Short film on CGBros

LONG TIME NO POST!!

Yes it has been a while, been out doing things and not getting things done in the end, learning C++ and not learning it at all at the same time, real frustrating stuff.

But hey! Remember I was talking about that final year movie I was part of a year back? No? In short, I was in my final year in Singapore Polytechnic and doing a final film for a year. I was in the technical department (I called it that), and ran the rigs and part of the simulations. It was fun working with  the others in their own specialised departments, but everyone will say their own work was the most fun. All in all, that film we made, was sent to multiple competitions. I will really have to dig them out since there are so many, nominated for some, won awards for some.

However, with all that said, it does not bring in much satisfaction, not until recently. Our Director (team leader), I did not know what he did or what he did not do, but he got our short film up on The CGBros youtube channel. What really moves me the most was that people connected with the film, and felt for the characters we created. There were so many encouraging comments and it was just... Truely amazing. I can say I am really proud of our work, how much hours we pooled into the film and made it such a moving and successful one.

Ok, that is enough words for the day, let our work speak for itself and...

Let it roll:

I just want to thank all those who left their comments in the comments section, those who really enjoyed the show as much as I like working on it. I seriously hope I can be part of a production in the future, whenever it may be.

Tips & Tricks related to Facial Modeling for Animated Productions by Sergi Caballer Garcia

It has been a long while since I have last posted, rest assured for those who are following me, I always keep my blogger page in one of my tabs. The blog will never die, unless I close it or declare it. At the same time, I will be serving the Singapore army soon, so that might or might not be 2 years worth of inactivity. Check back to see any surprises!

Now, I come to you today to offer you some great demo and teachings from Sergi Caballer Garcia. The article was posted on CGMeetup, here, I merely picked it up on my Facebook feed and thought it was great information to share with the good people here.

Picture taken from CGMeetup.com

All of this tips and tricks can be used on any 3D modelling software, as Sergi said, and I quote, "all of the steps and methods showed on these timelapses are the same ones you’ll find in other packages, such as split, insertEdgeLoop, extrude, merge, sculpt, etc.". 

The whole article will touch on topics like workflow, topology, deformations, appeal, hair modeling and all the little tricks you can pick up to improve on any models. Sergi also touches on the Sculpt Geometry tool, not a lot of modellers that graduated from my school that I know uses this tool for creating organic models. I tried it once on an inorganic blanket model (using a mouse), well, I guess I like the control the mouse gives as compared to the pressure that varies on the tablet.

Well, for the rest, the article is pretty self explanatory.

You can check out Sergi Caballer Garcia's website here, it includes a lot of works he had done before, deeply inspiring and impressive too.

Picture taken from Sergicaballer.com

Well that is it for today then, what a long time for an update.

Back again, loads of useful info on some rigging stuff.

It has been like what? 1 month? Yeah, I have been very late with my updates, but not to fear, I come here with something to show. This whole month have been flooded with a lot of simulations and cloth and rendering. Our final film is nearing its submission date and we still have animation unapproved. The best we can do is to make do with what we had and render everything out. Most of the shots are completed but we still have a minority of those which are of substandard quality. 

Rendering was taking a toll since we had to run around opening files and rendering them in school (nope we do not have a render farm, yet[I hope]). Some shots we will split the layers to be rendered in different computers. By the way, the rendering was not headed by me, but the lighting, composting and rendering head, I do not know if I should put his name here, still, blog posts could be updated. It was hectic at first because of the sudden flood in the amount of shots we have to render, however we managed to keep our calm and manage everything, all in a notebook. In the end, bulk shots were rendered overnight and renders are done the next morning (the day of submission).

Well, either way, hectic time is over and we get to polish the final film until the Graduation show, on 13-14 of March Singapore time. This will mean more resim for me and will probably take up a chunk of my time, although I can be more relaxed about the working hours in school.

UPDATE on Dynamic Hair Tutorial Part 4:

Nope, I have not gotten around to creating a video for it, yet, although the main bulk of the tutorial is done. Hope I still can finish it if time permits.

Other information:

CGMeetup.

Maya Rigging Tips and Tricks by Daryl Obert

The video touches on some key items like node based rigging, included in Autodesk Maya 2013 and onwards (presented in the video is Maya 2014). It also touches on using some of the provided nodes to rig for example the hips of the character to be always in the center of both feet, instead of using scripts to quicken the evaluations.

Maya Set Driven Key Tutorial by Daryl Obert

This video touches on SDK (set driven keys), its basics and its function and tweak-ability using the graph editor. Daryl Obert explained it pretty clear and demonstrated the use of SDKs very well.

Maya Dynamics Tips and Tricks

 This video also by Daryl Obert, will talk about nParticles in Maya and the fields of nParticles. This video gives an insight to the power of nParticles simulation inside Maya itself. It is a great video if one is interested in effects inside of Maya itself.

Yeap, that is all for today then. I wanted to say that Autodesk really outdid themselves, although each version of Maya has its own bugs and glitches, the newer one is considerably better than its own predecessor. It is great that Autodesk started to build in the node based system interface in Maya 2013 and its future versions. That allows better organisation and quicker workflow, whether one is rigging or doing animations or even effects.

Been really busy lately~ V2.0

Been really busy lately V2.0

Yeap, that kind of explains everything, I have been trying to find time to make the video on the Part 4 of the dynamic hair tutorial. However, I have been assigned (pre assigned but now the animation is done, I have to do the effects), more work to do. That left me little time to rest and to do the video and even update the blog.

At the same time, I have to prepare the materials that are going to be used in the Singapore Polytechnic's Graduation showcase. I linked my bio on the website to this blog, and most probably going to link it on my name card too. I have to prepare my demoreel too, so watch out for that.

Well, I have to get back to work now, this post looks like a quickie post, but I cannot help it, it is the truth.

BACK TO WORK!!

Been really busy lately~

OK, first and foremost, I like to apologise for those of you who are awaiting on my 4th part of the dynamic hair tutorial (whoever is out there~), I have been really busy lately.

Busy with what you ask, well, I have been busy in updating the blog's pictures; mainly the pictures on the tutorials. Since I seem to be having a lot of images now, I thought of organising them in my storage device. It started out as a very messy process since all the images are everywhere. I had also renamed the pictures for a better tracking of them and organisation. I changed the tutorial files' names too and created an icon for the download.

Also, it seems as if i went crazy with my watermark, putting them in almost all the pictures in my recent tutorial. I thought it was a good idea to stamp it with my mark, like a signature. I took the blue from the blog itself and made the designs of the icons and signature myself.

Ah! At the same time, if you are a faithful follower of my blog (or if you are new), I would like to say that my blog is intended for desktop/laptop usage on the web browser and not intended to be used on phones. I did not setup the mobile version of the blog since the images are sometimes quite big and it is meant to be like that because sometimes the words are very small and there are a lot of them (example: outliner)

That is all for today, and yes, I am still working on the Part 4 of the tutorial, stay tuned if you are following me.

Merry Christmas!!

Actually I do not celebrate Christmas, however I do celebrate the holiday.

This is a holiday post, I will tell you what I have been working on lately but no pictures, so sorry.

First up, I have been working on the Part 4 of the Dynamic Hair tutorial, going to be about the FK system on the system.

Secondly, I have been doing a lot of nCloth for my FYP (final year project), making skirts, sleeves and blankets.

Thirdly, I have been watching Breaking Bad, pretty cool show with chemistry involved, I studied chemistry in my Secondary school. I finished season 1 only though, will be watching more as the days come.

Fourth, and I think this will be the last, I've been Warframe-ing with my school pal, through the night. Great bonding session I'd consider it.

Well. that's about it, hope you had enjoyed your holidays!!

Siggraph week.

SIGGRAPH Asia 2013 is here, technically not here, it is in Hong Kong.

Website: http://sa2013.siggraph.org/en/

Hope you are not put down by the first sentence, SIGGRAPH Asia rotates its location ever year, on year 2011 it was in Hong Kong, 2012 it came here to Singapore, now it is back in Honk Kong. I also heard that the next Siggraph is going to be in another part of China (don't take my word for it, I don't choose the place they want to hold the events). 

I went to the 2011 SIGGRAPH Asia in the form of a study trip with my schoolmates. The trip was organised by the Polytechnic and we did get subsidies, although the price were still a little steep (no I won't talk about the price). It was pretty interesting, however we only get to go to the conference for 2 days out of the 5 days. Our pass is also a basic conference pass, so we could not really go any special areas, basically the electronic theater and the art gallery and some talks were open to us.

Other days were spent as tourist going around the city area and the malls and night markets. I totally forgotten about the names of the places that we went to, I am seriously bad at names. Tourist aside, we did visit the company of FATFace Productions (http://www.fatface.hk/). From my knowledge, they specialise in special effects, basically the green screen stuff, they do a lot of compositing and deal with a lot of layers in the compositing software. The layers range from matte painting in the back ground to painting set extensions from live plates to live action takes taken with the green screen.

We got to "invade" their small meeting room as the Chief showed us their showreel, mainly focusing on the film 风云II (The Storm Warriors). The the film has a lot of visual effects as the characters possess many magical attacks as they attack their enemies and at one point attack each other (if my memory don't fail me). Majority of the film is done in a green screen studio and later composited into the final film. It is amazing what technology can do this days and that the right people that can turn multiple things into a fantastic final product like what FATFace Productions did.

Film The Storm Warriors, FATFace page on the film

That's about it on SIGGRAPH Asia 2011, now to 2012.

On SIGGRAPH Asia 2012, the conference was held in the Expo of Singapore, a few stops from my house, I signed up as a student volunteer (SV) to help out in the conference and meet other countries SVs to make connections. Our seniors were there and a few of them were Team Leaders. My team leader (the overall one) is Nicolas (find him here!), he showed us his final year project and it was very inspiring, the style was interesting and appealing, although the film was in French, I enjoyed the whole thing as it grabbed my attention.

SIGGRAPH Asia 2012 in Singapore Expo as an SV, sometimes it was a pleasant experience, sometimes it was just an OK experience. The good part about the whole SV program is that we get a full pass, and we can go wherever we like (common sense wise do not intrude other people's personal space and restricted areas). The bad part about it was that sometimes the shifts were very packed and we did not get the chance to go wherever we want, and yes, the shifts were generated by a computer.

I dint make a lot of friends since I was not very engaging and not very sociable, I consider myself a better listener. I try to be more outreaching nowadays, because in this industry, being alone is the worst thing ever. At the same time I did not have any name cards to trade, that will leave a puny impression of me since there is not one thing I can base my existence in.

Thus, this year 2013, SIGGRAPH Asia 2013 in Hong Kong, I did not plan to go for it and plan to go to the next SIGGRAPH. Firstly, I want to get all my work ready to show people, get my name card ready to trade and also brush up my social skills (seriously). 6 members out of 8 on the FYP (final year project) went for the conference, some as SVs and some on the study trip. 

I will be staying back in school, running and creating hair for the characters. I created a connection system that allows the dynamic hair system to be controlled by a FK (forward kinematics) control chain. I first proposed this idea to a friend of mine, he was already doing the dynamic hair system and asked me if I could have any means to create a switch or an FK option. Thus, I proposed the system to him to make it more efficient. If I have the time and not mic shy I might even create a video tutorial for the rig. However, that might take a while, but I will post a picture tutorial at the end of the week if all goes well.

That is it for today, quite a long time to update though, at least I still kept the blog alive.

Another month past and...

It has been a while (1 month) since I updated the blog, school had been real busy. Now I am serving my half a year (1 semester) of internship. Since I am involved in this 1 year final year project, I will be serving for the school.

Work wise, we are still behind time by around 2 weeks to 1 month. However, on the plus side, I'm churning out rigs faster than ever, and the animators can now start on the animation (actually they already started on the blocking sequence and finished the layout).

I encountered a problem with one of the working files, it usually happened when a non-referenced node is parented underneath a referenced node. This fosterParent node cannot be deleted no matter what, and Google did not really help a lot in removing the thing. The thing was created during one of the modelling stages, I did not check since another person was under that section and I was busy with rigging the main character.

fosterParent nodes

I found no method of safely removing all the assets from the file, I tried exporting all the selected objects. That merely caused the blend shapes and textures to screw up, basically all connections were on fire. However, I found out that instead of exporting, I could do the opposite, import the whole file (it was worth a try since I got this far).

I imported the file into another empty file (Maya's import system still have not worked for the placing of a string for clashing nodes, apparrently it keeps going back to prefixing all nodes.) Once the file has been imported, I can just delete the fosterParent nodes from the outliner with no other problems arising (none that have bothered me anyway in the future).

The problem about these fosterParent nodes is that they mess up the shots files and once the file is referenced in, it cannot be unloaded since it seems to get information from the already existing fosterParent nodes that something is being parented to the referenced in objects. Thus, it created a massive problem while doing the shots, and I had to take control of the situation and solved the problem.

There was also a large number of duplicated orthographic cameras created by some unknown methods. That was the first thing that shocked me when I opened the file, because the outliner was clogged up with that. Second thing is that they are not deletable.

Multiple duplicates of cameras.

For the cameras problem, it is very easy to solve as Google got me some useful sites explaining how to make them deletable through some simple script provided.

http://www.3dbuzz.com/forum/threads/171756-How-to-delete-a-camera?p=1412846#post1412846

schyzomaniac (kudos to him), a member of 3dbuzz forum provided a simple script to make the cameras deletable.

camera -e -startupCamera false persp1;

(name of camera to be deleted to be place at the "persp1" area)

 This script basically (from what I understand from reading it), makes Maya know that the camera is not a startup camera, and that it is not the default scene cameras (persp, top, side, front) and that it is just another normal camera. Thus in the end, one can just press the delete button to delete the extra cameras.

The other code which he provided was: 

lockNode -lock off persp1;

(name of camera to be deleted to be place at the "persp1" area)
 
From what I understand from the script is that this is to unlock the node and make it editable, basically if you want to delete it, one have to free it first

That is all for now, actually spent 2 days on this post,  hope I still have time to update this blog as the project goes on.

Next rig and updates on the previous rig.

I was about to update a week earlier, but I can't turn back time, so I will just say what it was about. I have been doing corrections after corrections on the previous rig, and now i finally can move on to my next new rig, which is the mum of the first character.

To give an overview of the Mum character (sorry no pictures), she is of normal human proportions but it is her dressing method that needs some work. She is wearing a cardigan and a mid knee length skirt. the cardigan is a little bit loose and the skirt have to be simulated with nCloth. Both clothings will have to be sim-ed. I will be doing more research on that section and doing more improvements on the first rig since that is our most important character.

Our supervisor, have been going through the character designs, once there is a change, it goes down the whole pipeline. Design gets affected, model needs changes, rig have to be redone 50% (edits) and animation have to be put on hold (same for the rest of the pipeline).

Our layout artist, which is also our storyboard artist is having a very hard time since our supervisor keeps making changes to the storyboard/2D/3D layout, thus, she has to keep on making the changes and that slowed down production time a lot.

I hope I still have time to update on this blog on our progress and my progress, still, no promises.

2 months forwards, and 2 months behind

It has been 2 months since I have updated, there is not much to say actually. First, I will start off by saying that our production is 2 months behind (actually that is what I like to think, but it is actually 2 weeks behind). There is a lot of design changes in the characters and this caused changes in the models, without the models I could not rig anything and the animators are stuck with nothing to do.

The design of the characters came out late, and coupled with my rusty rigging skills from not doing any rigs for around half a year, I took around 2-3 weeks, with adjustments and test rigs adding up to 3-4 weeks total for the main character (I am still tweaking for . However, that is not only what I did for that whole time period, I did the rig for 2 more characters, still primary characters, one in T-pose one in A-pose.

I don't think I can post any of the production stuff here since it is meant to be private and confidential and it is part of production secrecy. However, I think our director is setting up a websiite for our WIPs and I will update as soon as that kicks in. Until then, I think I can just post the controls I did for the main character.

Whole control setup, althou not finished yet.

The unfinished part is the lower lips part, figured it was more logical to have upper and lower lips control.
P.S. Our main character's name is called Mei Ling.

Eye aim controls, the slider controls pupil size.

FK setup, can switch with the "EX" control in the background.

IK setup, "EX" control highlighted.

Well, I try my best to provide a comprehensive control system for the animators, if they want anything, they will tell me and I will implement it. Other than that most of the rigs all use these types of control setup and I pretty much consider this my "default" setup way to go. I will reveal my joints placement when we start the website, till then that is all I can show.

Update frequency DISRUPTED.

I know I have been late on updates, it has been really busy, and I am going off dynamics for a while and going to rigging for the character I am doing. Sorry, but no sneak peaks so i am just going to leave it as that. Hope I have time to update the next time. 

I have also been really sleepy these days, happened to all my classmates as well. I would consider this a class-wide phenomenon.

Busy week, will be uploading a lot of stuff.

Busy week this week, I will be uploading a lot of stuff, not just because my assignment prompts me so, but also I have A LOT of stuff to put up, so it is best to start early eh. Look forward to all my stuff, and I do know it has been a LONG while since my last post.

It's a START!

After coming home from school and not really wanting to stress myself with even more homework, I decided to create this blog. This blog serves as a platform to showcase my work and is something like a portfolio page here. My friend has just created one, so, I thought to myself, "Why not start one up myself also, I have to do it sooner or later."

Took me around 1 hour to get all the settings nicely. I am not really a web designer or coder, so all this is quite new to me. I am a tech junkie though, I like to assemble my own desktops and is pretty much interested in electronic products.

Back to matter at hand, I will be posting about my works, either current or past works. I don't usually complete what I started, but there are some completed works that I am kind of proud of.

Nevertheless, it's a start! Let the journey begin!