Miria Kutzner - 3D Rigging Show Reel 2021

Nice one!

Rigging & Tools Reel by John Smith

Cartoon bird rig demo by Rija

"Canary" Rig Demo from Rija on Vimeo.

Loved the wing setup, very clever solution!

Realistic facial rig by José Péricles.

[SIGGRAPH ASIA 2022] Video-driven Neural Physically-based Facial Asset for Production

Awesome rigging reel by Ignacio Barrios.

Cartoon Quadruped Setup by Alba Gastañaduy | Student Demo Reel

Cartoon horse rigging by Puppeteer Lounge student Alba Gastañaduy.

Hand setup with automated wrinkle maps by Pavlo Kotliar

The making of a rig by Iker J. delos Mozos.

A good read! Check out the post by Iker J. delos Mozos.

Cartoon Body Rigging by Hen Avisror | Student Demo Reel

Cartoon Body Rigging by Hen Avisror | Student Demo Reel from Puppeteer Lounge on Vimeo.

Character Setup (Rigging Workshop 2) by Puppeteer Lounge student Hen Avisror. Well done Hen!

Body Mechanics Animation by Rofiya Shakya | Student Demo Reel

Body Mechanics Animation by Rofiya Shakya | Student Demo Reel from Puppeteer Lounge on Vimeo.

Character Animation (Body Mechanics) by Puppeteer Lounge student Rofiya Shakya.

Body Mechanics Animation by Bishank Bajracharya | Student Demo Reel

Body Mechanics Animation by Bishank Bajracharya | Student Demo Reel from Puppeteer Lounge on Vimeo.

Character Animation (Body Mechanics exercise) by Puppeteer Lounge student Bishank Bajracharya

Joint Based Facial Setup by Alba Gastañaduy | Student Demo Reel

Joint Based Facial Setup by Alba Gastañaduy | Student Demo Reel from Puppeteer Lounge on Vimeo.

Joint based cartoon facial setup by Puppeteer Lounge student Alba Gastañaduy from Spain.

Cartoon character rig overview by Kevin Temmer.

Fake muscle setup by Ahmed Shalaby

Fake_Muscle from ahmed shalaby on Vimeo.

Maya Autorig User Interface by Mehdi Louala

Maya Autorig User Interface from Mehdi Louala on Vimeo.

Bison muscle simulation by Francesco Gioia

Muscle simulation and setup by Puppeteer Lounge alumnus Francesco Gioia. Looking good Francesco! I see a lot of improvement, just make sure that you are not over jiggle the muscle and the way the thigh muscle is collapsing should be take a look at. Overall I like it!

Rigging Reel 2022 - Elke Trummer

Character rigging show-reel by Puppeteer Lounge student Elke Trummer.

Puppeteer Lounge alumnus Jamie Blyth latest show-reel looks amazing!

Showreel 2022 from Jamie Blyth on Vimeo.

I remember training with Jamie Blyth back in 2013. He was one of my star student and looking to see how he has progressed over these past years and producing quality results working on some incredible projects make be very happy! Proud of you Jamie!! 

Below is his student show-reel.

Puppeteer Lounge Student Character Rigging Show-Reel

Sharing the latest compilation of Puppeteer Lounge student show-reel! Well done everyone!! 

Netflix's Love, Death and Robots Vol. 3 - Official Making of Jibaro Clip (2022) Alberto Mielgo

The making of Jibaro.

Anatomical study of the upper torso

To achieve realistic deformations a clean and anatomically correct skeletal base is important. In this post Puppeteer Lounge alumnus Francesco Gioia goes over setting up a complex scapula setup for muscle simulation.

10 Years of training and educating to bring the CGI Puppets to Life! 🥳

 

Love, Deaths & Robots (Volume 3)

 Love, Death & Robots (My top 3 pick)

1. Jibaro (A beautiful poetry in action! Greed vs Love!!)

2. Bad Travelling (Spirit of a true leader!)

3. Swarm (Complexity of Simplicity!)

Chubby Bear: Let's go Fishing!

Watch Chubby Bear wake up from hibernation and very hungry! Laugh along with Chubby as he tries to catch some fish!! An animated shorts by Puppeteer Lounge :)

Character Articulation through Profile Curves

Character Articulation through Profile Curves from Pixar Graphics on Vimeo.

A new approach by Pixar Graphics for character articulation that produces detail-preserving deformations fully controlled by 3D curves that profile the deforming surface. 

The deformation for the mesh is controlled by profile curve much like line art with Bezier handles to fix and articulate the underlying geometry. Looks like a blend of 2D line art controlling 3D geometry, very intuitive process resulting in better deformation with art directed profiles and volume preservation! I would love to see this implemented on all 3D platforms in the near future! This could be the end of needing to create skin binding, facial blend shapes, adding helper joints and corrective blend shapes but resolving with good old line arts driven by a traditional puppet rig. Rig driven by wire curve deformers with indirect bind for articulation is something that I am familiar with but never thought those wire deformers could have the possibility of being hand keyed and posed in vertex level with Bezier handle controls much like traditional animation. Very interesting!

Presented by Fernando de Goes, William Sheffler, Kurt Fleischer SIGGRAPH 2022. Check out the documentation here.

ZIVA VFX Muscle Setup by Mohammad Dorgham | Student Demo Reel

ZIVA VFX Quadruped Setup by Puppeteer Lounge student Mohammad Dorgham. Assignment for ZIVA VFX Hyper Real Quadruped Setup training workshop.

Variable foot

Variable foot from Armin Halac on Vimeo.

Variable foot setup by Armin Halac. Nice approach!

ZIVA VFX Muscle Setup by Sanal Deep | Student Demo Reel

ZIVA VFX Quadruped Setup by Puppeteer Lounge student Sanal Deep. Assignment for ZIVA VFX Hyper Real Quadruped Setup training workshop. Well done Sanal!

KiNG - Facial Rig - DemoN

KiNG - Facial Rig - Demo from The Beast Makers on Vimeo.

Animal facial rig demo by The Beast Makers.

Grizzly Asset I Anatomy Model - Rig - Simulation Cache

For those of you learning ZIVA VFX here is a really nice digital asset by Nicolas MOREL to get started with!

Cartoon Character Rigging by Marco Valsecchi | Student Demo Reel

Cartoon Character Rigging by Marco Valsecchi | Student Demo Reel from Puppeteer Lounge on Vimeo.

Character Setup (Rigging Workshop 2) by Puppeteer Lounge student Marco Valsecchi. Well done Marco!

Surface controller demonstration by Matt LeFevre.

surface controls (maya plugin) from Matt LeFevre on Vimeo.

Surface controller demonstration by Matt LeFevre. Interesting approach on controlling puppet by mesh selection similar to Pixar's Presto toolset.

Rigging & Technical reel by Arda Kutlu

Arda Kutlu - Technical Reel from masquerade on Vimeo.

ZRT Face Trainer Demonstration | Wrapping Tutorial - Custom Face Preparation

ZRT Face Trainer Demonstration | Wrapping Tutorial - Custom Face Preparation from Puppeteer Lounge on Vimeo.

Here you go! A video going over the entire process of preparing your custom face for training using Ziva Dynamics ZRT Face Trainer!! Bring your custom faces to life with the ZRT Face Trainer. This experimental technology trains any face mesh to perform the most complex facial expressions in real-time using a comprehensive library of 4D data and proprietary machine learning algorithms!

Cartoon Character Animation by Ashish Karmacharya | Student Demo Reel

Character Animation (Advance Body Mechanics) by Puppeteer Lounge student Ashish Karmacharya.

Ziva Rapid Face Trainer Result

So here it is the result from ZRT Face Trainer and below are my thoughts:

Looks like its all blend-shape driven process with a base FACS based logic driven face rig setup. Your base model which is termed as "target mesh" gets converted to match the topology of ZIVA base model (termed as "source model") which I believe already has all the necessary face setups and connections. Once you upload your file to ZRT Face Trainer portal, it takes a few hour for the preview result to be published. During the process of training in my opinion ZIVA Rapid Trainer essentially swap the face through some blend-shape algorithm and possibly face swapping AI similar to deep fake to get the result! This workflow is good for fast output for non real (living) human or CGI generated hyper real model and may not be suitable for CGI digital double. In our case we used our in-house 3D scanned digital double and the result doesn't match the real character in terms of facial expression. For CGI digital double face rig based on actual 3d scans of facial expression of the actor is essential. But anyways this looks promising and in my opinion a GAME CHANGER! Finally the Face Trainer just provides you with a video preview, there is no mesh file, rig file or animation file provided with this early access which is a bummer! As I could have dig deeper and also do a nice little render with custom animation 🙂

Ziva Real Time Face Trainer Access Granted

Looks like we (Puppeteer Lounge) are the first 5500 artists to get our hands on the ZRT Face Trainer. Time to dig in and the process begins with marker setups and wrapping with WRAP3D!

Cartoon Character Rigging by Casandra Johnson | Student Demo Reel

Cartoon Character Rigging by Casandra Johnson | Student Demo Reel from Puppeteer Lounge on Vimeo.

Character Setup (Rigging Workshop 2) by Puppeteer Lounge student Casandra Johnson from Netherlands.

Rigging, Deformation and Dev demo reel

Rigging, Deformation and Dev demo reel 2021 from Nims Bun on Vimeo.

Rigging, Deformation and Dev demo reel by Nims Bun.