January 07 - Storyboards, Animatic Draft 1, Character Design, preliminary modeling

March 07-Grocery Store, Purse, Facial controls

2-26-07

I tried using Comet scripts to export the weights of the joints so I could map out uv's (which I should have done BEFORE I jointed) and correct joint placement/orientation, but the script didn't work with Maya 8. So I started over one last time. I lowered the highest shoulder joint and corrected the orientation of all the joints. I watched the Gnomon DVD on UV layout, and using proxy geometry did both the Chihuahua and the Yorkie:

I don't think that Shave and a Haircut's fur is dependant on UV layout, but Maya's fur is. I'll have to find a good S&H tutorial.

We covered FK-IK switchable setup in class, and I applied to to both dogs. There's also a tutorial on it here: http://www.jawa9000.com/technical/fk-ik-arm/fk-ik-arm.htm (NB: That tutorial does NOT include the ankle orient constraint while performing Set Driven Key, which is just wrong.) I ran into some trouble on one of the Yorkie's legs where the IK arm twisted at the ankle. I froze transformations on the duplicated joints, then redid the IK handle and that fixed the problem.

I tried to set up an IK spline on the tail, then use a simplified FK to control it, but I couldn't get the proxy joints to work. I don't actually need the tail in acy shots but the last few, so I'm leaving it with just an IK spline.

All of the other joints have controls now. I created the controls by creating a nurbs circle, snapping it to the center of it's joint, creating a null group, snapping the null to the center of the joint, parenting the null to it's joint, freezing transformations on the null, unparenting the null, making the nurbs control a child of the null. Freeze transforms on the control and I was all set.

I took a break from the dogs to work on the backpack. Color's aren't final, but I set up joints and UV's, and did a folding test. Click to play:

Play

I'll put up a see through of the joints soon. The ridges on the zipper one done through a bump map. I need to ask about using a psd network for coloring and texturing. Althouh jpegs keep the file size down?

And plan for the rest of the year:

Feb 25th Two dogs jointed and weighted & uv’ed + controlled
March 4-–Dog blendshapes.
March 11-People jointed, weighted, UV’ed, bags made and jointed,
March 18-set building, squeaky toy made and jointed., Final fur
decision, dog collars and leashes made,
March 25-All Foley & barking done
April 1-Animating
April 8-Animating
April 15-Animating
April 22-Animating Rendering Editing
April 29-Done!

2-15-07

Been working on joints, reorienting, weighting, doing it over, weighting, doing it over . . . and I discovered that i've been importing references to files, instead of actual files, THEN re painting weights . . .good times.

We went over UV mapping in adv 3d yesterday, which, of course, I should have done before joints. But my teacher pointed me to www.comet-cartoons.com, which contains an export/import weights script. I've got to flip some remaining normals and merge a few verts then export the weights on the Yorkie, delete the history, do the UV's, reorient that one ankle joint and and re-import.

After lots of IK experimentation, I went with the setup I found here: http://www.peachpit.com/articles/article.asp?p=102262&seqNum=3&rl=1

The arms branches off the spine into a collar bone, to the shoulder, backwards knee, forwards knee, then ankle. There are two IK handles, the first from the collar joint to the backwards knee, then another from the backwards knee to the ankle. Moving the first IK handle deforms the torso nicely (even though my shouders are a little high) and the second controlls the stepping.

Click to play:

I discovered one of the ankle joints was STILL not oriented correctly, so I had to use world orientation to animate a walk cycle, which was just sloppy. I'll post that soon.

I went to my friends house this weekend and recorded her dogs. Some of it peaks, but I have about 45 minutes of sound. I began to sort through it, (burned the Prootools session to a cd which is in my locker) but I'd really like to have a sound designer work on this. Our class is supposed to meet with some soon. I have a final version of the animatic, I need to recompress it and post it.

next post: shave and a haircut

2-5-07

The Chi and the Yorkie's bodies are all done, made joints today.

Maya fur works great when uv's are actually laid out:

by great I mean creepy. The Yorkie is draft-weighted, click to play:

Play