Shakya

Check out the latest character animation demo reel by Manish Shakya who recently completed his Diploma in Advance Character Animation from Animation Mentor! Manish Shakya is the Co-Founder, Animator and also the Animation Instructor for the Animation Workshop at Puppeteer Lounge.

I wish him the very best :)

Labour Day by Gerry Wang

Short and sweet with beautiful emotion!

Rig & Tool Reel by Clovis Gay

Check out the rigging reel and also the tool demo reel by Clovis Gay. Impressive stuffs!

bhGhost & other animation tools by Brian Horgan

Very cool tool by Brian Horgan featuring onion-skinning in 3D.

Check it out over here : http://www.graphite9.com/MayaDownloads.html

Danny ~ Can You Believe It!

Here comes Mr. Danny with his new move "Can You Believe It!

The shot was beautifully animated by Manish Shakya, light and render by Manish Gurung and ofcourse the compositing done by me :)

Hope you all enjoy and like it!

If you are interested in learning character animation from us please visit Puppeteer Lounge homepage for more info : http://www.puppeteerlounge.com/

P.S. We could have pushed the animation a tad bit more with more exaggeration and emotion to make it more interesting and appealing. But we tried to keep it simple yet compelling with little movement as it was directed. Stay tuned as more of Danny's mischievous acting will be featured soon :)

Willow - Sweater

Amazing projection and integration.

BallBot "360 Turntable" ~ Puppeteer Lounge

I am pleased to present "BallBot", the latest character joining the fleet of Puppeteer Lounge rigging workshopand featuring in the upcoming "Transformer Setup Workshop". You must have checked out the original concept art of the character a little while back. The turntable video features a WIP model of BallBot. I have been constantly updating the model and the design to function a believable transformation making sure to match the the original design and overcoming the challenges of the technical stuffs. Stay tuned for a test animation or a teaser featuring BallBot coming to life soOn :)