Friday, December 23, 2016

Blendshape Combination System (Facial Setup) Overview



Watch an overview of the facial setup from Puppeteer Lounge Blendshape Combination System Training Workshop lecture session. The video goes over a comparison of Standard Blendshape vs Blendshape Combination System (BCS), developed by Daniel Pook-Kolb.

You can learn to setup a high-end feature quality facial rig using BCS toolset at Puppeteer Lounge.

Tuesday, December 20, 2016

SAM ~ Cartoon Character Rigging Demo | Puppeteer Lounge



Watch cartoon character rigging demonstration for Mr. Sam! If you like the demo and would like to learn how to create a similar character rig, feel free to check out Puppeteer Lounge Rigging workshop :)

Monday, December 19, 2016

Hyper Real Body Setup Demonstration in Maya | Puppeteer Lounge



Muscle & Skin Musculoskeletal rig and deformation demonstration for "Tejo" character from Puppeteer Lounge Hyper Real Body Setup Rigging Workshop. The rig features a combination of musculo-skeletal deformation, pose space deformation corrective shapes, skin simulation and automated detail wrinkle maps.

Friday, December 16, 2016

Wednesday, December 14, 2016

Hyper Real Facial Rigging Demonstration in Maya | Puppeteer Lounge



Quick video demonstration on facial rig and deformation for "Ajar" character from Puppeteer Lounge Rigging Workshop. The facial rig and character presented in this video is featured in Puppeteer Lounge's Facial Rigging training workshops in Maya. The rig features a combination of musculo-skeletal deformation and corrective shapes.

SUBSCRIBE to Puppteer Lounge:  Like Puppeteer Lounge on Facebook

Monday, December 12, 2016

Puppeteer Lounge is now on YouTube too :)



Check out Puppeteer Lounge Super Toon Character Setup Workshop demonstration!

If you like our work be sure to SUBSCRIBE to our YouTube channel so you can see it all and more in the making :)  

Alike



Watch the beautiful award winning short film "Alike" by Daniel Martínez Lara and Rafa Cano Méndez.

Learn how to rig a cartoon character in Blender here at Puppeteer Lounge.  

Wednesday, December 7, 2016

Body Mechanics Exercise by student Bibhuk & Ronit

Body Mechanics Exercise by student Bibhuk & Ronit from Puppeteer Lounge on Vimeo.

Check out Body mechanics #animation exercise by Puppeteer Lounge student Bibhuk & Ronit Shakya.

 → Apply to Learn : http://puppeteerlounge.com/apply
Animation Workshop : http://puppeteerlounge.com/animation-workshop

Monday, November 21, 2016

BOUDHA Stupa - Time-Lapse Renovation



Off-topic post here :)

I would like to share with you a Time-lapse video captured from Feb 2016 to Nov 2016 to showcase the complete renovation process of Boudha Stupa. Beside animation Me and Sachina love to capture indie videos around Nepal.

You can find more videos in our hobbyist YouTube channel :) 

Monday, October 31, 2016

Rigging Reel - Aurélien Cova from Aurélien Cova on Vimeo.

Rigging Reel by Aurélien Cova. An interesting approach to showcasing the show-reel! Check it out :)

Tuesday, October 25, 2016

Character reel by Dario Triglia

Check out this beautiful character rigging reel by Puppeteer Lounge former student Dario Triglia!

Wrap 3 face scanning test by Ten 24

Wrap 3 face scanning test from Ten 24 on Vimeo.

Morph based muscle deformation from Ten 24 on Vimeo.

Judging by the result here, looks like we are very close to crossing the Uncanny Valley for CG Human creation. Here is a quick animated 3D scans by Ten 24.

Qualoth for Maya Tutorial

Here is a nice set of tutorial going over cloth creation, dynamics and simulation using FXGear's Qualoth tool set. Qualoth is a great alternative to using Maya's in-built nCloth tool-set.

facial rigging by kimsumin

facial rigging v001 from kimsumin on Vimeo.

facial rigging v002 from kimsumin on Vimeo.

facial rigging v003 from kimsumin on Vimeo.

facial rigging v004 from kimsumin on Vimeo.

Exaggerated facial expression shots by Hyun Mi. Great stuffs!

Sunday, October 23, 2016

Tuesday, September 27, 2016

Wednesday, September 14, 2016

Proportional Modifier Setup Demo

This video goes over Proportional Modifier Setup which can be applied on-to existing character rig to create multiple character variation from the same base rig. This approach can also be used in fixing, fine-tuning or polishing the look, appearance and silhouette of a character during animation. To learn more about Proportional Modifier Setup, take a look at Puppeteer Lounge's Morphing Character Setup Workshop. You can watch Morphing Character Setup Demo below:
BoGo Morphing Character Setup Demo from Puppeteer Lounge on Vimeo.

Monday, September 12, 2016

Sunday, September 11, 2016

Rigging an Ogre for Shrek4



Deformation demonstration of the Ogre character from Shrek 4 (Forever After) movie by David Otte.

Tuesday, September 6, 2016

FACS Facial Rig Discussion



FACS Facial Rig Discussion by Puppeteer Lounge alumni Mathias Røyrvik.

Super Toon Animation Workshop @puppeteerlounge





At Puppeteer Lounge, we have introduced a new mini-workshop "Super Toon Character Animation". The training workshop focuses on full body shot with a Super Toon Cartoon character for films where students will learn to animate an entertaining shot with full body gestures and facial emotions giving importance to Traditional 2D Cartoon look and style by implementing Smears, Multiples and other Animation Gimmicks.

Watch Puppeteer Lounge's Super Toon Character Bucky Bunny Rig Demo below.




Wednesday, August 31, 2016



Check out the the first 8 minutes of The Lord Inquisitor, a full CGI short movie set in the universe of Warhammer 40k created and Directed by Erasmus Brosdau. The short movie is the outcome of collaborative effort of very talented artists from around the globe. Puppeteer Lounge is very proud to be a part of this team!

Watch a quick rig test done for the lead character in the short below!

Marcus Allenbrisk (Rig Test) ~ Sci-Fi - CGI - Warhammer 40,000 from Suchan Bajracharya on Vimeo.

Sunday, August 28, 2016

BoGo Morphing Character Setup Demo from Puppeteer Lounge on Vimeo.

Rig demo of PUPPETEER LOUNGE morphing cartoon character BoGo.

 Learn to model BoGo here: Learn to rig BoGo here:
Learn to animate BoGo here: Like us on Facebook:

Follow Puppeteer Lounge on Twitter: @puppeteerlounge

Thursday, August 18, 2016

Animation Workshop 1 Reel by student Nitin Shakya

Animation Workshop 1 Reel by student Nitin Shakya from Puppeteer Lounge on Vimeo.

. Training Workshop : Animation Workshop 1 “BASIC FOUNDATION” If you want to learn like Nitin, apply here : https://puppeteerlounge.com/apply For More Info : https://puppeteerlounge.com/animation-workshop Like us on Facebook: https://facebook.com/puppeteerlounge Follow us on Twitter: @puppeteerlounge

Tuesday, August 16, 2016

This is so beautiful. An inspiration short about the fastest man on the planet, Usain Bolt!

Monday, August 15, 2016

Facial Rigging Based on FACS Theory

Facial Rigging Based on FACS Theory from Siting Liu on Vimeo.

Beautiful facial rig based on FACS by Siting Liu. The raw 3d scanned model and expression set can be purchased from 3dscanstore.com

Friday, July 29, 2016

Animation Workshop 2 Reel by student Ronit Shakya

Animation Workshop 2 Reel by student Ronit Shakya from Puppeteer Lounge on Vimeo.

Puppeteer Lounge Student : Ronit Shakya Training Workshop : Animation Workshop 2 "Body Mechanics" If you want to learn like Ronit, apply here : http://puppeteerlounge.com/apply For More Info : http://puppeteerlounge.com/animation-workshop Like us on Facebook: http://facebook.com/puppeteerlounge Follow us on Twitter: @puppeteerlounge

The Angry Birds Movie - Character Animation




The Angry Birds Movie - Character Animation and Rig Calisthenics test by Sony Imageworks.

Monday, July 25, 2016

James Butler CelAction Rigging Showreel

James Butler CelAction Rigging Showreel from James Butler on Vimeo.
CelAction 2D Rigging Showreel by James Butler. Very interesting and intuitive setups based on digital vector workflow using the "Vectrinsic" Path system in CelAction 2D.

Thursday, July 7, 2016

Warrior Battle Scene - 300 Inspired Animation


Warrior Battle Scene - 300 Inspired Animation from Puppeteer Lounge on Vimeo.

Here at Puppeteer Lounge, we worked on an experimental in-house project to re-create one of the famous battle scene from the movie 300. This is purely a fan work!

Enjoy :)

Thursday, June 30, 2016

The Warriors Gate (Flesh and Cloth Simulation)


The Warriors Gate (Flesh and Cloth Simulation) from Ehsan Kiani on Vimeo.


The Warriors Gate (Flesh and Cloth Simulation) by Ehsan Kiani. If you want to learn how to setup SKIN dynamics and realistic looking flesh deformation, you can purchase the recorded video of SKIN (FAT) Simulation Webinar that we conducted with Ehsan Kiani.

Watch Demo video below.

SKIN (FAT) Simulation Webinar with Ehsan Kiani Teaser “Demo” (16-4-2016) from Puppeteer Lounge on Vimeo.

Wednesday, June 29, 2016

MultiBall 2.77 Rig Demo


MultiBall 2.77 Rig Demo from Wayne Dixon on Vimeo.


Bouncing Ball rig by Puppeteer Lounge student Wayne Dixon for Blender. Download it here: http://www.blendswap.com/blends/view/85010

Saturday, June 25, 2016

Student Feedback: William Esteban Méndez (Costa Rica)

EstebanMendez_CartoonReel from Esteban Mendez on Vimeo.
Anatomic Character Rig&Setup DemoReel from Esteban Mendez on Vimeo.

It is always great to hear from your student's progress and feedback! Here is what one of my star student at Puppeteer Lounge has to say about our training workshops :)
Student Feedback: William Esteban Méndez (Costa Rica) ~ "I`m very happy with my experience in Puppeteer Lounge because I learned how to make a entire rig with a world-class quality being sure that's going to be friendly with any animator. Also, with the rigging workshops you become more than a simple rigger, you understand and apply all the additional areas which help to make you a good rigger and better artist, as anatomy, sculpture, logical thinking and more. All the investment that you make on PL really worth it."
If you want to learn like William, apply here!

Thursday, June 23, 2016

Pose Space Driven Realistic Character Setup Demo


Rig demo of Puppeteer Lounge's latest character AXE. The rig's deformation is based on multiple corrective shapes. There are no muscle objects. Joint Puppeteer Lounge's Training Workshop program to learn to model, rig and animate a similar character.


Thursday, June 16, 2016

Sam McHamm : The Kingdom Of FooDoo Character Setup Show-reel 2016


Sam McHamm : The Kingdom Of FooDoo Character Setup Show-reel 2016 from Puppeteer Lounge on Vimeo.
Character Setup show-reel for Frogtale Studio's series Sam McHamm : The Kingdom Of FooDoo.

At Puppeteer Lounge we worked on all of the character rig for the TV series production by Frogtale Studio.

If you like the demo and would like to learn a similar setup, feel free to check out Puppeteer Lounge Rigging Workshop.

If you would like to collaborate with us (Project), feel free to contact us for Modeling, Rigging and Animation services: 

Do like us on Facebook too (Stay Posted):
Follow us on Twitter: @puppeteerlounge

Wednesday, June 15, 2016

Technical Artist - Showreel 2016 from Borna Nayer Nouri

Technical Artist - Showreel 2016 from Borna Nayer Nouri on Vimeo.
Check out the technical artist showreel by our student Borna Nayer Nouri. We would also like to congratulate Borna on his new job at The Foundry :) For Training Workshops: http://puppeteerlounge.com

Monday, June 13, 2016

Miracle Worker_Gift Offering by Rubix Studios (Work by my student)

Puppeteer Lounge's student Toochukwu Ogbogu from Nigeria would like to share with us a short music video that he created. Toochukwu joined us for our Rigging Workshop program. The character in the video is rigged based on the techniques he learned with us.

Friday, June 10, 2016

Bucky Bunny Rig Demo & PL 4th Anniversary

Bucky Bunny Toon Character Rig Demo from Puppeteer Lounge on Vimeo.

Today is Puppeteer Lounge's 4th Anniversary!!!

We would like to celebrate this wonderful occasion by sharing with you all the rig demonstration video of Mr. Bucky Bunny. Hope you like it!

There is much to celebrate! Learn more at Puppeteer Lounge website.

Thursday, June 9, 2016

How Pixar created its most complex character yet for 'Finding Dory' (CNET News)


It took 2 years for animators at PIXAR to complete one of the most complex shots in the movie "Finding Dory"!

Richard Maegaki 2016 Show Reel


Richard Maegaki 2016 Show Reel from Riggerman on Vimeo.

Check out the rigging show-reel by Richard Maegaki one of my former student at Puppeteer Lounge.

Tuesday, June 7, 2016

Anatomic Character Rig&Setup DemoReel

Anatomic Character Rig&Setup DemoReel from Esteban Mendez on Vimeo.

Here is what one of my student have to say and share through his Facebook post:

Hola personas! Desde hace bastantillo me propuse hacer un portafolio de rigging (una rama de Animacion Digital,  ) para poder trabajar algun dia en eso. Ya he llevado 2 cursos y ya estoy en el tercero de una escuela llamadaPuppeteer Lounge, la cual recomiendo montones, el segundo de los cursos que he llevado era de rigging anatomico, un reto bastante importante porque habia que entrarle bonito a la anatomia, entenderla y esculpir montones. De hecho tambien lleve un curso de escultura anatomica que valio montones la pena, aunque me sigue costando.En fin, el video del link, para los entusiastas del CG, es un reel de un rig anatomico, con estudio de anatomia previo, MayaMuscle, WrinkleMaps y lo que aprendi a usar.
Para los no entusiastas, es un video de un bicho verde moviendose, y se mueve porque yo configure para que se pudiese mover, aunque son otras personas las encargadas de darle la actuacion especifica, esas personas se llaman animadores de personajes y en este caso fueron la gente de Puppeteer Lounge. En los comentarios voy a dejar el reel del curso de rig toon que hice antes de este. 

ParaNorman Dialogue Tests


ParaNorman Dialogue Tests from David Vandervoort on Vimeo.

ParaNorman Dialogue Tests by David Vandervoort. Love to see 2D reference being used to bring the best out of 3D animation.

Sunday, May 29, 2016

FLEX Super Toony Animation Test

FLEX Super Toony Animation Test from Puppeteer Lounge on Vimeo.

Super Toony Style Animation test by Puppeteer Lounge animation instructor and animator, Sachina Shakya for our Flex character utilizing various kinds of animation gimmicks such as smears, multiples, etc. The dog character in the test video is from our cartoon quadruped setup workshop. Learn more here: puppeteerlounge.com/rigging-workshop Flex character features in our animation workshop. Learn more here: puppeteerlounge.com/rigging-workshop You can learn how to rig a character like Flex through our Super Toon Character Setup training workshop. Learn more here: puppeteerlounge.com/rigging-workshop

Thursday, May 19, 2016

Wednesday, May 18, 2016

Sunday, May 15, 2016

AXE rig demo WIP


Here is a quick WIP rig demo for Puppeteer Lounge new character AXE. The rig will be available for our animation students to practice realistic animation exercises. We will also have AXE in our Rigging Workshop too!

Wednesday, May 11, 2016

Plugin and Nodal Demo Reel 2016 from Hans Godard on Vimeo.


Plugin and Nodal Demo Reel 2016 from Hans Godard on Vimeo.
Plugin and Nodal Demo Reel featuring modeling, rigging and pipeline tools by Hans Godard.

Bucky Bunny WIP rig demo


 Click here to watch the demo video...

Here is a quick WIP rig demo for Puppeteer Lounge new character Mr. Bucky Bunny. The rig will be available for our animation students to practice super toony cartoon animation exercises utilizing the many different kinds of animation gimmick that is built into this rig such as bendy controls, scalable controls, multiples and smears. We will also have Bucky Bunny in our Rigging Workshop under the upcoming new Super Toon Rigging Workshop. More details with animation test will come soon :)

Thursday, May 5, 2016

The Division_Cloth_Simulation_RND

Cloth Simulation R&D for The Division trailer by Tonton Koutal.

SHAPES 3.2 - Features and improvements


SHAPES 3.2 - Features and improvements from brave rabbit on Vimeo.
Check out the quick features and improvement demo of SHAPES 3.2 by Ingo Clemens. More Details: http://www.braverabbit.de/shapes/ Puppeteer Lounge SHAPES Webinar: http://puppeteerlounge.com/webinar

Tuesday, April 26, 2016

Alike Progression Shot from psl





Animation progress reel forAlike Short by Pepe School Land.

EISKO Facial Rig Demo

Facial Rig based on captured expressions (3d Scans) by EISKO. Check out there webpage for workflow on detailed facial rigs.

Friday, April 22, 2016

Transfer UV onto a rigged and animated model in Maya


Transfer UV onto a rigged and animated model in Maya. from Marko Vukovic on Vimeo.

Handy little tutorial to transfer UVs without creating junk nodes on the actual bind rig. You can use this technique of tweaking the Orig Shape node to quickly update you rig mesh with updated new model with the same topology, run multiple meshes with the same base Orig Shape mesh and such. #rigTips

Tuesday, April 19, 2016

#rigTips on Faster Character Rig

https://www.facebook.com/puppeteerlounge


#‎rigTips‬: Avoid using a lot of contraints in a rig unless it is absolutely important (needed). To create a stable, fast rig use parent child hierarchy based relationship for rig objects like controls and joint. Often time a direct parenting is the best solution of fast, intuitive and scalable rigs! Using a direct connection from controller to driven joints also speeds up the rig. This is applicable for FK joint chains. Lot of the time, we use constraints from controller to drive these joints which in greater number significantly slows down the rig (for complex rigs). In the fig. I used the locators to store the offset position of each joint, so that we can directly connect from control object to joint to maintain offset.

Always use a proper rig hierarchy system: Hierachy in a character rig is similar to a book library where you have a lot of books kept in each department in an orderly manner. Think about it, let say there is no library and we have books all over the place, you will be spending a lot of time searching that one specific book you needed! Well that is the same case with a character rig, your PC will have to process each of those nodes to process the calculation, hence a slower rig. Below is an example of a standard rig hierachy for character setup. :)

ü  (Character)_ALL                                                                                (Top Node)
o   (Character)_TRS                                                       (Transform Node)
o   (Character)_PP                     (Puppet Parts Node)
§  (Character)_IK           (IK handles Node)
§  (Character)_SKL        (Skeleton Node)
§  (Character)_CC          (Control Curves Node)  
§  (Character)_LOC         (Locators Node)                               
o    (Character)_GEO                                                                      (GeometryNode)                                                                                                
o   (Character)_XTR                                                                                                              (Extra Node)     

e.g.

ü  Momo01_ALL                                                                                                                                                   
o   Momo01_TRS                                                                                                                                   
·         Momo01_PP                                                                                     
§  Momo01_IK
§  Momo01_SKL                                                                   
§  Momo01_CC
§  Momo01_LOC                                                                                  
o   Momo01_GEO                                                                                                                                 
Momo01_XTR         

       
Join us at Puppeteer Lounge for educational training Character Rigging Worskhops!


Monday, April 18, 2016

SKIN (FAT) Simulation Webinar with Ehsan Kiani Teaser “Demo” (16-4-2016)


SKIN (FAT) Simulation Webinar with Ehsan Kiani Teaser “Demo” (16-4-2016) from Puppeteer Lounge on Vimeo.

Watch the Demo Teaser of Puppeteer Lounge's Exclusive Webinar Event on SKIN Simulation with guest instructor Ehsan Kiani :)

Special thanks to Puppeteer Lounge's guest instructor Ehsan Kiani for sharing all the tips and trickeries on FAT & SKIN Simulation inside Maya.


Monday, April 11, 2016

"THE GIFT" (created using "MARZA Movie Pipeline for Unity")

 
Very cool. An entire shot created with Unity 3D. 

Last Breath by Yousuf Abbas


Last Breath from Yousuf Abbas on Vimeo.

Love this fun little animation by Yousuf Abbas. Really liked the idea of how the animation is based on an anime fight scene. Nicely done!

Using the anime fight scene as a reference for animation sure is a fun way to experiment and enhance your skills! For those of you doing some body mechanics exercise, go through some japanese anime and manga series, choose a few shots and give it a go :)

Sunday, April 10, 2016

Illustrations to 3D Making of


Illustrations to 3D Making of~ from freebird on Vimeo.

Making 3D Model based on 2D Design!

Setting up Multiples on Character Rigs

https://www.facebook.com/puppeteerlounge
Here is a quick #rigTips on Setting up the Multiples. 

Multiples are traditional animation gimmicks to give you those wacky cartoon look, more like motion blur these days but 1000 times more cooler if you implement properly in 3D animation. Watch the video below which shows multiples on Eyes (yes multiples can be applied any where):


Now the trickery... Well the trick to creating Multiples is pretty simple! You might be wondering on creating each and every rigs one by one from scratch!! Well, let us keep it simple, the idea is to just select the nodes associated with any limb and Duplicate special with input graph connection (Yes that Duplicate Special button/command is the magic wand :). Works like a charm!!!


To make it even more simplier, easier and convenient without much headache; just duplicate special the main character node (See the image below). When duplicating special, make sure you have "Duplicate input graph" and  "Assign unique name to child nodes" is checked on (Very important, we want all the input output connections well connected and ofcourse with unique name for every nodes.) After a few second, minutes or more, you have multiple copies or clones of the same rig. Now, just some clean-up and organising to do which I will leave it upto you! And ofcourse you will also need to show hide the mesh parts which you can simply achieve by detaching and separting mesh parts for head and limbs, simple stuff, just make sure you don't delete the mesh history; finally some tweaking with the shader for blending transparancy and that's pretty much it. (Check the image below for breakdown :) 



Implementing multiples will slow down the rig as you know we have multiples for every rig, so I think it is wise to create 2 version of rig one featuring multiples and the other the standard one OR you can make some smart connection on the visibility of multiples mesh to show and hide depending on user input to make the rig faster to compute.



Well that's all folks! Easy as a piece of cake. Well go on, add some multiples on your rig, let us bring back those good old tradinal animation back into CG!

Check out this cool site for reference on many trickeries (gimmicks) used in traditional animation: http://animationsmears.tumblr.com/

For more exciting topics on character rigging, feel free to join Puppeteer Lounge training workshops at Puppeteer Lounge! We offer a wide range of training workshops! 

We now offer an exciting new course called Super Toon Character Setup which goes over creating a super cartoony rig featuring multitudes of animation gimmicks.Watch a quick demo here ;)

BTW do check out a quick animation test below with multiples!

FLEX Super Toony Animation Test from Puppeteer Lounge on Vimeo.

Classic Linear vs Dual Quaternion

How often do you use Dual Quaternion Skinning Method?

Notice how Dual Quaternion method preserves the volume (very important). There is also a 3rd option called Blended Weight where you can paint the DQ and CL influence on bind mesh.

The dual quaternion smooth skinning method is designed to eliminate these undesirable deformation effects. While linear smooth skinning allows a mesh to collapse or shrink when a bone twists, dual quaternion skinning helps to preserve volume in the mesh, creating more realistic deformation in those problem areas.

BTW feel free to take a look into these wonderful tech demos on skinning & deformation.

Fight 2D-2014


Fight 2D-2014 from Neeko on Vimeo.

2D fight animation reel by Nicolas Leger.

Thursday, April 7, 2016

Jimmy Hulk morph


Jimmy Hulk morph from Jimmy Gordon on Vimeo.

This is cool! Just in time when we are preparing this Hulk Setup Workshop at Puppeteer Lounge! This is some serious Voodoo magic, all of this in less than an hour!

Thursday, March 31, 2016

Digital Humans: Crossing the Uncanny Valley in Unreal Engine 4 - GDC 2016


Take your time and go through this video! Some clever techniques here for ‪#‎mocap‬ facial animation. Looks like it's time to stick my gopro on a head mount to do some perfomance capture and cross the uncanny valley (hehe)... As for the rig here since it is optimised and needs to be driven real-time in UE4, is fairly based on blendshapes and joints. The details come from the wrinkle maps and shading networks. I like the idea how they are using stereo camera to capture the facial performance in pseudo 3D, this helps in realistic facial animation! And yeah the blood flow gives added realism, but looks like they missed the skin pores and dynamics! Bottom line is 3D facial scans (Blendshapes based on FACS + Multiple combination shapes) + Stereo facial performance capture + Texture Analysis + Dynamic Facial Shading + Realtime Rig Logic system to sync between Maya and UE4 ...