Diving into rigging part 2

Here is a movie with my curent eye setup for my new character. I wanted to create a separate set of eyes that I can attach to the head rig with locators. This way I will have a flexible setup so I can move the eyes around freely.

All the attributes for shaping the eyelids and pupil dialation are in the eye controllers and can be adjusted in the channelbox.

The reshaping of the whole eye is done with separate controllers that drive a lattice. I have three controllers per eye that can rotate, translate and scale so I can have a lot of fun with the eye shapes. I will also add brows to the rig. These can be modified with a separate controller.

Diving into rigging

After hearing a lot of people talking about creating a fresh reel with your own characters I decided to dive in the world of rigging too. I had some mixed feelings about this because it's hard enough to become a good animator and your really need to spend a lot of hours to improve. (Thinking about the 5.000 hours Shawn Kelly was writing about in his blog before).

But on the other hand, it think it's a good thing for an animator to understand that rigging thing some more too and to be able to communicate well with the technical departments. At the moment I am working my way trough the Jason Schleifer rigging tutorial. And I am surprised how clear he explains everything in a way an non tech guy like me can understand all this. I already knew he's a great teacher at Animation Mentor but never expected that these DVD's were so clear and thoroughly documented. Really great stuff.

At first I wanted to try to rig with auto-riggers, and that could work great too, but than I would not expand my knowledge on this subject. So that's why I decided to take this rocky road and fill my brain with new stuff and have fun along the way.

Here is the character I designed. Did some facial tests in Maya too. It's still a work in progress.

Based my new knowledge I am going to finish the model try to create a rig from scratch for this dude. Just wish me good luck the next few weeks. I think I am going to need it:-)

Frames from the first movie

First rendered frames after some compositing. Thinking changing the window colors of the cars and maybe the colors of the shirt of the girl to make here stand out some more.

Streetview with cyclist

Another rendertest to get the right atmosphere. Still not not happy about the blue-ish windows of the tram and the houses. But everything is coming along now.

Tramdesign

A rendertest of the tram I created for this project. Thinking of making the body of the tram somewhat reflective to give it some more life.

Rendertest

A rendertest for one of the scenes. You just have to imagine the the blue cube on the left is a car passing by pretty close.

City design

First design for the overview of the city.

Girl Pose and color test

The girl character is mostly finished now. I added some blend shapes and did more weight painting today. So it was time to test her in a pose looking very scared when the tram can't avoid her anymore. Some additional blendshapes will be added when I start the animation for this project. It's time for the second character first.

Environment models

Halfway creating the models for the environment now. Here is just a testrender in duotone for fun. The final project will be done in color but its always fun to experiment with colors and filters and discover new moods. The car is still a work in progress.

Girl model with bike

Just one extra for today.The girl is standing a little to high on the platform so there is some space between her feet and the platform. Maybe she borrowed her shoes from Astro boy. In that case, why should she need a bike then :-).

Setting with girl character

Finally an occlusion render to show how the girl looks in a setting. I gotta do some extra weight painting on the girl to fix some areas but overall I am happy with the progress.

Tram modeling done.

Finished most of the modeling on the tram today. Just a few more weeks and I can start doing the animations for this project.

New models

Just finished some models for the tramstation. My to do list is getting smaller:-)

HTM Tram model

Working on the model of the tram now. I trying to find a balance to keep the shape stylized but also recognizable as the HTM tram that runs in Den Hague.

Bike

I also modeled and rigged a bike last week. I even added a wheely controller :-). A big thanks to Henk Kok who helped me write an expression to be able to counter rotate the pedals to keep m horizontal when a character is riding the bike.