WillieWork

Creating non-renderable "implicit" spheres, cones, cubes

2011-11-08T11:49:00.000-05:00

Not sure how I didn't know about these until recently. The names sound so passive-aggressive. . .

createNode implicitSphere -n "name";
createNode implicitBox -n "name";
createNode implicitCone -n "name";

Each of these commands basically creates a non-renderable object (sphere, cube, cone) that has a very basic shape node (no components) and a transform node. You can still go into the shape node and change color using the drawing overrides and all. Doubt I'll be using them all the time or anything, but cool to know they are there if ever you should need them.

Note on "distanceBetween" nodes . . .

2011-11-08T11:19:00.000-05:00

A kind fellow named Maarten sent me an email asking about the distanceBetween node when using objects that have frozen transformations. More specifically, that it didn't work correctly after freezing the tranforms. Absolutely correct and I should have mentioned it in the video.
Basically once you freeze transforms on an object you sort of "reset" the matrix that the object lives in. As far as Maya is concerned internally, these objects now all live at 0, 0, 0, despite the fact that their pivots might be any old place.

Since I don't know much (read: anything) about matrix math, I'm not sure exactly what the technical description of what is happening is, but you're probably familiar with the results. If you're not, try this: create a cube, rotate, scale and translate it. Then freeze tranforms on it. Now look at the manipulator handles for the rotates (in local mode) and the tranforms (in object mode). Not only have the values in the channel bar been reset to 0's and 1's, but the object no longer has any idea of it's own orientation relative to the world. So any values relative to anything else in your scene are gone, thus things like distanceBetween (and loads of other stuff) don't really work any more. There are a bunch of little tricks you can use (sometimes) to pull out some information about the object, but things like world space position and orientation are kind of messed up. You won't run into this with things like joints very much, as you're probably not freezing them, but depending on how you're doing things elsewhere, this could be something to be aware of.

Some notes about this:
a) This is yet ANOTHER reason why it's smarter to "group freeze" or "group orient" your controls or anything else that you care about the position/orientation. By grouping an object at the origin on creation and then moving the group, not the object, you avoid the need to freeze transforms on anything.
b) When you're modeling for rigs, you DO want the freeze the tranforms (usually) but it's probably better to wait until you're pretty well finished with the model, THEN clean it up (freeze, delete history, etc). Most of these objects will end up being controlled by other things (joints, etc) anyways, but it's nice to have older versions of the file that have the orientations, etc (even better if you use groups here too, but let's not get too fussy)
c) in the ordinary course of events it's, of course, totally fine to use the standard measure distance tool, with it's UI component and locators and all. When you actually want to see the values, it's actually easier to use this method because of the visual feedback it gives. I'm guessing that this freezing business is why these tools don't measure the objects directly, but instead use the locators.
d) if you have frozen objects (whose world space matrix has been messed up at some point) and you still want to use the cleaner method of the "distanceBetween" nodes, you can just create some null groups (one for each object) and point constrain them to the objects. Then you can either delete the constraints and parent the nulls under the objects, or leave the constraints and stash the nulls away somewhere in the outliner. Then you just hook up the nulls to the distanceBetween, just like you would any other objects. A bit cleaner visually than using locators, but you could use those too if you want.
Anyways, thanks to Maarten for pointing out the omission!

Dealing with smoothing in your character rigs

2011-10-07T10:35:00.000-04:00

Was literally thinking about whether to include this topic in another vid and someone emailed me and asked me about this specifically. Weird!
This video sort of quickly goes through some ways to deal with how to include various smoothing levels in your rig, from lo poly proxy geo to highly smoothed for rendering.
Here's the code I use in the video:
1) for grabbing ALL polySmoothFace nodes in the scene and connecting them to your master control in the rig scene (note you should change any appropriate names, obviously, to ones you're using):

{
string $smooths[] = `ls -type "polySmoothFace"`;
for ($each in $smooths){
    connectAttr master_CTRL.hiPolyLevel ($each + ".divisions");
    }
}

2) for changing the smooth state of any selected master control objects (probably best to use this as a mel button on your shelf, and of course change any names/values to what you want):

{
string $sel[] = `ls -sl`;
for ($each in $sel){
    setAttr ($each + ".loPoly") 1;
    setAttr ($each + ".hiPolyLevel") 0;
    }
}

Creating stretchy joint chains

2011-10-05T15:06:00.000-04:00

Been meaning to do this tutorial for a while, but never got around to it. Some fella named Jeremy Parrish did a tutorial on this subject that I saw recently (http://vimeo.com/29466144) and did a few thing differently than I would do.
1) I now use the "distanceBetween" node in rigs. Easier, cleaner.
2) WHAT we're measuring makes a difference. So a bent leg, for example, needs to be measured differently than a straight leg. Subtle, but important distinction that needs to be looked at depending on your model.
3) by measuring the leg joints that are being stretched (or any static, constant measurement), you have issues with scaling. These can be solved (as Jeremy shows), but that may, in fact, create some weaknesses in your rig that can pretty easily cause problems.
So here's a vid where I walk through a stretchy leg the way Jeremy shows and then with a few modifications.

creating a nice clean distance node using "distanceBetween"

2011-10-05T14:54:00.000-04:00

Here's another neat little node, called the "distanceBetween". As you might guess, it measures the distance between of two selected objects. What's nice about this is that you don't get the extra gunk that comes the measure tool, like locators and UI stuff, which one typically doesn't need in a rig.
The only tricky part here is that in a DAG hierarchy you can't really use the translate attributes as the measure inputs because those don't reflect world space distances. So you'll need to hook up one of the pivots for each object and then use the "world space" attributes for each object into the respective input matrices of the distance node. Huh? Just watch the video and I'll walk through it.
The basic code for the node itself is:
shadingNode -asUtility distanceBetween -n "name;

BTW, here's the code I used in the video for creating this distance node . . . You can just copy it into your script editor and make a quick mel button for it. I've added just a quick dummy check to make sure there are 2 tranforms selected.

{
string $sel[] = `ls -sl -tr`;
if (`size($sel)` != 2){
    error "please select 2 transformable objects to measure";
    }
string $name = "distance";
string $dis = `shadingNode -asUtility distanceBetween -n $name`;
connectAttr ($sel[0] + ".worldMatrix") ($dis + ".inMatrix1");
connectAttr ($sel[1] + ".worldMatrix") ($dis + ".inMatrix2");
connectAttr ($sel[0] + ".rotatePivotTranslate") ($dis + ".point1");
connectAttr ($sel[1] + ".rotatePivotTranslate") ($dis + ".point2");
}

Connecting to a curve via "pointOnCurveInfo" node

2011-10-05T14:45:00.001-04:00

Recently I was on a job where we had to hook some objects up to a curve and move the curve around (though technically we could have done it other ways). Carmine Laetta (an animator I was working with) came up with idea to hook everything up to a motion path with no animation (1 frame range) on it, which I thought was pretty clever. I did that via some quick mel scripts, but later investigated a cool little node called "pointOnCurveInfo". I'd seen this before (as well as it's brethren, curveInfo) but never fully investigated, so here's a vid about how to use the node.
The basic code to create the node is:
shadingNode -asUtility pointOnCurveInfo -n "name";

Dealing with Double Transforms

2011-09-25T12:05:00.000-04:00

Double transforms are probably the single most frustrating thing to deal with when you're first learning rigging. What can be even more frustrating is when these issues pop up after it seems like you've got a perfectly working rig and you just want to clean it up in the outliner!
Fortunately, the issues are almost always in one of a couple of relatively simple categories and you get accustomed to dealing with them fairly quickly. This is a video talking about some of those basic scenarios and some ways to address them. Hopefully enough to help get you started in solving some of the more complex issues you may run into down the line.

Maya/Rigging: Dealing with Double Transforms from zeth willie on Vimeo.

Using the Point on Curve Info node

2011-09-25T11:56:00.002-04:00

I always think this kind of stuff is pretty cool. . . a) this node is semi-secret/hidden and you'll feel pretty cool showing it to someone who's not aware of it (though don't be too smug. No one likes that asshole) b) you get to create some stuff using the command line, which again is pretty sweet and nerdy and c) the pointOnCurveInfo node is exactly the kind of node that riggers like. It just does what it's sposed to do with no extra fussing around or additional junk.
Anyways here's a video talking about how to access this node and some basic ways to use it (namely for sticking stuff onto a user-defined point on a curve).
A quick tip, which is in the video and which is a reiteration of info I've posted before. . .
Rather than using:
createNode pointOnCurveInfo -n "name";
which will give you node, but leave it hidden from view in the hypershade, I prefer:
shadingNode -asUtility pointOnCurveInfo -n "name";
which does basically the same thing, but flags the node as a "utility" and thus puts it under the Utility tab in the hypershade. Just thought I'd point that out again.

Maya/Rigging: Attaching objects to a curve (using pointOnCurveInfo node) from zeth willie on Vimeo.

Why so many groups?

2011-09-02T17:52:00.000-04:00

Been asked by a few people (in my rigging class and elsewhere) about why there are so many groups in my rigs. So thought I'd post a quick video talking about some ways to use groups (kind of like nulls in After Effects) as part of the functionality of my rigs.

Maya - Using groups in your rigs from zeth willie on Vimeo.

Swapping out rotation orders under an animation

2011-09-02T14:38:00.000-04:00

Not an everyday thing to use, but useful when something like this crops up. . .
Rotation orders are always kind of important, but on certain animations it can be pretty necessary to manage them correctly (I'll try to do a separate post on rotation orders in general later).
I was just on a commercial recently where I was tasked with animating a couple of leaves fluttering into position. Somehow I got something sideways in one of the leaves and already had a fairly decent animation base down before I realized it. One leaf was correctly oriented in the rig to point in X and the other got perpendicular in Z. I built the entire rig for both as though they were pointing in X with the default rotate order (XYZ) and thus had two slightly different behaviors. I couldn't get a clean rotation down the axis of the leaf that was oriented in Z because the rotation order was incorrect (should have been ZYX, if I remember correctly). The general rule of thumb is that you usually want any channel that you'd like clean to be FIRST in the rotate order (though technically, that means it rotates last). Anyways, that's a fairly easy fix in the rig, just had to go back to my working version and change the rotate orders of the control structure elements, publish it back to the master version and done.
BUT, since I'd already animated a bunch of stuff, swapping the rotation orders under the published version of the rig would mess all the rotations up. Didn't want to have to match each keyframe by eye, but there seemed to be no numerical way to match stuff up. I was banging my head against the wall when I asked Brad Friedman, who's a really smart pipeline TD at Method and he told me unequivocally, "nope. Can't be done mathematically". My next thought was to try to go to a key, orient constrain the object, delete the constraint, key it and repeat. The evil trick, though, is that this isn't even doable by hand (except to go through and key by eye), because even if you were to try and constrain then delete the constraint, then key the value, it would blow away any keys you previously had. So you can do that once, but not multiple times over the length of the animation. Ugh.

So I came up with a quick little script (with a python assist from Brendon, who's another smart pipeline TD there).
Basically the idea is this, you have a scene with your incorrect rotate orders already animated. Import your new rig with the correct rotation orders. Select the animated original, then the new rig, then run the script. It will find any keyframes for rotation and translation. For each keyframe, it will point and orient constrain the new rig to the old rig and store the translate and rotate values of the NEW rig (which are the numbers, at least rotation, that aren't derivable from the orig data) and then, once it's stored them all, go back and key those stored values at the correct frame for your new object. Finally, it will run an Euler filter on the lot of the new curves (I noticed some rotations can get a bit weird without it).
Not perfect but serviceable and fast. Which is good cuz it was my mess up in building the rig that started the whole problem!

So here's the script:
zbw_swapRotateOrder.py (rt-click,save as)

To use this, drop it in your version/scripts folder (or wherever else you stash your python scripts) and then in Maya, select the original object, then the new rotation order rig and type:

import zbw_swapRotateOrder
zbw_swapRotateOrder.swapOrder()

Once you've imported the script, you just need the second line to run the function thereafter, I believe. (I can write the python scripts fairly simply, but using them in Maya still seems like a pain to me)

Follow up some Linear Workflow stuff for Maya 2011 +

2011-08-11T00:54:00.001-04:00

Been meaning to do this for a while, but never got around to it . . . And I got scooped a little bit! Derek Flood did a couple of short videos about this and lit a fire. Thanks Derek!
Anyways a quick overview (as quick as I can do it, everyone else seems to have a better grasp of the brevity thing than I do) of how linear stuff embedded in Maya 2011/2 relates to what you may have been doing before . . . not expansive, just pointing a few things out.
*EDIT* Derek was kind enough to point out some of the specific bugs/weirdnesses he's found in the comments. Check it out if you're interested!

Maya/Mental Ray: Linear Workflow in Maya 2011 from zeth willie on Vimeo.

HERE'S (rt click, save as) the updated zbw_gamma script that works by shader selection and sticks gammas into the color channels. You can also adjust any/all gamma nodes in the scene or delete them globally.

Creating a reflection "sheen" pass for your scene

2011-08-10T08:27:00.002-04:00

Every semester I end up explaining this in a really rushed and half-hearted way to a bunch of poor students who are in my animation class. Rather than do that again, I finally wised-up and made a video about it. . .
Somehow my videos seem to get longer and longer, so I split this up after the fact and made two videos (it's like my inner self is telling me to do less videos and more text-y type tutorials).
The first video is the basic stuff for setting up a render pass that will give a nice shiny reflection pass for your scene (stuff like a cell phone or tv in a commercial) and the second chunk of it gives a few ways to customize this concept and make it a more reusable using things like RGB passes for various different reflections, etc.
This is something that is really useful to know how to do in production, especially for stuff like commercials, so hopefully I haven't made it tooooo loooong and boring . . .

Maya/Mental Ray: Rendering a reflection "sheen" pass - part 1 from zeth willie on Vimeo.

Maya/Mental Ray: Rendering a reflection "sheen" pass - part 2 from zeth willie on Vimeo.

BTW, HERE'S the script that I use at the end for pulling stuff out to a render layer with custom color overrides . . . (rt click, save as)

A little script for those big scenes . . .

2011-08-09T23:06:00.000-04:00

A little script from a job with a HUGE environment (basically a city made to scale in cm units. Good grief). Just to help get things moving more quickly I threw this together. The cameras layouts were set up and we had to throw the characters into the scene, but when we referenced them, they came in at the origin which might be 10's of thousands of units away from the camera position.
So to ballpark things I made this script. . . Really simple actually, select your camera, enter a distance and hit "create Locator" which will create a locator at the specified distance in front of the camera. (Or you could make your own, though that kind of defeats the purpose) You can then move the locator around if you're not happy with the distance or undo and try again with a new distance.

Then go the outliner and select the locator you want, then the group or object you want to place at the locator and hit snap. The script will just snap the position of the object to the locator in front of the camera. . .
Not a big deal, just something to ease the pain of trying to pull things around a scene that's way too big for it own good :)
HERE is the script if you want to have a go. (rt click and save as)

Creating an auto-swimming fish rig using expressions

2011-08-09T15:08:00.000-04:00

I while back I posted a video about using joint chains in rigs and one of the things I demoed was a fish rig I had created for Method Studios. I got a bunch of questions about how I set that up, so here are a couple of videos about using expressions to control the auto-swim part of that rig (which IMO is the tricky part).
If you're an expert at expressions and such, probably nothing new here but if you're not this might be a good example of using expressions in rigs (for things other than auto-stretch, which seems to be the most common thing) . . .

Maya/Rigging: Creating an auto-swim fish rig using expressions, Part 1 from zeth willie on Vimeo.

Maya/Rigging: Creating an auto-swim fish rig using expressions, Part 2 from zeth willie on Vimeo.

Follow up on corrective shapes for Maya 2011 . . .

2011-08-08T11:31:00.000-04:00

Sorry for the lack of posts, been pretty busy (which one can never complain about these days, though I try). Seems like this will be the M.O. generally speaking. . . Nothing for a while, then a flurry of stuff.
Well, get ready to be flurried on, cause I've got a bunch of stuff to throw up here in the next few days while I have moment :) Let's start with some follow up material:

Did a post on pose space deformation, or corrective shapes, a little while ago. Here's an update of some scripts, etc that may work for you (mileage may vary) in later versions (post 2010). I haven't had much time to play with these unfortunately, but if I come up with anything else, I'll let you know . . .

extract deltas from brave rabbit playground
This works nicely . . . but be careful about the scaling and transforms of your orig mesh. Seems like the script is having trouble recognizing at least any scale values in the bound mesh (so you'll get a tiny or big blendShape mesh as your result if there are scale values other than 1 in the orig mesh. Which there shouldn't be, but still . . .)

http://www.chadvernon.com/blog/resources/cvshapeinverter/ - cvshape inverter from Chad Vernon
Watch some of this guys videos. Seriously off the hook skills. This plug in is giving me some trouble though. Seems from the comments like some people have gotten this working. Not me. Might be my stupidity re: how python stuff works, might be something to do trying it on my Mac, but while I'm seeing the plug-in, I'm not getting the script version to work, failing on "import" (tried this on a PC at my last gig but didn't have access to the plug-ins folder to install everything. But it seemed like it was trying to work than on my Mac. Hmmm).

http://www.djx.com.au/blog/downloads/ - look for "poseDeformer" towards the bottom
This seems pretty interesting and certainly has lots of options . . . check out a walkthrough of features here. Seems like it was written a while back and is just being updated for newer versions of Maya. But also seems like overkill in most instances (at least for me) and because of all the bells and whistles, seems like it may require ALL the artists on the team to have it installed (at least those that need to see the deformation at the rig level). Can't even be fussed to install this :p

Pipeline Basics

2011-06-14T13:37:00.000-04:00

Pipeline stuff is a topic that TD's and 3D people (in particular) talk about a lot in the real world. The reason is that whatever you're working on, using whatever techniques, at whatever scale you always need to be going through a pipeline (even if it's an almost nonexistent one). Since the state of the pipeline will ALWAYS be affecting the quality of your work and your productivity, just a little bit of effort on this front will affect every job you do, usually positively. And I'm not even talking about the nuts and bolts of networking architecture or any heavily technical stuff, which most successful studios also spend a lot of effort and money on.
The main issue I've come across in studio work in NYC (and in almost all student work) is that, because any work you put into thinking about and developing a pipeline will pay benefits in a kind of diffuse way, it seems that lots of people would rather spend that time (and $) doing production work instead because it seems to pay more immediate dividends. The result is that, at some studios I've worked at, there's almost no pipeline or institutionalized workflow at all. Unsurprisingly, the result is that the same issues keep cropping up on every production.
Some things that I see regularly:
1)No naming conventions at all for either files or even folders. This can lead to mass confusion on a big job or even a smaller job, when a new artist has to step in. Where are the files? Which is the latest version? What does this abbreviation stand for? Which files should I reference?
2) No standard for passing files from one dept to the next. Without some kind of publishing system to create master files, the chances for hiccups (or worse) when using references, etc grow exponentially. What is the plan when you're animating and someone realized a modeling change needs to happen? How do you propagate a change from the front of the pipeline through to the end of the pipeline late in the game?
3) Since there's no standardization in naming or methodology, it's very difficult to develop any tools to help facilitate some tedious tasks. Even little chunks of custom code across a studio can be a huge boon to artists and actually prevent a lot of time/effort-draining errors.
4) it sounds obvious, but I spend a TON of time hunting for files, references, and project spec documents just to figure out what I'm supposed to be doing. When you multiply all that time by all the artists on all the jobs, you realize that some studios spend thousands, sometimes tens of thousands of dollars per year on time that artists aren't actually doing anything productive. Studios that deal well with these issues often have things like production calenders for all the artists to see their deadlines (and their interconnectedness to the pipeline as a whole), areas (on a computer or IRL) to look at the most recent/relevant artwork and ref material, an easy to find collection of tools, shaders, and regular team meetings (where input is heard and addressed) during production, etc.
I know it sounds like I'm slagging the studios, but I don't mean it that way. There are lots things involved here. Yes, in some cases there are studio heads are just ignorant of the business they are in (and remember I work in NYC so most of the studios I deal with are relatively small. I doubt there are many big 3D studios that don't take pipeline issues very seriously, certainly none I've worked at). Mostly I see this ignorance with design and 2D studios that are ramping up to try get 3D work. I worked with a studio a few years back that supposedly lost over $200,000 doing a their first BIG 3D job. They hit almost every point I made above in terms of issues with pipelines. They're not around anymore.
But most of the time it just boils down to not making a concerted effort in developing the infrastructure that's required to do 3D work efficiently. MacDonald's and Coke and Walmart and all other successful companies (whatever your opinion of them) are successful largely because they understand their business model really well and make huge efforts to stamp out inefficiencies. MacDonald's may not make the best burger (I'm pretty sure they don't), but they probably make the most efficient burger and that's part of why they are so successful. On the flip side (no pun intended), many of the producers I've worked with over the years know NOTHING about 3D production specifically. How can they possibly be expected to allot the time and people-power to developing a pipeline when they don't know what that even is? Many studios hire producers on a freelance basis. So where would the motivation be to develop in-house tools and other "invisible" things when you're expected to bring in a specific project on a tight budget. Many 3D leads are overworked and don't have the bandwidth in their day to spend a lot of time working on this either. Coding for specific tools would probably require hiring a specialist, which can cost a bunch of money. Often, no persuasive argument is made for doing this. And of course, money and time are always tight, so things like pipeline infrastructure often are the last things to be dealt with. But in the end it really is like running a burger joint without knowing where you source your meat or potatoes, it doesn't really make sense to ignore your pipeline when THAT'S THE BUSINESS YOU ARE IN!
Lastly (and, in all honesty, mostly the reason I care) is that most of the "lifestyle" issues in this business that adversely affect us all (by which I mean, crazy late hours, lazy and inefficient scheduling, etc) are directly correlated with all that I've mentioned above. In my experience, studios that have really tight pipelines, have almost by definition, a better understanding of the business. They know how long x,y and z takes, they know where their man-power is going and steer it in productive ways and maybe because of that, tend to have more realistic and "human" schedules. I've been on long jobs, where within 20 minutes of sitting down I can spot a month of all-nighters coming from a mile away. It almost always has to do with the thought and effort put in long before I sit down. Obviously, stuff happens and late nights are required sometimes, but respect for the craft and the people who do it can be manifest in a real and tangible way. When a studio spends the time and energy to figure out how to best do the work that they're paid to do, my experience has been that they're also more likely to respect the people who do that work and to treat them that way (I can't speak for MacDonald's in this regard).
A long rant. Whew. So you know, this is also something that I try to talk about with my master's program students, trying to instill some rigor in the process by which they go about their work, whether on their thesis projects, on personal projects and certainly when get into the working world. Process isn't everything, but it sure helps.
Here's a video talking about some of the basics of this (organization, naming, publishing). Nothing very technical or high level, just the basics to get started.

Maya: Pipeline Basics from zeth willie on Vimeo.

Pose Space Deformation

2011-06-14T12:11:00.001-04:00

Here's a video talking about the basics of pose space deformation. This is definitely one of those things that one should be aware as a rigger. The basic idea of pose space deformations is to create modeling fixes for certain areas based on the poses that that area will hit (a lot of times you can use the term "corrective blend shapes" for this type of thing as well). The math/programming behind creating pose space deformations can get tricky, but fortunately there are a few resources out there that will handle it (I use BSpiritCorrectiveShape in the video). The gist is that you pose your already rigged character and then make changes based on the deformations, etc IN THAT POSE. The tool you use should remove the influence of the joints, etc to calculate what the actual transformations of the vertices (or CV's) are in local space and give you a corrected model that can be worked in as blend shape or what have you. Really a great way to do two things: a) fix a model that's not deforming correctly based on weighting alone and/or b) add some movement specific deformation to enhance the rigging. Anyhoo, here's the vid:

Maya/Rigging: Pose Space Deformation from zeth willie on Vimeo.

a basic intro to IK spine type setups (IK spline/Ribbon)

2011-04-02T16:02:00.009-04:00

Here are a couple of videos that start to outline a couple of different approaches to IK "spine" systems, how they work and what are the pros/cons of each. The two main things are the IK spline setup (video 1) and the ribbon spine (video 2). Again, no great detail (they're both a bit tedious to build), but enough to get you started in looking for more info.
BTW, the tutorials I mention in the videos are 1) the "divine spine" in vid 1 can be found at http://www.peachpit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=102262&seqNum=4. In the second vid I mention 2) Aaron Holly's videos (http://www.fahrenheitdigital.com/dvds/rigging/feature-animation-rigging-dvd.php) which may not even be available any more (I've never actually seen this specific topic covered by him, though I've seen other stuff and he's awesome) and 3) Jose Antonio Martin Martin's tutorial on Creative Crash (formerly HighEnd3D) (http://www.creativecrash.com/maya/tutorials/character/c/ribbon-spine-rig). I never noticed the comments before now where everyone's referring to Aaron's videos. Funny (though if he's directly ripping Aaron's techniques, he should at least credit him, IMHO. Just saying).

Maya/Rigging: intro to IK-type spine setups part 1 from zeth willie on Vimeo.

Maya/Rigging: intro to IK-type spine setups part 2 from zeth willie on Vimeo.

scripting your "bind" joints into a Quick Select Set

2011-04-02T16:02:00.008-04:00

As I mentioned in the videos in the previous post, here is the basic idea of how you'd create a Quick Select Set from your "_BIND_" joints. (thought I'd break it out into a separate post to make it easier to read) . . .

{
string $bind[] = `ls -type joint "*_BIND_*"`;

sets -text "gCharacterSet" -name BindJoints; 

for ($obj in $bind) {
    sets -edit -forceElement BindJoints $obj;
    }
}

(it's MEL, btw)
The weird bit of that is the syntax for creating a QSS (sets -text "gCharacterSet" etc). Not sure what that's about . . .
You'll have to change stuff for your own setup (the name you're looking for), but otherwise it's pretty straightforward. It looks for joints, then within that selection, looks for the name you've got (in my case "_BIND_") and adds those to a QSS called BindJoints. I find the QSS a bit easier to use for this purpose than a regular set.
Now if I want a selection that isn't easily grab-able (like in the ribbon spine) I can just grab the QSS from the "Edit" --- "QuickSelectSets" menu and then grab my geo and off I go to binding-world. I'll usually end up adding some code to remove any joint that I don't end up wanting in the bind afterwards (though I try to name things with this in mind, so the end joints on toes, for example, WON'T get the "_BIND_" added to their name, as I don't need them bound.) I'll just add this code to the tail end of any rig I'm scripting (or as a stand alone chunk of code for a custom built rig) and the QSS will be there waiting for me every time I build the rig or want to bind/unbind. Definitely makes things faster to test things out in your rigs. Hope this helps!

Cleanly transferring UV's to a skinned model

2011-04-02T10:25:00.002-04:00

Why does the transfer attributes node sometimes resist getting deleted on a rigged model? Doesn't it know resistance is futile?
I've had it happen many times that a UV set has to get transferred onto a skinned model via transfer attributes operation. And then refuses to go away. Which sucks cuz cleaner history is better. This a quick vid about why that happens and how to kill that history. Thanks to Christina Sidoti for pointing it out to me!

Edit: Oh yeah . . . Here's a script to help you do it faster! Download it HERE (rt-click, save). Put it in your scripts directory, start Maya (or type "rehash" in the MEL command line if it's already open). Select the obj with the new UV's, then the rigged object with the old UV's and type "zbw_cleanTransferUV". (catchy name, right?). It seems to work fine for anything I've tried it with. If you've already got some UV changing history (polyTweakUV or transfer UVs, etc) you can delete those, you're new UVs are coming straight from the source and any previous tweaks will get weird.

Carry on!

Maya/Rigging: Cleanly Transferring UVs to a Bound Rig from zeth willie on Vimeo.

Creating an inky bleed effect in Nuke with Time Offset

2011-03-27T22:52:00.001-04:00

Here's a quicker tip/trick related to Nuke. A really cool time offset effect that's actually way more complicated than it looks. This time it was for a job I was actually on, though we didn't actually end up using it for the final, as far as I know.
The gist of the technique is to use a time-offset node to take a frame that has literally just been written an instant before, add some effects and merge it back into the frame that's about to be written. So you get a cool trailing effect that iterates on itself, anything in the past growing while keeping a tight "leading edge". Not too crazy once you've seen it, but pretty hard to explain.
Anyways, Andy Jones at Method NY showed me this (he actually just did it and then had the unenviable task of explaining it to me once I took over the comp). Hopefully you understand it better than I did the first 30 minutes or so.
Cheers.

Nuke/Compositing: Inky Time Offset Effect from zeth willie on Vimeo.

Creating custom UV pass in MR and using it in Nuke

2011-03-27T22:39:00.003-04:00

That's a mouthful.
On a job recently I got some secondhand Nuke goodness when a lighting TD showed me how they were using UV passes from Maya to "auto-track" some footage into their shots (I wasn't on that job). The basic issue was that a lot of footage had to go onto screens in the spot and some of that footage wasn't ready or the client was changing their mind about what the footage should be. So, in short, any manual trick to the get the footage locked onto the CG screens required redoing some additional work in post, in terms of tracking, etc. Additionally, sometimes late notes were coming in about animation changes to the screens themselves, which meant that there was no option to render "in-camera" in Maya, it had be done in post.
So the simple solution was to render the screens with properly adjusted UV's as UV passes. This automatically locked the footage in place and wasn't dependent on any additional work once the comp was built, even if the footage had to be completely replaced or the animation of the screen itself changed. Pretty sweet. While I'm sure some people think this is obvious, I didn't (and neither did a lot of the other people I was working with. So I'm not the only ignorant one.)
In any event, I also realized that I never really followed up on any render pass stuff in Maya 2010/11, so the first vid below is basically what we're trying to do and how to get custom color passes out of Mental Ray (as opposed to the "regular" passes that are pre-set, like reflection, diffuse, etc). I use this method to get out RGB matte passes and a UV pass in EXR format.
The second video is how to actually use the UV pass in Nuke to get the basic effect we're looking for. Nothing crazy, just basic use of the UV pass.

Maya/Mental Ray: Custom Color Passes (2010) Part 1 - UV Pass from zeth willie on Vimeo.

Maya/Mental Ray: Custom Color Passes (2010) Part 2 - UV Pass from zeth willie on Vimeo.

A quick little Gamma script

2011-03-24T14:44:00.002-04:00

I said I would post some stuff and 10 minutes later, here I am (pats self on back) . . .
Working on a job recently, we were using linear workflow, which is sweeeeet, but not so shocking since this was a pretty big studio that does mostly photo-real work. But they actually didn't have any automated way to deal with the gamma correct nodes in the scene (that I or anyone I talked to knew about). I got to one scene that I was animating and went to do a rough mock up of the texturing and lighting and realized with all of the objects and references and such that there were 40 or 50 shaders that needed a gamma correct node. So I decided to just write a quick script to do it. I know there are versions of this kind of stuff out there already, but if it's something manageable, I prefer to do it myself. I feel like I learn more that way.

Turns out, it's actually kind of hard to do scripting for this stuff. Basically, I just wanted 3 basic things. Add a gamma correct node right before the color slot of any shader I select (or all shaders), be able to adjust those nodes (turn the gamma from .455 to 1 and visa versa) and be able to remove all the gamma nodes if I want to. What turns out to be really tricky is navigating upstream/downstream from the selected materials. If I wanted to put a gamma correct node somewhere upstream from the selected shaders I would have to traverse back up through connections recursively and run the risk of encountering loops and such. Basically, navigating through shader trees is trickier than objects, because without the DAG hierarchy (parent/child) there's not such a clear and definitive relationship between nodes. I'm sure it's doable, but started getting deeper than I was interested in going, so I simplified things.

I wrote a script that will look at the "color" channel of a shader (I did blinn, phong, anisotropic, lambert, surface shader, mia, mia_x, mia_x_passes, testing for their respective color channels) and look for a gamma correct node connected there. If there's not one, it will add it with the values you input. You can choose materials to apply this to, or do it to all of them. If there's nothing going into the color channel, no gamma is created. You can then adjust or delete the gammas (again only the gammas connected to the color channels) from the other tabs in the UI.

Basically, as long as your only worried about color information connected to the material and you're not adding any gamma correct nodes elsewhere in the tree, this script should cover you. Just run the scripts (zbw_gamma) select the materials you need gammas for (i.e. blinn, mia_material_x_passes, etc) and use the buttons/tabs to add, adjust or remove them.

As usual, I make no guarantees about how it will work for you, so don't plan on funding your retirement by suing me. (Like I've mentioned before, part of my reasoning for posting these scripts is just so that I have access to them if the studio I'm at has locked USB ports or something. Easier than emailing them to myself every job :)
Oh, BTW, I know there is some pretty useful gamma stuff in 2011 now. I've only been at 1 (!) studio that uses 2011 in production. And that was pretty hairy. I'm sure more than that do, but 2010 is still the most common release for use in production in NYC as far as I can tell. Any studio that has any significant pipeline tools, render farms, etc, would have to change/update all the code to incorporate 2011 into the pipeline and I'm not sure it's worth it at this point (actually, it's obviously not worth it yet, the proof is in the pudding, as they say)
Anyways, happy gamma-ing!

You can download the script HERE.

Been a while . . .

2011-03-24T13:51:00.001-04:00

Wow. It's been a loooooong time since I've posted anything. Been really busy, moved apartments here in NYC over the Christmas break (on rather short notice, I might add, but for the better), did the holiday/insane blizzard thing and have basically been working crap-loads ever since the new year. But I have a day or two off and plan to get some more material up here in the next couple of days. Maybe some videos on some things I've been using for work and some new stuff that I've been learning about.

BTW, thanks to Stuart Christensen for pimping the blog-izzle. He's got a you-tube channel where he cranks out tons of great tutorials on maya related stuff. Check it out at http://www.youtube.com/user/deepfriedectoplasm. Kind of bananas how many tutorials he does. . .

Anyhooo. I'll be back soon with some stuff to show.

Setting up a "Reverse Foot" Rig

2010-12-03T13:18:00.001-05:00

Creating a reverse foot setup is fairly simple (that's the thing that keeps the character's feet stuck to the ground and allow you bend the foot in various places). But the process can seem a bit complicated when you first see it . . . lots of moving pivots to various places, etc. So here's video to walk through how I do it. Obviously, other people have other ways of doing it, but let's see them make you a video! They'll never love you like I love you! {sniff}

Maya/Rigging: Reverse Foot Setup from zeth willie on Vimeo.

Set Driven Key weirdness in Maya

2010-12-03T13:07:00.002-05:00

I noticed this issue a few years ago while animating something (something brilliant, I'm sure) and realized while describing it recently that most people don't actually think about the "behind the scenes" stuff when creating set driven keys. So here's a video describing it!
In short it goes over the "interpretation" graph that gets made when a set driven key is created and how the tangents (and shape generally) of that curve affect your animation.
Please to enjoy . . .

Maya/Rigging: Set Driven Key Animation Problems from zeth willie on Vimeo.

Modeling for animation - 3 part video

2010-06-10T12:00:00.002-04:00

Did you know that the word modeling has only one "L" in it? For some reason I always chuckle when I write that. (as opposed to "sepArate" vs. "sepErate", which my brain seems incapable of ever remembering).
Anyways, more to the point, here are a few videos about MODELING (heh heh) that go over some basic stuff that pertains to animation. Did these quite a while ago and forgot to put the Vimeo links here on the blog. Oops.
These go over creating and using edge loops to get the forms you want while keeping the poly count low, localizing additional geometry you're creating using loops, and some general tips about modeling for rigging. The general idea of all of these is to point out that modeling for animation and production has some different requirements/goals than animating for, say, stills or for turntables. Some of the stuff is pretty basic, but things that I see done a bit wonkily fairly often, so there you go . . .

Modeling for Animation - part 1 from zeth willie on Vimeo.

Modeling for Animation - Part 2 from zeth willie on Vimeo.

Modeling for Animation - Part 3 from zeth willie on Vimeo.

Creating custom render passes in Maya & Mental Ray

2010-03-05T16:31:00.003-05:00

Been studying up on how to create some render passes in Maya/Mental Ray. I'm using 2008 (so sue me), but this should mostly be applicable to 2009/10, as well, because there are some issues with the render passes coming out of both of those versions (mostly much longer renders, as Sagroth talks about HERE).
Basically the idea is to use the mia_x shader in particular to get a full spectrum of render passes basically at no cost (or little cost) to the render time of the images. This can be HUGE when you're rendering a longer animation or a series of animations.
Problem is that it's REALLY complicated, so I do it in three parts here. Part 1 talks about why you'd want to do this, Part 2 talks about the basic setup in Maya using the SimplePasses shader (which you can download HERE) and Part 3 talks about adding multiple shaders to your passes (both multiple mia_x and other custom passes) and some things to look out for re: render layers.
BTW, the script I'm using in the vids is here, though I make no promises about it. I fixed a couple things and can't replicate the weirdness from the 3rd vid, so I think . . . think . . . it should work OK for most things. To use it, source it, then type "zbw_renderPasses". If you open it in a text editor, there are some basic instructions in the header . . .
So anyways, here are the vids :)

Maya/Mental Ray: Custom Render Passes (Maya 2008) Part 1 from zeth willie on Vimeo.

Maya/Mental Ray: Custom Render Passes (Maya 2008) Part 2 from zeth willie on Vimeo.

Maya/Mental Ray: Custom Render Passes (Maya 2008) Part 3 from zeth willie on Vimeo.

Getting the most from your joint chains

2010-02-25T17:11:00.001-05:00

Sounds fun, right? Actually did this video a while back, but been so busy with work that I forgot to post it here. . .
This is a video about how I "reuse" joint chains in a rig. The basic starter example is using copies of the same joint chain for an IK/FK arm. From there I show how to use a version of that chain in a stretchy rig and finally show how that concept applies to a rig I did for Method for a fish character that incorporates an autoswim function with FK control.

Maya/Rigging: Using multiple copies of joint chains from zeth willie on Vimeo.

Correctly orienting controls to your rig

2010-02-01T15:27:00.004-05:00

A quick tutorial about getting your controls oriented correctly to the joints of your rig. Seen this done wrong a few times in the last couple years on jobs, and definitely amongst lots of student rigs so I thought I'd throw this together. One of the most sneakily fundamental things you need to know to make decent rigs . . .

Maya/Rigging: Group Orienting/Freezing Controls from zeth willie on Vimeo.

Maya/Mental Ray: Portal Light

2009-12-28T14:52:00.005-05:00

Was looking around at some lighting/rendering sites and noticed how often some people use the portal light/sky light in mental ray. Not much stuff about that, though, regarding Maya. So I thought I'd throw up a vid about what it is and how one might use it. It's a pretty cool shader/light that solves a couple of specific problems and can actually be used in bunches of other circumstances. Some more info can definitely be found at Zap's site and Andrew's site.

Maya/Mental Ray: Portal Lights

Maya - Rigging a dynamic hair system (or one hair anyways)

2009-12-18T10:20:00.006-05:00

Here is a video about how to set up a rig for a strand of hair (or anything else that requires some dynamic simulation, like a tail or a wire or whatever). The basic concept is to use an IK spline and blend shapes to get a rig that is fully blend-able between dynamic and manual animation and still give full control over the dynamic component of the rig. It's a bit long (about 40 min), but has the theory behind the rig and pretty much the full setup in Maya.

Maya Rigging: Dynamic/Manual Hair Setup

One more time, for realsies this time

2009-12-18T10:03:00.006-05:00

With feeling this time . . .

The Needful Head is for sale on Amazon! By the gods, it's frackin awesome! (can you tell I've started watching Battlestar Galactica?)
Rich made another banner for this holiday season (last year was kind of wash out with distributor issues) so the push is on. In case you didn't catch it in the business pages, we're up to #158,542 in the amazon dvd sales charts! With a huge holiday surge we can catch "Alluvial Deposits in the Nile Delta: The DVD". Those guys at the Geological Information Network think they're such hot s*$t. Let's take em down a peg!
The link to Amazon is here. (look around and you can also find the downloadable version)
The website is here.
Don't buy this crap:

Maya - Rigging a no flip pole vector for a leg

2009-12-17T23:38:00.002-05:00

Here's a MUCH quicker video about rigging an IK leg with a "no flip" pole vector. I'm definitely on more solid ground with rigging stuff than the Mental Ray stuff :)
Anyways, the idea is to create leg rig with a "knee twist" attribute so that you don't have to animate the pole vectors (most of the time). I prefer animating this way- a bit cleaner and works better for me most of the time.

Maya Rigging: No-Flip-Leg Pole Vectors from zeth willie on Vimeo.

Maya Mental Ray - the basics of linear workflow

2009-12-17T23:12:00.011-05:00

Finally had a bit of time, between all of the stuff (work, teaching, life), to create a few videos tutorials!
I love it when people take the time to create detailed tutorials and I've watched more than my share, so I thought it would be fun to make a few myself. Since I'm teaching animation right now, I'm always talking about that and I'll eventually throw some stuff up about animation things related to my class, but for now, I'm mostly doing stuff that I think is more interesting to me lately and maybe a bit more esoteric. Definitely not super advanced stuff for the most part (unless you're a total beginner, which is cool too), but just sort of picking and choosing what I feel like exploring. Some of it is might be a bit complicated and specific, like some rigging stuff, but others are about stuff I'm just learning the finer details of myself, like the mental ray joint that follows.
BTW, I know that I can be a bit over-explainy and pedantic sometimes. So sue me. Too much classroom time (I was a HS teacher in NYC before I started digital stuff). But I hate it when people assume I always know what they're talking about when I don't. Just went to my finacial advisor and WHOOSH. Right over my head. Didn't understand a word. Sometimes the simple stuff is interesting to me too, dude. I went a bit crazy with the first one, so it's in four parts. I also get a bit fast and loose with the specific lingo sometimes (gamma correction, gamma encoding, float, HDR, etc). Feel free to correct anything that's wrong or bugging you in the vids, or let me know and I'll do it.

Anyways, I'll throw a bunch of posts up as I see fit with the rest of these mama-jammas . . .
part1=gamma, part2=basic workflow, part3=real workflow, part4=basic post stuff

Maya/Mental Ray: Linear Workflow Part 1

Maya/Mental Ray: Linear Workflow Part 2

Maya/Mental Ray: Linear Workflow Part 3

Maya/Mental Ray: Linear Workflow Part 4
Here are some of the links I mentioned in the video:
1. The man, the myth, the legend . . . Master Zap

2. djx talks about linear and gamma
3. Andrew at 3dLight talks about linear for Maya/MentalRay
4. floze does a tute about linear rendering in a series of interiors
5. A long CGTalk thread about the topic
6. A much more detailed Mental Images thread
7. A detailed article by Yves Poissant on Tone Correction
Good lord. Here's a couple more for post-production stuff:
1. A bit of AE stuff
2. S'more AE, a bit more complicated this time
3. A good generally useful pdf

Maya - AddDoubleLinear node, the better way

2009-12-13T14:56:00.004-05:00

This is a quickie. I've actually got a few videos with some slightly more interesting (I think) tutorials that I'll post up later.
I hate the +/- Avg node in Maya for adding two numbers. It usually takes some fussing to get it work correctly (I think it might even be buggy, or at least poorly conceived). So I usually use the script editor on the bottom left corner to create an "addDoubleLinear" node. This is more straightforward . . . takes two scalar inputs adds em and gives a result. Just type "createNode addDoubleLinear -n *name it what you want*".
The only problem is that this add node doesn't show up in the hypershade, which is where I do most of my connections. So here's a better way. . .
Create the ADL node like you'd create a mult/div node or other utilities with MEL. Instead of "createNode", use "shadingNode -asUtility addDoubleLinear".

This creates the ADL as a utility which shows up in the HS window under the Utility tab. Now you can finally sleep at night!

s'more scripts

2009-09-29T10:48:00.005-04:00

A couple new scripts and some slight revisions of previously posted ones. First the old . . .
zbw_attributes.mel (rt_click "save as" to download)
Previously, I had a color slider just to change the color (via color override) of multiple controls at once. I've added some new stuff (or rather I made a different script and added the color stuff to that). Basically, this script will lock or hide (or unlock/unhide) all or any of the standard tranforms from the channel box. So for an FK controls that just use rotation, you could select all of them and lock and/or hide all of the tranlates, scale and visibility. The color stuff is also here, but in canvas format instead of slider format. The slider was just a bit too random for my taste.

zbw_playblast.mel
Same playblast script that was up before, just changed the background toggle to a canvas format for ease and added green so you can quickly key a test playblast into your comp or storyreel.

zbw_randomSelection.mel
I'm working on a job that requires me to have LOTS of objects in the scene and mess with them a bit to add a bit of randomness, so I wrote two quick scripts. This one will take a selection of objects and randomly remove a certain percentage. So if you wanted to change the shader on some objects or offset the animation on some objects, you'd select them all, then run the script and remove whatever percentage of them and go for it as a subgroup of the whole. This runs a random check on each object vs. the percent you enter.

zbw_randomTransform.mel
This script takes a selection and performs a random transform on each object based on the info you enter. You can do translation, rotation or scale (or all of them) either in world space or based on the current position. It cycles through the objects and calculates random values for each attribute for each object, so for lots of objects it may take some time. The example below was 2500 objects and 6 attributes and it took a couple of minutes. But I've had lots of situations where this would be useful, so I thought I'd script-ize it up.

As always, the code is a bit crude at times (no dummy checks on object types, etc). Maybe I'll clean it up later, maybe not ;)

The basis for the randomizing scripts was something like this:

As I said, there are about 2500 objects in the scene (placed by hand). I used the selection script to select a few squares here and there to change shaders to dirty up the mosaic. I wanted the pieces to blow away (based on objects in the 2d comp) but didn't want to deal with dynamics. So The random transform script was used to add a key frame to each object. Basically this whole animation is two keyframes on each object. One in place and one with the random transform script. I then selected a few and offset those two keys a frame or two a couple of different times. Took about 5 minutes total (2 of which were waiting for the random calculations). Not perfect, but quick and dirty (like I like it).

OMG - The Needful Head is available!

2009-09-07T23:18:00.003-04:00

How could I have forgotten? Redoing a couple of jammy's on the site, but The Needful Head is now available on Amazon.com! Really shameful lack of shameful self promotion by me! Let me correct that. . . .
Here is where you can buy the DVD. It's nice. No really. There is a little making of section (mostly for my family, so they can see what I do) and you can listen to Halli's music and read the original book and there's a commentary and all kinds of other great stuff. (actually I think that's it).
You can also direct download it, too. Actually all of the options are here. If you want to purchase the institutional version (?) I strongly encourage that, too. :)
We thank you for your support . . . (Bartle's and James wine coolers anyone?)

Some more work doodles - vids soon

2009-09-07T22:48:00.005-04:00

I'm actually in the process of figuring out how to get some demo videos up with good quality. My animation class is starting soon and I'm gonna put some of the stuff (or least Related stuff, hopefully animation, modeling and rigging vids) up here as videos, probably through Vimeo. Work has kept me really busy, though. I'll post some of the work stuff up here soon, too. Have bunches of it from the summer, but too lazy to pick it from my clients. Anyways, here are some more random doodles.
BTW, Richard Bailey is working on a new series over on his blog. Good stuff as always from ol' Richy.
As always, click for larger.
really no idea what this is. Maybe related to Dan Simmons' "Ilium". Liked that book. "the Terror" too.
I'm thinking about an animation about a science experiment gone wrong. These are some prelim doodles.
Been watching some physics lectures from Stanford on YouTube. I'm a nerd, this is Prof Susskind
no idea, but somebody pissed at something.

Work doodles from June July

2009-07-14T15:58:00.006-04:00

Been Working a lot in the past month or so. Which, of course, is good. But leaves less time for doing other stuff, like fun things for the blog, Ilksville, Psychemy, and some more tutorials for my NYU class. But I get paid (not paid like Eric B. and Rakim "Paid in Full", but paid like normal slobs like me get paid), which makes up for a lot.
Because I was doing quite a bit of rendering, I had some time to doodle. Thought I would throw some up here. These are just things on scraps of paper while I'm sitting around. . . (click any of em for larger)

roller ball pen, guess I was into sports that day
pencil
pencil, rock n roll!
pencil, shmarmy dude
pencil, one of the guys I just worked with had impossibly good posture
sketchbook pro

I'm thinking about doing some "cel" animation, but i'm not loving the way Flash is drawing. Wouldn't want to use Photoshop and exporting things are a bit of pain from Sketchbook. Maybe I'll try drawing in Corel. I hear they have some animation layers/tools. Anyone have any ideas?

a few bits and bobs to start the summer

2009-06-05T10:55:00.011-04:00

I've been pretty bad about posting with any regularity. Been a bit busy with the family and a lot of the things I've been working on aren't terribly conducive to interesting blog posts, some MEL scripting and playing around in XSI, Nuke, etc. Hopefully I'll get more up to speed this summer.
A few random things . . .

1) added a couple new things to my reel. Again. Not a ton of new stuff, just some 3d tracking stuff and some bits of the Nick stuff (which never got used). Here's a quick hit of a couple of the many Nick pieces we did. (FYI, I modeled a bunch of it, rigged much of it, and animated all of the first bits and some of the last bits)

2) Rich and I did another quick Ilksville thing, "half-shell smile". Trying to keep chugging along with it. It's tough cuz we've both been busy. Got one more cooking as we speak.
larger version here
BTW, congrats to Rich on his installation at the Artomatic show! If you're in DC in the next month or so, go and check it out!

3)Here are a few of the doodles from Corel Painter that I've been playing with.

click for larger

4) I've also gone back to modeling a bit more of the Psychemy guy. As I've talked a bit in my animation class at NYU about modeling for animation (however briefly), maybe I'll post up some of the modeling process for the body and such.

5) After a big of a hassle with distributors, I've finally reorganized things to get The Needful Head DVD a proper home. It may take a few days to for things to get sorted with Amazon, but once it's all working, rest assured, I will pass along all the relevant links.

3 channel dirt passes

2009-04-23T12:00:00.016-04:00

Another technical post about using multiple channels in one image to allow more control in post production, this time with dirt maps (I know some people/software use the term to refer to ambient occlusion maps, but I'm talking here about actual dirt or grime).

The basic premise here being 2-fold: 1) the use dirt maps to create a more realistic look, rather than worrying about bump maps and the like, and 2) to be able to use generic dirt maps to create a bunch of different looks in the final render by combining them in one rgb pass.
I'm going on the basic premise here that often in production you don't actually need bump maps to rough up a surface. Adding dirt to the specular/color components is often just fine to create a rough surface look. This technique is actually applicable if you do use bump maps, you'd just add another pass of three combined bump maps in the color channels (more later).

So what am I talking about? Let's say we have the following image:
(click for larger images)
and we want to dirty it up to get something like this:

Just a bit of dirt to give it some texture or character.
If you knew what you wanted, etc. you could just add the dirt maps to the spec shader, tweak it out to get what you want and render. But the way I'm approaching this allows for loads of changes in post and requires little thought in 3D. This isn't necessarily for every shot or production, but its really useful when you just want to generally dirty stuff up.
Here's how we do it, again using multiple channels to hold multiple images.

This scene in Maya is super simple: Just a sphere and some lights.

I've got three different dirt maps that vary in the size and "frequency" of the dirt (it's basically just black and white images of splotches and splooches if you know what I mean). Here's what they look like mapped onto the sphere:

So I have 3 B&W dirt maps. I map them individually to the R, G and B color channels of a material or surface shader. (one to R, one to G, etc) This will give me a false color image with 3 different images in each of the color channels which I'll pull apart later in post. I also have my spec shader and my color shader.

If I was clever, I would have done the combining of the images in photoshop to get something like this:

Then I would map each channel to the corresponding channel in the dirt material. But I'm wasn't clever here and used each image separately in Maya. No real difference, just more parts.
Then I'll set up my render layers. One for color, one for spec, and one for the dirt.

And here are my renders. Again the dirt will be pulled apart to give us more options in post.

So onto Shake (though, of course, After Effects or Nuke or whatever could be used). . .
The idea is that I'll use each channel of the dirt map separately and get 3 dirt maps from this, which I'll use to muck up both the color and the spec passes.
The basic operation I'll use in Shake is a "reorder" which just puts one channel into all of the other channels (ex. red channel into red, green and blue channels). I keep the alpha. I use a "compress" node to dial up the blacks and whites to the values I want (like transparency but just with color).

Here is the comp below. I've pulled two of the channels of the dirt on the left side, multiplied them together (we want only the dark bits) and multiplied them to the spec pass. This roughs up the spec. Then on the right side, I just copied the dirt nodes, changed the compression a bit and multed them to the color pass to dirty that up a bit also. Then I "added" the dirtied spec to the dirtied color.

Here are the passes once I've tweaked them in Shake (color, spec, dirt):

Once again, here is the final result, with the spec added to the color and both roughed up by the dirt maps.

I know it seems like a lot of work to do this in post rather than doing it in the render, but in fact, once you get the hang of it, it's actually easier and certainly more flexible. For example, I can instantly change both the look and intensity of the dirt right in Shake.

If I wanted to include bump mapping in this, I would simply create three bump nodes in Maya with a basic texture and map the color ouputs of those into the R, G and B channels of another shader (say, a surface shader) to get a "super bump" pass. I could then dial up and down any of the three bump maps in post the same way.
As I said, this isn't always the most efficient technique for every job, but if you export out the dirt map shader, you can instantly add grunge to any object you like and then have some more specific control in post.

Watch out for the render ninjas . . .

2009-04-02T23:11:00.005-04:00

On ur computrz, ajustin ur gamma.

a bit of painting. . . and jealousy

2009-04-02T16:10:00.008-04:00

. . . So the other day I checked out the blog of this dude, Mark Behm, and I was blown away. I LOVE his paintings. I scroll down a bit and turns out he's also an awesome illustrator. Ok, makes sense. Keep scrolling and see that he's also a sick sculptor. Wow. Turns out he's also an amazing 3D modeler and texture artist. What? And he's got videos that demonstrate that some of his paintings are done in, like, 10 minutes. On screen. Man oh man, that's impressive! I click on a link and it turns out that he also animates feature films. Ok . . . now I want to kill this guy.
What the hell? Sooooo much talent. I linked to his site over there ------>
He is the first person I've linked to that I don't actually know. Does he care? Probably not. Too busy doing all that fancy art stuff of his better than 99.99% of people in the industy. Dick.

Anyways . . . he inspired me to realize that I suck, so I've decided to try being a bit more serious about drawing and painting. Not too serious, cuz then i might feel foolish, but a bit. Of course, ACTUALLY painting is a big step. So, instead, I'm gonna try to do a quick number in Corel Paint each day. Only for 30 mins or so (ok maybe an hour) just to try to get back in the swing of things, that is, to the degree that I was ever in the swing of things. Here are my first few efforts. If I ever do anything thereafter that I decide I like, I'll post it, but certainly not daily. This is more of a public benchmark for myself, I guess, to see if I get better later.

the "under coat". This is the stuff I forgot that I don't really know how to do well. . .

this is with muck painted over the last image.

today I saw a stupid trailer for "Wolverine" and then did this.

Hopefully next week I'll be able to post up some new Ilksvilles and maybe some other work. Otherwise, you can find me staring at this guy's blog and crying . . .

Been way too long - Ilksville update, doodles, etc

2009-03-30T12:04:00.010-04:00

It's been a while since I've posted, mostly not my Fault. We moved (only 10 blocks, but the hassle is still pretty much the same). Been working a ton. Teaching twice a week. Daughter's first birthday. Ex-cet-er-a, Ex-cet-er-a.
But I'm back and I promise to never to be gone for so long. Until such time as I need to be.
Anyways, I'll post a couple of technical things later, but just a quick catch up.

• Been playing a bit in Sketchbook Pro. Really cool program. So simple. I know Photoshop can do all kinds of crazy things and you can make your own brushes and defrost your Xmas turkey and blah blah, but all I really want is something to doodle in that can reasonably simulate pencils, rollerball pens and some markers. I love that there is almost no interface and almost no options other than transparency. Great for quick little sketches, storyboarding doodles and the like. Wouldn't do a serious image in it, but great for jotting down ideas.

• On another app note, just finished a serious 3D tracking gig and got to say PFTrack is still my favorite 3D tracker. As if you care.

• Rich and I are back on Ilksville, after much delay. Spent a day or so adding some front and back cards, cleaning up the sound and reframing the older ones and another day making a new one, "one woman show". Believe it or not, this is STILL just audio we picked up while we were hanging out. No "acting". (you'll see what I mean when you hear it). Rich and I planning to start carrying around the audio recorder more often to build up our library of stuff. There's a couple more we can work with from what we have, but the well is running dry.

You can see the bigger versions of all the revamped clips here (temporarily).

• Would love to be able to post some stuff I've worked on the last year. Maybe soon. I'll just post a pic of one of the numerous Nickelodeon things I animated for a "rebrand" effort at Freestyle. Brian Drucker has bunches of images of it here. He designed it, so I'll let him show it off. My goodness, he has a lot of cool work on his site.

Wrapping a 3D object in post

2009-01-31T22:36:00.013-05:00

Another long technical post. Studio work brings it out in me. This one is for Rich.

Been working for the last few weeks on a big broadcast thing (can't say what). But came across a situation in Maya that I've come across a few time before and never had a good solution for. It's probably that I'm just dense and there is an easy solution, and I've certainly never researched it extensively, but it's kind of annoying. Here's the situation:

I have a circular object (or a sphere, or a spiral or whatever) and I need it flowing or spinning around an object. Normally, not a problem, I'd just put the center object (or a card with video of the object) in the 3D scene and render it that way. Just did that recently on shot with faces inside 3D bubbles. But often, as is the case here, the video that needs to go inside (or sandwiched between) the 3D object(s), needs to be put there by someone else after the 3D render, in the edit.

In this case we've got clips of talent and video that hasn't even been shot yet, let alone color corrected or finalized in any way. So I need to somehow make a tool kit that allows for things to go IN FRONT OF AND BEHIND ONE OBJECT AT THE SAME TIME in an easy way that an Avid editor can do without much instruction from me.

Example. How do I comp this assuming things are moving around and flowing, etc.

The most obvious way is to just mask things by hand (ie. lay the 3D on top and mask out the back sections). But in these shots I'm working on, there are LOTS of pieces and they're all spinning and moving,etc. Don't want to ask someone else to do it and I definitely don't want to get stuck with it. The other solution is to just reframe stuff or change the shots. That would make me feel JV, and wasn't really an option here.
So I thought about for a few minutes and came up with two solutions, both kind of similar, but slightly different in terms of workflow:
1) create a depth shader for the 3D objects that is binary. That is, beyond a certain distance it's black and in front of that distance it's white. Then I'd render the scene normally and use the output of the shader to mask either the front or the back.
2) use the camera clipping planes to chop the render in half and render two separate passes, one for the front half and one for the back half.

I ended up choosing route #2 because it seemed to be the easier thing to pass off to the guys in post. I also KNOW what will come out, basically. The renders on this project are relatively simple, etc, so I think it'll work just fine. I think there are advantages to both methods, and I suspect now that the depth based solution would be the more robust one in many cases, but granting that, here's how I created a workable solution:

As I said, the objects and cameras are moving around, so I needed something a bit more flexible than just typing in numbers. I wrote a script that creates a distance tool between an object (can be whatever transform you want) and the camera. The script just uses some conditional nodes to pump in the distance to the object's pivot to the far and near clipping planes and switches them based on an attribute in a null group. So I can just select the circle (or a locator parented to the circle) and the camera and run the script. Then I set up render layers with the switch set to "near" and then "far" and render the two layers. I get the scene rendered with just the front and then just the back and I can just hand off those two renders.

In post you just sandwich some video in between these two renders. Easy to understand, I hope, for the editors.

viola!

Here's the script I wrote: zbw_splitPlane.mel
Some limitations of my method (which is why I'll probably redo it the masking method, at some point) are that you won't get reflections (I don't think) from objects in front of the split plane. Not really a problem in my shots, cuz there's almost no reflection and things are really zipping around.
The only thing I could see possibly going wrong the masking/depth method would be that things crossing (front/back) could create issues when you actually want to see something in back, but it is occluded by an object in front. There would be no way to get images of JUST the things in back.
Anyways, if anyone has any other thoughts or ideas or solutions for this type of thing, I'd love to hear them.
As always, re: scripts, my code is inelegant and usually just me hunting and pecking around for ideas that work. Don't judge me, just love me.

Reel redux part deux II the second and so forth

2009-01-10T14:56:00.004-05:00

Based on some generous comments from a few friends (see below), I've recut my reel. Trimmed about a minute out of it. (of course now I have to redo the breakdown, but that'll have to wait.)
I actually knew that it was running long and had some weaker stuff in it towards the end, it's just hard to trim things down when you're rushing between all the stuff you have to do (cue the weepy music). . . I tightened some edits at the front and cut a bunch of older 2D stuff at the end. It's probably still a bit wobbly towards the end, but at least it's shorter. It's in the same place.
At some point it will be worthwhile for me to spend a proper amount of time cutting and even designing a nice reel. And redoing my site a bit. And buying some new shoes. Which will come first?
I'm finding reels are a funny thing nowadays. I don't remember the last time I sent someone (or gave out) a DVD of my reel. It's all web-fied. So I don't really think about it too much. Lots of people I know (and respect) don't even really HAVE reels! They either just link to complete works or flash a winning smile or something to get work (realistically, it's probly mostly word of mouth). As a freelance generalist, tho, cutting a reel is actually getting a bit harder, showing a full skillset. I haven't put any interactive stuff (DVD menus, etc) on my reel in ages, though for a couple of years, that was the bulk of my income. . . Definitely don't want to cut multiple reels at this point . . . So I suppose the answer is to design a better website that will allow me to compartmentalize some of that. (kind of non-plussed by that notion, too, though). Ideas are welcome . . .

I also wanted to point out that I've added two new links:
Keith Kin Yan is terrific photographer and designer (and 3d guy and so forth) out in LA. He collects sneakers and ride bicycles, too.
Mike Gallay is a talented animator with a beard who also does ridonkulous Flash work. You can acquire and use some it (for a nominal fee . . . ) here.

OK, no more posts without some artsy or techy meat . . .

New reel . . .

2009-01-07T23:45:00.002-05:00

I've re-cut my reel, finally. Good grief, that's no fun. I had a small break in the schedule, so I spent a couple of days throwing stuff together from the last year or so . . . Of course, as always, there are 3 or 4 things that I would love to put in there, but yet can't because of legal reasons (or they're not quite done). Say la vee.
I've also been backing up my drives so a bum drive doesn't kill ALL of my stuff. Now I'm up to 7 drives counting the one in my G4. It's becoming a bit of a tangle. Since I work at home a lot, I end up with mega files to backup. Seems to me that one BIG drive is easier, but puts you more at risk. So I have lots, which is super confusing. Any thoughts on a better way?
BTW, I'd also love to hear crits on the reel (it's a generalist reel for commercial/design work here in NYC). The link is here.
For some reason I'm getting a weird white box around the quicktime, but only Firefox. Not sure why. Any help there would be nice too. Mike?

Peace and Happy New Years! Hopefully I'll get post some more fun stuff soon, though I've got a job (I think) for the next few weeks, so we'll see. Just for goofs here some concept art via Richy for the next Ilksville:

click the pic for larger

RGB light passes

2008-12-21T12:58:00.038-05:00

Just a little thing about lighting/rendering/comping, based on what Josh Harvey and Eric Concepcion were doing for the Fusion Fall cinematic in the last post. This may be familiar to some people, but I hadn't seen it before in production, so I thought I'd give a little example. Josh was cool enough to explain it a few times to those of us who were interested and I think it's pretty cool.

The basic idea:
This is a really cool way to extend your flexibility in post-production. The concept is that rather than render RGB passes for the scene (or each light or whatever), you actually assign each light to a color channel and render each lighting pass with three individual light passes included. In essence, each light pass (render) will include one light in the red channel, one in the blue and one in the green. These are then used to reveal an ambient color pass of the scene based on each light channel. Let me show you with a simple example.

Example of RGB Light Passes (a simple version for clarity):
Let's say this is my scene. I'll do a simple 3 point light setup with a key light (directional), a fill (spot) and a rim (spot). I've added a bit of simple color to the character to make things more clear. Normally, I'd set up the lights, adjust their color and render a beauty pass (diffuse +/- spec, etc). maybe I'd add a shadow pass, amb occlusion, other passes, etc. But the idea would be that certainly the beauty pass would include all the lights. If I wanted to break out the lights for more control I would render a seperate RGBA pass for each light.
The idea here is a bit different. I'm leaving any light color info until post, so all I need to do is render the luminance (or diffuse/spec MINUS color) for each light. So I can use only one channel per light. It's a pretty easy setup actually. Only two passes (+ an amb occl pass, for fun)
First I'll take care of my color info. To do this I'll hide my three real lights and create an ambient light. You can do this from within the textures, by turning up the ambience, but I think it's much easier to turn off the ambience in the textures (you probly never had it on) and just make an ambient light. The only catch here is that the ambient light defaults to having an "ambient shade" value of 0.5, which sort of defeats the purpose. So turn that to 0.0 and make sure you've got no other lights on and render.

You'll get a pure color pass. Doesn't say much for my textures, but this is what I wanted.
This becomes the "base" for the lighting setup.

Now I'll take each light in turn and assign it's color to R, G, or B. My key light becomes pure red, fill pure green and rim pure blue.

Once each light is given a color, the render looks something like this. It seems very colorful, but really that's only because we've got a "false color" thing going on. The keylight isn't really pure red, it's just in the red channel to get it to post. Same with the other lights. (BTW, if you have more lights, you'd just do another pass with other lights in the RGB channels. You'd just do this whole process twice or more). Here's what the individual channels look like:

Now once we take it to post we can see why this method is actually pretty powerful.

Here I'm using Shake, just cause it's easier to see stuff and a bit less work/layers for comping. Could easily be done in After Effects or whatever. These are the only two layers I'm bringing for now (I'll bring in an AO pass later).

The trick is to seperate out the channels for each light and use THAT to matte out the color pass. So the light (from each channel) actually reveals the pure color, or doesn't. Basically making our own diffuse color pass. In Shake that's done with a "reorder", in After Effect it'd be a "shift channel", I think. (BTW, I'm sure there are few other ways to do this . . .)

You can see I created three reorders and pump the light pass into each one. Each channel gets shifted to red for the key, green for the fill, etc. Each one of those goes into a copy of the color pass as a mask (so it has the correct colors to reveal). So I end up with this node tree. (note: below the color passes are some "switch matte" nodes just to put the correct alpha channel back. I also added the Ambient Occlusion pass at the bottom of the tree)

To clarify each color pass looks like this when matted with the correct light channel.

Since we're just adding "light" to the scene, you can then just "add" each of these passes to each other to get the final fully lit image. (In After Effects or Photoshop, I'll just use transfer mode "add" to lay one on top of the other.) As I noted, I multiplied an occlusion pass at the end, also.

Finally, we can get to what's cool ab0ut this . . . Here's the image as it stands:

The power comes from my ability to now start adjusting each light/color pass. In Shake I just stick some nodes under each pass (in this case I just used a mult node to color each pass and fade node for the transparency of each pass):

By changing the transparency of each pass and the color of each pass you can end up with a huge array of options.

More theatrical?

More alien?

I changed all of that instantly, without any rerendering of anything. Notice that I've actually changed not only the color, but the intensity of each individual light on the fly. I could also change the gamma, etc for each light as I see fit, any color correction really.

This image is a bit dark and lo-res, etc, so it might not be the best example, but it shows the basic principles. There are lots of variations. You could do groups of lights per pass in a more complex scene, or render a FG pass, then add some subtle lighting effects to that with this method, etc. It's a great idea to render shadow passes this way by making the shadows from each light R, G, or B and seperating them in post. I wouldn't do this for everything, but for things where there's a more stylized look, I think the flexibility is invaluable. As I said, Josh and Eric rendered all of Fusion Fall this way.
Another bonus is the disc space it saves if you want this much control. Instead of an RGBA pass for each light you get three passes in one. I love the idea a reusing the channels for other things besides color. I'll do something later about RGB combo passes and ID mattes, etc. But that's enough tech stuff for now.

Cartoon Network - Fusion Fall

2008-12-14T15:53:00.007-05:00

One of the projects I worked on earlier in the year got posted recently, so I can show it. Eventually, I'll get this cut into my reel or on my real site, but the link will have to do for now.
Watch it here.
I got to meet lots of cool and talented people on this job: Josh Harvey, Nick Weigel, Stanley Ilin, Erol Gunduz, Roger An, Eric Concepcion, Ricardo Vicens, Dylan Maxwell, Ian Brauner, Jed, and all the cool peeps at Freestyle . . .
I did most of the rigging on it (all the human(oid) characters and the big green monster, plus some stuff on the bugs, the cars, etc). The most memorable thing about this job was that it was a psycho schedule and my daughter, Juliette, was born right smack dab in the middle of it (6 weeks early to boot). Since both she and the project turned out great, I have fond memories . . .

Some random Maya scripts

2008-12-14T15:25:00.012-05:00

Sorry for a technical post, but thought it worth throwing these up here, if only so I could have them available wherever I'm working, in case I forget my drive ;)
BTW, I just threw these together while working to help myself out, make no claims as to their value to anyone else or my competence in putting them together. . .
zbw_playblast: (rt-click to dnload)
For when I'm animating. Nothing here that you can't do from the gui, just all in one place. buttons for toggling overscan, title/action safe and gate, renaming the playblast, changing the bkgrnd color, etc. When I was working on the Nickelodeon job (more later when it comes out), we had tons of things in the scene, so there's also a button to toggle on/off the curves/geo/other stuff.
zbw_groupOrient:(rt-click to dnload)
select the object/joint, then select the control for it and the script will create a group over the control, orient the group to the object, then rename the group to the control name + "_GRP". Useful for rigging.

zbw_changeColor: (rt_click to dnload)
Turns on the color override for selected objects and gives a slider to change color. Lets you do multiple objects at once, which is useful. Again, pretty much just for rigging.

I wrote a full body rigging script, which I'm still tweaking. That's a bit more complicated, so maybe I'll post something about that later.
UPDATE: Fixed links, sorry.

3D stock images

2008-12-14T14:40:00.006-05:00

Been working with my Lovely, Talented, Smart and Lovely wife on a bunch of images to submit to a stock agency. Basically, just images based on globes. I can see why there aren't loads of 3D images in stock. They have to be rendered at around 6K (6,000 x 6,000 pixels). A lot of the ones we've been doing have depth of field, transparency and so forth, which takes FOREVER. About 3-5 hours per frame (I know that's not forever for some renders, but I'm doing 5 versions per image (US, S. Amer., Eur., Asia, Africa), each precomped on various colored backgrounds (15 images per concept). Some things don't work and some do (I rendered about 30 images at 4K, only to realize that wasn't high enough rez). I'm rendering them in little elements that Steph is then comping together. The upside is that with 30-40 pictures, we could probably get a couple hundred images through all the permutations. It just takes ages. Since I'm not a Render Ninja by any stretch, I'm trying to figure out the best way to attack these hi-res images as best I can.
Here are a couple, smallish, of course.

Nil doodle - animated

2008-12-10T22:52:00.008-05:00

Just playing around for a few minutes in Flash. Don't know how anyone ever used Flash or Photoshop without a Wacom pen/tablet (I did for years). Absolutely different programs when you can draw kind of properly.
Anyways, as I said, I was doodling in Flash and started playing with a character that Rich and I were discussing the other day, Nil. We were talking about his head shape and translating it to 3D and I just started drawing him (not nearly as well as Richard does). Anyhoo, the resulting test is below. It was fun to draw something again, even just for 20 minutes. BTW, it was 12 fps drawn on two layers (head, arms). Hopefully more about the real Nil project later.

click pic to play the .gif

Oh yeah, also wanted to mention that I've been reading Ken Perlin's blog and put a link on the right side (over there --->). I've worked briefly with Ken on a project and he's near about the smartest computer-y type guy out there. But he's also a really fun blog writer ("blogger", I guess) about a lot of different topics, most of which require no p.h.d. so I'm throwing it out there.

Sure I'll work on your movie. Where's my trailer?

2008-12-02T22:05:00.005-05:00

Rich and I got some work animating a few sequences for a movie some friends are making!
The Brothers Barnes shot a documentary about Todd Snider, called "Peace Queer: The Movie" and had a few interstitial moments they wanted to fill. They called me about some animation. The schedule was basically 3 minutes in less than 2 weeks to make their deadline for the South by Southwest festival. Yikes. So after throwing up in my mouth a little bit, I said the only thing I think I could do would be something along the lines of Ilksville. I showed then what we had done and Viola! They liked the style and I whipped up some storyboards and now Rich and I are furiously making the characters, backgrounds and animating away. When it's all said and done, I'll post some stuff up. It's basically just some Ilksville-ish charicatures of the subjects of the movie that Rich drew up, with the same rigging and animation procedures and such as I've mentioned here before. The only new thing is that there are some cuts to tell the stories a bit better.

It's a lot of work (relatively) in a short amount of time, but it's fun. I love working with the Barnes. Worked with them on some jobs for IBM/Lenovo and always like their stuff. Good to be back working with them again. So never let anyone tell you blogging doesn't pay off!
I won't forget my roots when I become big and famous. I bet Rich will. . .

Needful Head DVD

2008-11-23T14:08:00.004-05:00

Rich made this up the other day. I guess that means we're making the Special Edition DVD!
It will include the Director's Cut (which, since I am the director AND the producer, will be the exact same as any other version), loads of needless commentary, a Makin'-Of Featurette that is in the makin', a read-along version of the Book with a neat-o "linky thingy" that will let you play the scene from the movie that corresponds to the scene from the book (I need to work on the marketing pitch for that particular feature. . . ) and perhaps some other things that you might like. Or not. What do I care? We're not offering refunds.
So if you're interested in acquiring a few copies of the DVD, let me know. The minimum order is 32. Cuz my economy needz stimulatin. . .
BTW, the trailer is here.

Fishes doodle

2008-11-23T13:14:00.005-05:00

Just doodling . . .
Guess which one I am? (hint: second from the left. Workin my way up the food chain baby!)

I'm back, baby!

2008-11-03T12:18:00.004-05:00

Been working on an Undisclosed Job in an Undisclosed Location (actually at home) for the past few weeks. Can't show or tell anything about it (for a year!?), but I dug up something for the pitch that I never showed the client. Rich and I were thumbing through "The Art of the Matrix" book the other day (Rich is working on a graphic novel, which is also undisclosed, etc etc) and this thing I did a few years ago reminded vaguely and worsely (?) of Geof Darrow. (BTW, shockingly hard to find his art online). So I'm putting it here. How's that for an explanation?

(click for larger)

Technical - Modeling Psychemy

2008-10-08T23:09:00.016-04:00

Richard has a series of drawings that I love that are called, collectively, Psychemy. He's had some of these up in art galleries on both coasts and keeps adding new pics into the collection. It's basically a loose series of weird little mis-en-scenes or scenarios. We've talked a bit about working these into short little animations. They're really weird and fun and moody and full of character. Since Ilksville is so cheap and we're working on a slightly longer form piece with a big story(more later), I think any Psychemy stuff will be, instead, about style and execution, really hitting a mood and a look. So anyways I'm slowly getting started working on some pieces for these projects (I have two of these Psychemy shorts in mind right now, this is from one of them).

So anyways this fella is from one pic (I've cropped the rest of the image out so as not to give away any story).
I thought I would just quicky post about starting to model out this character. Any crits comments welcome . . .
Today . . . the head.
So. . . I just started modeling yesterday. I think the idea will be to go pretty realistic and tone it down from there if necessary. So I'll just show some shots of where I am and how I got there.

(click any pic for larger)

So basically, I start with a unit cube and move it 0.5 units in x til the edge lines up with the origin. Then I delete the origin-side face so I have a box with the open side facing the origin. I center the pivot on the origin and then use the poly proxy to duplicate the object and set up vis layers. (Back in the day, I used Connect Poly Shape to do this. It's built into Maya now). So basically I'm modeling the entire head on only one side and the poly proxy ends up duplicating the other side. I can smooth that or leave it rough modeled, hide or show any version of this. All these visibilities are useful depending on the stage. Here's after ten minutes or so of getting the rough shape. It's important to make sure you really pay attention to each vertex you add, moving it to enhance the shape.

Here's with a few more loops added. I'm basically just adding loops at this point and shaping the head each time. You can see for the eyes, I'm starting to add the shape of the loops. I'll have three major sets of edge loops: 2 eyes and the mouth. The nose kind of works off all three. BTW, I'm NOT a great modeler, but I try to make sense of it as I go, so bear with me if you know a better way (and be sure to tell me anything to improve my sh#t). I just added the eyes by cutting (chamfering?) the vertex where the eye will be.

Here's what I was talking ab0ut with the proxy stuff. I often model only on half the face, then periodically look and see what it looks like whole and smoothed. you can see the starts of the loops for the eyes and mouth. There are definitely some problems at this point. The laugh line isn't really right (look in the mirror, it goes up onto your nose) and the mouth loops are a bit wonky. Even on simplified or non-real characters I thinks it's pretty huge to have the topology at least close so the deformations when you animate work well. As I said I'm not a great modeler, but having an idea helps. So I'll usually stop at a point like this and rework some of that stuff, adding edges and deleting them til it works a bit better.

So here's where I've ended up at this point. I've added a few more loops around the eye and ended up turning the chin inwards, making it much "weaker". I've added some really rough ears, too.
At this point I only have half a head. I'll leave it that way til I'm really sure it's right. This character is pretty asymetric so I have a bit of a dilema. The two options are to just create a symetric model, which is much easier to work with and rig (especially if you have any heavy rigging stuff you want to dupe from side to side). Then I'd model the asymetry and use it as "permanent" blend shape later. Or I could just finalize the model and "hard model" in the asymetrical changes. I'll do that for now just for testing. (it took about 5 hours to get to this point.)

Here is the smoothed poly proxy. I'll just copy the scene and get rid of the stuff I don't need. BTW, I save a new version about every 10 minutes. I have about 15 versions of just the head. I've used the autosave version stuff and it's fine, but I don't always trust Maya, so I manually "save as".

I'm not going crazy with this, since I'm going to go back and tweak the ears and a few other things, but I just wanted to do a test to make sure the asymetry worked OK. It pretty much does. I'm back to low-poly merged version (acutally an older version, sorry) and I pretty much just used some soft mods (about 10) and pulled points. A couple of quick tweaks to line up some verts and this is what I got. Not quite there, but close enough for now. (some loops need some work, but I'll redo all this later)

Here's a smoother version. Obviously I'll have to make some changes. There's still way too much symetry and things a bit too "normal". I like to pull out renders (or screencaps) to look at stuff so I can judge things as from the third person perspective. I'll make notes and go back later and make things works better.

So aside from adding an inside of the mouth/teeth and "lumping" things up generally, here are some things I'll change when I get a chance to go back to the model. Having worked with Richard's illustrations before I know that I always have to go back and add in "quirkiness" later. The model might look fine (or might not), but it needs to match his mood, which is really unique and great, so I think it's worth the time to pull around a few pixels to get it right.

Hopefully, I'll have some time soon to go back and polish this up. I think the body should be pretty easy, so I should do that in a day or two also and post it when I'm done. I'm still trying to figure out whether to go nuts with the hair and clothes, or keep it easy. We'll see.

Ilksville - "fasting" testing

2008-09-19T14:18:00.005-04:00

So here's another one I worked on for 5-6 hours yesterday and today. The sound is a bit low on this one for much of it (I may have to treat it to make it more clear) and it is, once again, about as long as I would want to go, but it's progressing. As always, this is audio of an actual conversation . . .

As I said previously, I'm not trying to make these any good from an animation POV, just sort of fun little things to watch. But one thing I'm finding interesting is that these require attention to a sort of secondary animation principle that I usually don't worry about too much. Because these are so static and there is so much reliance on the eyes and mouths, I find that it's really important to make sure that I'm at least doing a little to direct the viewer's eye to where it needs to be. I have to be really careful not to put extraneous motion away from the center of action. Subtle things seem to work OK to give some texture, but big movements will pull the eye all the way across the scene and make it harder to watch. Obviously, this isn't animation rocket science, but I though it was interesting that certain things become more clear when something is as simple as this. It's also a little more clear in the larger version (see link below) . . .

view the larger QT - here

Animation - The Needful Head Website/Trailer

2008-09-16T22:53:00.005-04:00

Just for anyone that I haven't told yet, I made a site for "The Needful Head". It's not quite done (slouching my way to the finish line . . . ) but it Exists, and that's the important part.
I can't put the full film up there (it's still at fests around, just played in Taipei and in Germany in a couple of weeks and is scheduled to go onto iTunes soon), but there are pics and stuff there and some drawings from the book that Rich wrote and illustrated that aren't in the movie. The music is a bit annoying (Halli's music is wonderful, but unstoppable on the site at this point). I also slapped a trailer together, which is on the site. The link to the site is on the the right side, over there =====>>>
or www.TheNeedfulHead.com

Here's the trailer.

Animation - noise and BofA animation WIP

2008-09-16T22:30:00.008-04:00

I just found this "laying" around my hard drive. Kind of apropos, given the current banking crisis. . . It's from a job at a studio, which I won't name, that never amounted to much (this job, not the studio). I don't think it was ever finished (parts are even still in blocking). I had about a week or so to rig the character, plan, block and animate this little spot (obviously it's not a real render and minus any 2d text, logos, etc). It was proof of concept thingy. The people were nice, but the job wasn't much fun. I'm pretty sure nothing came of it (I spent some time later at Framestore and they did most of the B of A spots I've seen on TV, though I didn't work on them). I'm starting to gather my stuff from the last year to put on a new reel and came across this. There are some problems (the foot slipping at the beginning sucks), but there are bits that were OK, at least in theory.

The reason I remember this so well is that while I was working on this, there was no soundtrack for the spot yet. The studio I was working at played REALLY loud music. I never listen to music while I work, especially while I animate, so that was distracting, but the kicker was they wanted a really specific look to the drumming (don't know if I ever got it, or even if this is the last pass I did). So I was trying to work out the animation to a specific drum beat that didn't exist while listening to BLASTING techno! I nearly had a nervous breakdown. Live and learn. Now I go to studios with headphones, put them on and just listen to nothing. . . .

click here to see a slightly larger QT version - BofA animation QT

Technical - Figuring out Linear Workflow in Maya

2008-09-16T17:50:00.018-04:00

Another techy thing. Just learning about this stuff and wanted to throw some stuff up about it. This is specifically Maya related (more specifically Mental Ray).
This is called Linear Workflow . . . I'll give you the most simple version (and hope that I don't get that too wrong).
Basically, the gist is this. When you're working in Maya (or most other 3d apps), the math that makes the images works in something called "linear" space. Okay . . . The problem comes from the fact that the images you're used to looking at generally come "corrected" or "adjusted", NOT in "linear" space. This is to compensate for the way computer monitors and tvs treat light vs. the way your eye see light. You've probably seen this idea either in calibrating your monitor or in a Photoshop image that's missing some info. The common space for monitor's correction is called sRBG (again you may have seen this term somewhere on your computer). Digital cameras and web photos, etc are usually all gamma corrected to sRGB (a value of 2.2), so they look correct to your eye. This gamma is basically the relationship of lights to darks (it's the center point slider in the levels control of photoshop). Correcting gamma to sRGB looks like it makes the image lighter, but it's actually more complex. It's really changing the gradient from dark to light. The blacks are still black and the whites are still white, but the stuff in the middle shifts brighter (sRGB or gamma 2.2) or darker (linear or gamma 1.0) to the eye. This comes into to play mostly when you're trying to render realistic images in a 3D program. Things don't work quite right.
So here's the basic, simplified deal (I'll show an example in one second).

the program works and renders linear images (hence "linear workflow")
to look correct, images must be gamma corrected
therefore, you should be gamma correcting your output images when you render in 3d

An example/cheap and easy tutorial in Maya/Mental Ray:
I set up a scene with a few objects, each with an mia material and create an HDR environment. Here's what I get straight out of the box:

(click images for larger)
This is supposed to be correct, but when compared with what I think it should look like (based on the HDRI file), it's DARK.
Typically, one would just crank up the influence of the env HDRI or add some lights. But you shouldn't have to . . . that's the problem. Furthermore, the image is actually only too dark in the darker parts. That's because this image is LINEAR, and thus looks funny on your monitor. There is only one element of this image that actually matches what one would expect. That's the wooden floor. That's because this TIF file has already been gamma encoded (I know because it looks right in Preview, as I said most normal images are already gamma encoded). So Maya takes what you give it and computes and renders out in linear(dark) space.
To properly light and render this image, there are two steps (at it's most basic level):

I'll de-gamma my textures. This will make EVERYTHING in plain old linear space up until we hit the camera.
Then I'll add a gamma correction to the camera lens. Everything that then renders will be properly gamma corrected.

When we do it this way, we know that all elements are working properly and synchronistically in linear space (this is for the math and computations). Then we correct the final image right before we see it, so that it looks "correct". This should create an image that is less contrasty looking, with less "blown out" areas and fewer crunched shadow areas.
Here's how I fixed the image above.
The first step is to "de-gamma" my texture file (the wood). Here's how. You should stick a Gamma Correct node in between the texture file and the material. Then connect the outColor of the image into the value of the Gamma Correct. Then change the "gamma" value of the correct node to 0.455 in all channels. This is to "de-gamma" the image (.45 is the inverse of the sRGB gamma, i.e. 1/2.2). Don't worry too much. 2.2 and 0.455 are really the only two numbers you need to know.

Repeat this step on every texture file you have. (there are other approaches, but this is the simplest.)
This is the image that you get now:

You'll notice that the only real difference is that the wood is actually darker. That was exactly the point. We want everything on the same page, the same working color space, in this case, linear. The image was looking dark and now the wood is equally as dark, because we removed the gamma correction that was built into the texture. Now we can add correction back (to sRGB) and the wood texture won't be brighter than the rest of the image. Got it?
Now let's add that correction back, this time onto the camera itself. Select the render cam and open it's attribute editor. Twirl down the "mental ray" tab and we're looking for the "lens shader" slot.

Click on the checker box of the "lens shader" slot and add (from the MR list) an mia_exposure_simple node (you could also use the photographic version of the exposure, but simple works fine for now). Open it's attributes and change the gamma to 2.2. (some people seem to like the look of 1.8 better, but that's a seperate issue). This is correcting to sRGB (the way you normally see images).

So anything this camera renders will get a gamma of 2.2 added (which is why we had to remove the gamma from the texture file, otherwise we'd double it up). Since everything in our scene has been working in linear space, the image should look much more like one would expect a photograph of our scene to look.
Here's the image with gamma correction.

The image is much "brighter" and softer. The brightness is actually all in the midtones. The white parts and the black parts are all the same, just the gamma has changed. Adding the sRGB gamma makes the physical properties of the image behave much more like a photograph to our eyes, which was the point. The wood is now in line with the rest of the image, as well, unlike our first pass. And I never touched a light or any other setting save the gammas!
So in short, there are two things to do for the basics:
1. remove gamma corrections from your texture files
2. add gamma correction to your camera for the renders.

whew.

NOTE: These images were rendered in preview quality and took about 5 seconds each. There was no retouching or anything at all.
One could easily work in this mode then remove the gamma (switch the gamma back to 1.0) and render to float images for later gamma correcting in a comping program, or use different workflows entirely, but this was the easiest way for me to understand this.

NEW NOTE (thanks andrew, from 3dlight): You can also adjust the gamma at the framebuffer in mental ray render globals, but this works inversely (to add gamma of 2.2 (make the image lighter), you would have to change the setting to 0.455). In that case, you would not need to add all of the gamma correct nodes to your textures, it would correct those all for you, but you would need to turn your lens shader gamma back to 1.0. There is some difference in terms of what happens depending on whether your textures and/or output are float or LDR, but I'll leave that be for now. You can certainly get better info on that from the links below.

Some good posts for more about this stuff are:
http://3dlight.blogspot.com/2008/09/linear-workflow-for-maya-mental-ray.html
http://www.djx.com.au/blog/2008/09/13/linear-workflow-and-gamma/
http://www.floze.org/2008/07/six-tuts-on-light-and-shade-part-i.html

Technical - Making Ilksville

2008-09-15T17:14:00.015-04:00

Yes, there will be technical stuff here. I'll try to give fair warning (like the word "technical" in the heading). But since I enjoy knowing how other people do stuff, I figured I may as well show I do stuff.
Here I'm gonna walk through the basics of how we put Ilksville together. Here's where we started . . .

Audio is recorded on a little device (a Zoom H2, it's awesome. records in surround sound if you want! It's cheap and small and works like a charm). Just stuff with our friends for now, but we'll branch out and record other people and things as we go. We take that "wild" sound and listen to it and clip out a few interesting little snippets. I run those through Soundtrack pro and 2 semi-tones up of pitch correction to each. I take these snippets and we figure out which to use and then pick a character for each person (if they don't already have one) from the many pages of characters Rich has done and start to set them up . (BTW, I think this is basically how South Park is animated . . .)

This is one of the dozen of so pages of chars Rich started with. The character for Rich is third from the left on the bottom row.

(click pics for larger)

Then Rich redrew the character so I could put it back together as individual pieces.
I used the original template to piece this back together in seperate layers in Photoshop. Then I rendered each piece out in its own Tif file.

The next step is to go into Maya (3D program) and create a flat plane for each body part. I map the textures onto the planes. Here's a quick example.
Each plane is positioned and the pivots, etc are adjusted so the parts move as they should when rotated. Basically, every thing will rotate in only one plane. If we wanted to create a new arm shape we would draw a new arm and map that onto the flat plane. We're trying to stay away from that for now. Just keep it super simple.

Then I add in controls for each body part and link them as I would any character (parenting, point, orient and parent constraints) I try to lock off anything that won't be used so I don't confuse myself when animating. The only parts that are slightly different are the mouth and eyes. That's because these have so many shapes.

For instance you can see here that the mouth has some new controls. I set up some enum controls on the mouth controller with each phoneme. This type of control works well because each shape will completely cancel the previous shape.
I tried to use the bare minimum of shapes, as you can see. I then used set driven keys to drive the visibilities of the various mouth shapes (easier to me than switching textures).
The eyes were similar.
Each mouth shape and eye shape was drawn seperately in photoshop then imported and mapped onto a plane. Again there's probly an easier way to do this, but I couldnt' be bothered . . .

BTW, I copy each rig from a previous character and reshape it for the next one. Then I reproject the UV's and change the texture maps, so I don't start from scratch on each one. . .

In terms of the backgrounds we're just using anything that seems to work. In this case I took a photo at the Museum of Natural History and tweaked it out. Sorry kid. Whoever you are.

The first pic is the orig. The second pic is the corrected one.

I use these in Maya to layout the scene, but don't render them. I only render the chars and props then comp it all in after effects, adding shadows, etc.

So here are the characters in the set. Everything is done from the front view, so there is no perspective at all. Everything is orthagonally flat.
Since the set won't be rendered with the chars, I don't need to complete all the doodads before I render. I can go back and add in signs or whatever later.
Then I just start moving things around. I do the mouths first. Then just do runs on the body. I'll do the torso, then the arms, etc. Sometimes I'll animate straight ahead for a little while too. This one ("purses") was really long. It took about one day. "swayze" only took about 2 hours. I'm trying to animate as LITTLE as possible and still have it be watchable. I'll have to adjust the level of animation once I do a few more and figure out what works best. Trying not to be fussy at all. Bush-league, I know, but time is precious and stress sucks. The red hashes at the bottom are all hand animated points, so you get an idea of how many things need to be touched even for this level of animation.The timeline covers about 1 minute. Even keeping it simple, it's a lot of animation to do in a day.
That's about it. As I said I render it out and comp it together with the final pic in after effects and mix the sound back in. Eventually I'll also be adding a quick title and end card to each one as well.

Ilksville - "Purses" testing

2008-09-15T12:36:00.001-04:00

Here's the second one. This one is rougher and much longer. the render here is straight out of Maya, so there's less integration with the chars and the props, etc. But you get the Idea . . .

This is about as long we'd be wiling to go on any one clip. The point is to be fun and quick, not to belabor the process or the story. This one is of our friends Ana and Melissa. Again just a randomly captured snippet of dialogue. We've decided that for the time being, all props and environments will be photos, not drawings, though as I said, they're not quite properly integrated yet in this clip.
At some point we'll work out intros to the clips and package them up a bit. Just starting to talk about that now. Obviously, the whole idea of the thing is evolving a bit as we go. . .

View the larger QT - here

Ilksville - "Swayze" testing

2008-09-15T11:06:00.000-04:00

Here's a small sample of what we're on about. This is the first test I did.

The basic idea is that these videos are just little excerpts from the lives of the residents of Ilksville. This one has me, Rich and our friend Melissa. The sound probably isn't quite loud enough, but this is just the first test. And the whole point is that this is "wild" sound. Just caught while the recorder was running. The animation is also crap, but the whole point is that we should be able to do an entire clip in about a day. I'm rigging the characters in Maya (a 3D program), which I'll explain in another post someday, but aside from that, we're trying to be Breezy about this whole thing and just accumulate interesting tidbits whenever we have the time.
View the large QT version - here

Ilksville - the beginning

2008-09-15T10:52:00.002-04:00

Last year at a film festival with "The Needful Head", my main collaborator, Richard Bailey, showed me about a dozen pages of drawings he had recently done. They were just rows and rows of funny little people. He was calling them "Ilksville", but had no idea what to do with them. I loved the drawings and after months of fits and starts we've Decided on this concept:

1. Ilksville will be about the town/place called Ilksville(duh), the residents of which are the little people in the drawings.
2. the whole point is to be quick and loose with the project. Never to worry overmuch about what we're doing. We'll do that with other projects. This should be fun and "easy".
3. Rather than worry to much about a plot, we will just periodically record audio of us and our friends while we're hanging out, etc. We'll then take small snippets of that audio and quickly animate Richard's drawings to that clip.
4. Eventually the clips will be collected into a website or some other repository where people can browse through them. We'll wait a bit to see when this will happen.
5. The characters will be consistent throughout, so viewers can get to know them, as they would a real person. No acting or cherrypicking dialogue to create false impressions.

That's about it. We've started with a couple of tests, which I'll post later.

Getting Started

2008-09-15T10:47:00.000-04:00

Good lord. Another blog foisted on the world. . . So sue me.
Just seemed like a good place to keep a bunch of work in progress and 3D/animation tidbits for those who were interested, rather than hiding things deep in my own site.