I'm an Animation Mentor Graduate!

I got my diploma in Advanced Studies in Character Animation! I'm now officially an AM alumnus!

I'm very excited to be graduated, but I'm also sad that AM is over. But I'll keep visiting the online campus, and I plan to keep on being a Peer Buddy, so I'll still be a part of the AM community.

Animation Mentor was such a great experience, and I finally feel that I have the skills I need to be a working animator. Now all that's next is to finish polishing up my reel, and then I can start applying to studios!

The Monsters: Bottle Battle- Animated Short Released

My CG animated short is finally released to YouTube! Check it out below, and please like, comment, and share if you enjoy it!

The short was 2 months in the making as a personal challenge to see if it was possible to create a full CG short in that time period. To complete my goal within that time limit I had to animate 30 shots in 30 days (the fastest I've ever animated). In Animation Mentor we have several weeks just to animate one 10 second shot, so this was a great exercise in animation speed. As a result, I'm much faster now! I also learned more about every other stage of CG film production from storytelling, camera angles, layout, lighting, rendering, and (of course) a lot of animation things. I especially got a lot practice animating all that running (I didn't use any run cycles). In the end, it's not my most polished work (you can see my most polished work in my demo reel) but I'm happy with what I created in the time I allowed myself.

If I got to do it all over again, there are dozens of things I wouldn't do and dozens of things I would. But that's just hindsight being 20/20, so I'm going to leave this alone (except for maybe polishing up a shot or two for my reel) and am thinking up my next short! I won't start it until after I graduate from Animation Mentor (which will be soon, it's currently week 4 of my last 12 week class). I want to get my demo reel all together and sent out first. Then I can work on the next short to distract me while I wait to hopefully hear back from studios.

I figure I'll probably always be working on a short, even once I get into a studio. It's just a fun thing to do, getting to tell a full story and play all the roles in its creation. Though it would be nice to collaborate with a person or two (and would probably produce a nicer result, especially if they know about all the non-animation things that I'm still learning about). I highly suggest that every CG artist create a short of some sort, either by themselves or with friends. It doesn't have to be a 12 month production, it can be a short 2 month production like mine. That way you can learn what not to do and what you need to improve on in a short amount of time.

If you've made a short, or are currently making a short, mention it in the comments below!

Announcing "The Monsters"- My Upcoming Animated Short Film!

I'm happy to announce that "The Monsters," a CG short film I've been working on for over over a month now, is going to be coming out sometime this month! I say "sometime" because I'm still working on it. I'm in the latter stages of animation, but still have plenty of work to do, never mind the lighting and rendering (I'm using image based lighting and final gather with Mental Ray, so each frame takes a decent amount of time). Anyway, here's the first promo poster!

It'll be about 2 and a half minutes to 3 minutes long and, as the poster says, is an action-comedy. I can't really say too much without giving it all away (3 minutes takes a long time to animate, but a short time to watch). However, I will say that the possible subtitle for the film is "The Bottle Battle." It should be fun! There's no dialogue, just a lot of physical humor due to some conflict between the characters. It's kind of like one of the old Road Runner or Sylvester and Tweety cartoons.

Work in Progress Screenshot from Maya

I'm not doing it for Animation Mentor or anything (though the characters are the AM rigs Monster Ball, Bird Ball, and Twig). It's a personal challenge I've set myself to see if (A) I can make a short all on my own, and (B) how fast I can do it. Which is why I'm using pre-existing rigs and several free props, along with the props and set that I made, to help speed it all up.

Work in Progress Screenshot from Maya

It's been quite a challenge so far, but I've learned/improved a lot at so many different things that it's been worth it. I've gotten a lot faster at animating, which is good since my last class gave us 11 weeks to make a 15 second 2 character dialogue. That's fine for school (and actually really good since you have the time to slow down and learn) but in a real production environment you have to work a lot faster than that, which is what I'm trying to train myself for here. And on top of that, it's just fun to be able to produce animation faster because you get it out of your head and onto the screen quicker.

Anyway, I'll keep this blog updated about the film's progress through the last few weeks. When it's finally released, you'll be able to find it on my YouTube channel.

Until next time!

Hand Practice Animation

Check out my new animation- a hand practice piece I did a few weeks ago. I did it while working on my AN05 Advanced Acting dialogue assignment because I was having trouble with the hand poses. It's based on webcam footage I filmed of myself making various hand gestures. Since I'm on break this week, I polished it up and rendered it out (using some of the lighting things I've learned from Digital Tutors). Doing this helped my hand animation skills a lot! I learned more about creating nice hand poses, getting into and out of those poses, and holding the poses while still keeping the hands "alive." I also thought it was interesting how the forearm and upper arm responded to the movements of the fingers/wrist.

Anyway, here's the animation! If you want to see my animations as soon as I upload them, subscribe to my YouTube channel.

Animated in Maya 2013, rendered with Mental Ray.

New Progress Reel- Animation Mentor Class 5

I just finished Animation Mentor Class 5- Advanced Acting! All I have left is to take Class 6- Polish and Portfolio, and I'll be an AM graduate!

I considered putting my AN05 animation into a new demo reel (my current one is here), but decided to wait. I decided that because #1: I want to re-render all these shots since I've been learning more about lighting with Digital Tutors (I got 1 free month for entering the CG Student Awards). And #2: I'm going to start revising many of these shots in AN06 in just 1 week. So I decided I'll wait until the end of Class 6 to upload a new demo reel.

It'll be nice to be able to go back and rework these shots in AN06. I've learned so much the last few months that already several things stand out to me, especially in my AN02 and AN03 work. I may even get to make a whole new shot/sequence in AN06, depending on what my mentor decides. Either way, it should be fun, and I'll graduate with a great looking demo reel!

But that'll be about 13 weeks from now, so in the meantime, here's my progress reel! It's pure Maya 2013 playblast animation, no rendering, no extra music, etc. Again, if you want to see my prettier demo reel (with rendering and music, but minus my AN05 animation) you can see it here: http://youtu.be/ClDsJu92_88 .

WILWA #1- Lifting a Foot

What I Learned While Animating #1

Lifting a Foot

From my Experience Animating "Ballie Jump"

When I first animated Ballie lifting his foot to move back on the block I did it like he was taking a step. He lifted his foot high and didn't let it touch the ground until he was placing it down. It sounds fine in writing, but it looked off somehow. I finally figured out why by acting out the shot myself (another reason to film your own reference instead of just using YouTube).

The action looked strange because in real life people don't lift their feet- they lift their heel and the foot follows. It's true. Remember, even though you probably often animate IK legs, real legs are an FK chain. The foot doesn't move the leg, the upper and lower leg bones move the foot.You're probably sitting right now. Try moving your foot to the right a bit, enough that you have to lift your leg some. What did you notice? Your whole foot probably didn't lift off the ground. Your ankle lifted and your heel lifted, but your toes just dragged, still contacting the floor.

This is how people move their feet when just adjusting them or taking a small step. The larger the movement, the higher the leg, ankle, and foot lift. The smaller the movement, the more the toes drag. I believe that in forward movements it is more likely that the whole foot will leave the floor, simply because friction makes it hard to shove your foot forward without lifting it, but I'm sure that's not always true.

Now back to the shot. Ballie's step was tiny, but not small enough to just drag the toes. There had to be a little lift in the movement as he clears the ledge. Here's the moment from the animation. It has a small arc, and it's hard to see in the screenshots, so I drew up some diagrams to better show you what is happening.

#1- The foot is on the ground and the toes rest on the ledge.

#2- The ankle lifts and the toes move up to clear the ledge. If the toes just dragged, they could get caught on the ledge, and Ballie doesn't want that.

#3- Now that his toes are clear, Ballie begins to conserve energy by letting his his foot go back to the ground, the toes dragging. Remember, everything always wants to conserve energy when possible.

#4- The toes drag back until the heel comes down in the new foot position.

And that's it. It's simple, but it took me some time to figure out that this was the right way to do this small movement.

Questions or comments? Post them below. I'll post another WILWA (not the best acronym, but not the worst) after I upload my next animation. The next one may be a dog one, so it could have some good quadruped animation tips/tricks.

Until next time!

New Model- White Rhino

After several weeks of work, I am happy to present to you my new model- a white rhinoceros!

He has to be my best model to date! That's because I made a work in progress thread for him over on BlenderArtists.org and got a lot of great feedback and help. I should have begun posting over there ages ago! This is what he looked like when I first posted.

 
Believe it or not, I thought he was almost finished then! The base model actually stayed pretty much the same throughout the revisions, though I did make some changes based upon critiques. What the people over at BlenderArtists helped me with the most was the normal map, displacement map, uv map, sculpting, and they motivated me to rig him. The sculpting part was very new to me, never having sculpted then baked a displacement map before, but it made a big difference in the amount of detail I was able to put on the rhino. Though next time I think I'll sculpt in the beginning, then retopo and bake a normal map, because I think that would be easier to set up.

Here's a close up of his face.

And a side view.

Here are some wireframes.

Here's his rig.

And here's a turntable.

As always, you can get this guy here. He's available in BLEND, OBJ, and FBX formats.

I'm very happy with how this rhino turned out! And I'm excited to put what I learned to use on my next model. I still haven't decided what I'll make next, but when I do I'll make a thread for it over at BlenderArtists.org. Here's my profile for over there.

Until next time!

Cartoony Hammerhead Shark

Hi again, everyone! I'm on winter break now after having finished a great online semester at the Academy of Art University. So that means I've got the time to make a lot of new things to show you all!

My first completed winter break project is my Cartoony Hammerhead Shark model. It's not rigged because I plan to take this month to really focus on my modeling, texturing, and lighting skills. I'll be doing animation practice, too. I got Tangled and Kung Fu Panda 2 on DVD for Christmas, which means I've been able to go through them frame-by-frame and try to figure out what makes them great. But this post is supposed to be about my new hammerhead shark. By the way, he's unique in that he's the first model I've textured for both Blender Internal and Cycles. All you have to do is turn the nodes on and off to switch between renderers. Anyway, here he is!

Here are some wireframes.

 And a turntable.

As always, you can see more images and download him in .OBJ and .BLEND formats here.

Until next time!

New Models- Screwdrivers and Screws

Sorry for the lack of posts lately. As those of you who follow me on other sites may know, a lot has happened in the last few months. I transferred out of the Savannah College of Art and Design to the Academy of Art University (which I am doing completely online) and also adopted a new dog, a Basset Hound mix named Corey. Both were great decisions, but more on them in another post.

Today I just wanted to show you guys my newest models. I haven't been able to make much personal work, CG or otherwise, lately because of adjusting to a new college and then adjusting to a new dog. But things have started to fall into a more predictable sort of schedule, so I was able to find the time to make these models.

I made a slotted screwdriver (AKA flat-head), a Phillips screwdriver (AKA cross-head), a slotted screw, and a Phillips screw. The screws are accurately sized to the screwdrivers.

While these may not be that exciting to look at, they were rather challenging to make. On top of simply re-learning Blender yet again (I keep forgetting things as I continue to use Maya for school), I also had to learn about the screw modifier, hard surface modeling, and how to make the Phillips tip. Also, I tried to pay a lot of attention to the materials and rendering. I really want to improve in those two areas because no matter how well made a model is, its materials, textures, and rendering will decide how nice it actually looks as a finished product.

As usual, you can get these models on TurboSquid in .obj and .blend formats. They are packaged as a set.

Until next time!

CG Program Recommendations

Welcome to the final part of this three part series of art supply/program recommendations. Last time, I covered digital art programs. Before that, I discussed traditional art supplies. This time, I'm going to cover CG programs that I've had some experience with. I'll be gearing my recommendations more toward how the programs are at making still renders, though I may mention their animation capabilities a bit. Here we go!

CG/3D Programs
There are multitudes of CG/3D programs out there (you'll find people sometimes use CG and 3D interchangeably, since they have come to mean pretty much the same thing). Now while there are lots of CG programs, many by big companies, anyone who's done a quick search will know that there are a few main players. Two of these are the main ones that colleges seem to acknowledge (Cinema 4D and Lightwave aren't on any of my college's computers). The third is one that everyone knows is a strong competitor, though I guess it hasn't become "industry standard" enough to get into college classes. So first, the industry standard ones.

Maya
In my current universe, Autodesk Maya holds the title of Queen of All Things CG. Every CG class I've had so far used it, there are tons of tutorials, tons of websites, and tons of examples of it being used to make films. It can be buggy at times, but patches eventually come out and all is the right in the CG world again. I personally love animating in it (more so than animating in Blender), but I currently like modeling in Blender more. This could just be because I've spent more time practicing animating in Maya and more time practicing modeling in Blender. All in all, I think it's an awesome program. If you're a student, check out my post on how to get Maya for free. Because it costs thousands, if you're a hobbyist, I suggest you start with Blender. And if you've been using free programs and want to move up to an industry standard you can get Maya on Amazon and from Autodesk (the $500 difference is a subscription fee that you'd have to get after purchasing the program from Autodesk, so the prices are actually the same). Keep in mind that often there are only small differences between the versions (they do come out every year), so you may want to consider buying an older version to save some money.

3Ds Max
Autodesk 3Ds Max is another great CG program (I've played around with it a bit). I think that the reason people often have trouble deciding between Autodesk Maya and Autodesk 3Ds Max is that they are both all-in-one CG programs from the same company. Why Autodesk has such similar programs, I don't know. I actually truly don't know the difference between them. The way I've always understood it is that Maya is used more often for movies, while 3Ds Max is used more often for games. Of course, there are many exceptions to that. Whatever it's made for, people seem to love 3Ds Max, so I suppose I recommend it if you find something that it does that Maya can't do (or if you're going to focus on games). You can get it on Amazon and from Autodesk.

Blender
This is one of the biggest CG programs out there, and it's totally free. I used it for several years before getting into college and being eligible for the free version of Maya. I still use it often now. It may not be "industry standard" but it certainly could be. The Blender Foundation has shown that a number of times with its animated shorts, and many professionals and small studios use it for commercials and other such things. I actually know of a couple of people who left the industry standard programs mentioned above for Blender.It has fur/hair, cloth, fluids, and all those other things you find in the "professional" programs. It also has a lot of tutorials available, including books and DVDs. On top of that, it has a built in video editor, so you don't even need something like Adobe After Effects to finish your animations off (you need After Effects, or something similar, if you render animations out as individual frames, which is recommended opposed to rendering single video files). You can use the Blender video editor with videos and frames from other sources (so you could use it with Maya or 3Ds Max). You can get Blender here.

Mandelbulb 3D
This free 3D fractal program is kind of a digital art program and CG program rolled into one. You interact with 3D fractal objects, and have to render your image out like you do in a CG program, but it's not as functional as a true CG program. You can't import models (though I've heard a few ideas about exporting models), and coloring and lighting abilities are somewhat limited. Also, navigation in 3D isn't that easy. But given that it was made by one person (Jesse of fractalforums.com) and is free, it's pretty awesome. It's functional enough for tons of people to be making beautiful 3D fractal art with it right now, and I'm sure that it'll continue to grow. I've used it quite a lot recently, and am looking forward to working with it more in the coming months. You can get it for Windows here (this is the one I use), and a similar program called Mandelbulber for Linux, Mac, and Windows here.

DAZ Studio/Poser
I've never tried Poser, but I have DAZ Studio. I know that there are some people out there who love those programs, and there are some people out there who don't think renders made with them deserve as much attention as they get. This isn't because the programs are bad, they are actually great, but the problem is that you are using pre-made content. With Maya, Blender, etc. you make your own stuff from start to finish, then render it. With DAZ and Poser, you buy stuff from the companies, arrange and pose it (though you can buy poses too), then render it. You're not relying on your own modeling, texturing, and rigging skills. Some great renders can be made with these programs (I get the DAZ newsletter, and there are always stunning renders making up the ads). However, because it is so simple and user friendly, a lot of people seem to feel they don't need to work with their images as much, creating a lot of bland, obviously CG images out there. Because it is not an all-in-one CG program like Blender or Maya, I think they approach it from a more playful mindset and feel that they don't need to read up on fancy texturing and lighting techniques. Of course, there are many exceptions to this rule (I've come across some great renders on deviantART).

So with all that said, do I recommend these programs or not? The answer is yes and no. Yes, if you are just a hobbyist and don't mind having to pay every time you decide your character needs a new outfit or a new hairstyle (you can find some free things, both from the companies and from users, and you can customize the models in other CG programs). These programs can be a great introduction to CG and can teach you how to effectively pose, set up appealing compositions, and appropriately light your scenes. Also, they can be helpful if you need a drawing reference for a pose but can't find any stock footage (I occasionally use DAZ for this). I do not suggest them if you plan on becoming very serious about CG. They are not used in any visual effects houses, so knowing them isn't much of a plus on your resume. Also, it's much more impressive (I think) to show off something that is wholly your own, made from scratch. Lastly, unless you start customizing the models, you may become constrained by what is available for you to buy. And if you're customizing the models, you might as well take the next step and start making your own things from scratch. You can get DAZ Studio here for free, Poser 9 here and Poser Pro here . Be aware that these are not good animation programs (at least DAZ isn't, because I've tried). They are very simplistic when it comes to animation (annoyingly so, I think). Many of the awesome animations you may see on Youtube come from people buying motion capture animations from the companies and applying them to their characters.

Renderers
Once you get comfortable with a CG program, you may decide to go find different renderers. This is not at all required to make great CG art, since all the programs tend to ship with awesome renderers already installed. But it never hurts to try some new ones out, because you may find some that you like better. The only ones I've ever used were YafaRay and Luxrender for Blender, but that was back before Cycles came out. I don't know how necessary they are now, because of Cycles, so I'm not going to actually recommend any renderers. However, here are some that I know of that seem worth a look: YafaRay (for Blender), Luxrender (Blender, 3Ds Max, SketchUp C4D, Daz Studio, XSI, and Poser), Aqsis (for many programs I think, though I think you may need the MOSAIC plugin for Blender), Pixar's Renderman (I think it works with most all the big CG programs, and I've seen it on Maya in my college), and NOX (3ds Max, Blender).

So, that's the end of this series of recommendations! I hope it has been helpful. As always, if you agree or disagree with my recommendations, leave me a comment! In my next post, I'm going to cover how to sketch animals. You can see some of my sketches on my Tumblr.

Until next time!

How to Get Maya for Free (If You're a Student)

Hi, guys! Today I want to talk about something that I know a lot of beginning cg artists and animators are wondering. How do I get a hold of one of those awesome Autodesk programs without putting myself in the poor house? You may know that Maya runs for over $3,000. You may know that the Personal Learning Edition days are over. You may also know that there are free trials. But 30 days is only 30 days. What happens when that time is over and you've fallen in love with the program? Well I'm going to tell you something that a surprising number of people still don't know. I know this because I got to an art school where you can get a number of CG related degrees (where I'm working toward my degree in CG character animation) and every so often I have to tell people this. Just a few months ago I had to reveal it to someone in my CG rigging class. I didn't even know about it until the end of my first year when I happened to overhear someone talking about it.

Here's the secret: you can get any Autodesk program for free if you're a student at a participating school. And there are a lot of participating schools (mostly colleges I think, but I could be wrong). When I signed up for the Autodesk Education Community, you had to have a school email address. But I now see on the FAQ that that is no longer required. You can register here.

Cropped from my desktop

Now, that doesn't mean you can just go download every Autodesk program and become the King or Queen of Turbosquid or start your own CG company. These programs are for personal learning use only, not commercial use. According to the FAQs, some of the programs have watermarks. I know for a fact that Maya and 3Ds Max do not have watermarks on their renders. However, Maya does have a popup that comes up each time you open a file saved with the Student Version of the software, saying that it was made with that version and is not for commercial use. Also, these programs time out in 36 months (though since new versions of the programs come out every year, this shouldn't be a problem). And obviously, once you graduate, all the free stuff goes away. But those are the only things that could be called "limitations" that these programs have. They are in every way exactly the same as their expensive counterparts.

However, be aware that since these are such awesome programs, they are big programs. Check the system requirements before you download and be prepared for a long installation time. I've got a Windows 7 Professional (64-bit) HP with an AMD Athalon processor, updated graphics card, extra RAM, and two internal fans to keep everything going (it was a birthday gift) and I haven't had a problem yet. The programs probably run fine on regular out-of-the-box computers, though they may react and render slower.

I personally think it's awesome of Autodesk to provide so much for free. I've actually never seen a more seemingly generous company. I'd love to be able to say the same about Pixologic (the makers of ZBrush, which I really want to use). Because, as anyone who's followed Sculptris' development over the last few years will know, they only got it when its creator Tomas Pettersson joined them in 2010. It was free before they got it. Now if they were giving a full-featured version of ZBrush away for free, that would be something to talk about.

Even Maxon, the makers of Cinema 4D have a free student version available now. The license is only valid for 18 months (1 and 1/2 years) but that's still pretty awesome. It beats a 30 day trial for sure.

So if you already knew all this, good for you! I hope that, like me, you're having fun with all these awesome programs. And if you didn't know this (and you're a student) I hope that you're as excited as I was when I heard I could get all these industry-standard programs for free. Again, you can register here.

Have fun!

A Bobcat That was 2 Years in the Making

I've finally finished making Bobby the Bobcat! For a while I thought he'd never be complete. But I've learned that while it may look like I abandon some projects, I always come back to them eventually. This goes for 2D art and CG work. I just can't stand starting something and not finishing it. But I think 2 years is the most I've let anything drag on. I think I let it go on for so long because school made me forget about him and college kept me too busy to work on him. But now that it's summer break I've been able to relearn/remember everything that I forgot about Blender (since I had been using Maya so much in college) and I was finally able to finish him. The confidence boost I got from my cute bunny turning out well also helped.

Here's a render of Bobby:

And a turntable:

And finally, here's his walk cycle:

He's a lot of fun to work with! I can't wait to do some more serious animations with him and with my bunny character!

You can download Bobby and see more images of him (including his wireframe and rig) here.

Until next time!

The Cute Bunny is Finished!

I finished my Cute Bunny model! That's what I'm calling him until I can think of a good name. Anyway, he's all rigged and tested and ready to go! He's really a lot of fun to animate! After all those problems with Bobby, it was nice to make something that didn't fight me every step of the way. Rigify helped a lot with that. I still had to adjust and add on rig pieces, but it really sped the whole process up tons.

Here are some screenshots of the Bunny, with and without his rig and jacket.

Here's a new turntable:

And a walk cycle:

And finally, an example of how his jacket reacts to movement.

You should definitely expect to see more of this guy in the future. I want to try compositing him into a photo, and do some lipsync with him. I'd also like to be able to animate him with his jacket. That shouldn't be too much of a problem, render-wise, as I've set up a tiny sort of render farm! It's just this computer (my stronger 64-bit Windows 7) and my last computer (an out-of-the-box 32-bit Windows Vista). I transfer files between them with a USB stick, because I can't get the Vista online. The Vista renders slower, but it's still nice to be able to share render loads with another computer.

Anyway, if you want to animate this little Bunny, too, he is now for sale on Turbosquid.

Until next time!

A Cute, Nameless Bunny

Hi, everyone! I've got a new character that I'm working on that I'm excited to show you. Poor Bobby the Bocat has unfortunately been put to the side again, this time perhaps forever. It seems that working on him in little spurts over two years has allowed me to create all sorts of issues, and since I can't remember how I made him, it makes it very difficult to troubleshoot. If you think you can help, you can read the details of my problem, check out the rig, and try to help through the BlenderArtists thread I started.

Unlike Bobby, the little guy I'm about to show you is completely new, and so far hasn't given me much trouble. Modeling and texturing is done, so next I'll be rigging him. Here's a turntable render of him:

I'm not sure if I'll be keeping the jacket. I'm going to have to think about it for a bit. It's not really the possible technical issues that it gives that I'm worried about, I'm just not sure if he's cuter without it.

Here's what he looks like in Blender. The jacket is wrinkled because I baked a cloth simulation, which came out very nice without going through his mesh or fur.

Here's what he looks like in edit mode (without his jacket). I had Photoshop lighten the image up so you can see his wireframe better.

So he's coming along very well! I hope to soon have some images of him with a rig. I may also soon have images related to an animated short I'd like to make, probably in Maya (I'm using Blender so much, I'm afraid I'll forget how to work in Maya, and I use Maya in college, so that can't happen).

Anyway, until next time!

Bobby is Complete!

Well, I actually still have to do some little weight painting tweaks, so he's more like 95% complete. But that's complete enough to start making renders and animations. And the good thing is that making those will show me what areas need tweaking, so it all works out.

Bobby has a pretty advanced rig. His face is controlled by bones, which are actually drivers that control shape keys. He has IK/FK functionality for his whole body, and his tongue is controlled by bones outside of his head that can be scaled and moved about freely. In IK mode, his fingers are controlled by single bones that can be scaled to automatically curl them inward. Lastly, though this isn't really a rigging thing, his materials are set up so that he can be used with either the Blender internal renderer, or the Cycles renderer.

Here's a Cycles render of Bobby (slight post-work in Photoshop):

He's very happy to finally be out of that T pose! Here's what his finished rig looks like on the IK layer:

And here's what it looks like on the FK layer:

Here is a list of the tutorials I used. They're all very well done!

• Foot/Leg Rigging 
• IK/FK Leg Rigging 
• Spine Rigging 
• Face Rigging 
• IK/FK Arm Rigging 
• Hand Rigging 
• Alpha Mapping in Cycles 

I'm really happy with Bobby! It took a week of day and night work to rig him, but it was worth it! Now to make more test poses/animations and do the final tweaks. I'm also going to make him a walk and run cycle, a lip sync animation, and probably a pantomime animation. I'll post those on here when they're done. When I'm done with everything and Bobby's completely production ready, I'll make him available on Turbosquid.

Until next time!

Bobby Rigging Update

Hi, guys! Here's a quick update on the bobcat rig.

I've finished rigging his legs and torso. It took a lot longer than I had expected, but that's because I rigged him with some good, advanced tools. He has IK/FK functionality, and little important extras like foot roll and tumble controls, and knee pole vectors. Having used professional/semi-professional rigs in my animation class, I knew that I wanted those to be in his rig, to make animation easiest.

I really think that using other rigs is a great way to figure out what you'd like to include in your rigs, and what you wouldn't like. For example, I currently like facial rigs best if there are bones actually on the face for me to use, so I'm rigging Bobby's face in that way. I don't like having some big panel of sliders next to the face. It's not like that method is any less effective, I just don't enjoy animating with those rigs as much. Of course, this preference is just based off of one rig that had that sort of setup, so maybe other such rigs are better.

Here's a shot of the foot rig, without the tumble bones or custom shapes. It's pretty complicated (for me, anyway, since I didn't know how to rig extra controls before).

Here's a shot of the rig as it is right now, with x-ray on for the bones. Those extra shapes outside of the rig control the knees, foot tumble, foot role, and leg IK/FK. The spine's IK/FK does not have a control. Instead, you just switch visibility layers (you do this with the legs as well, the IK/FK control just helps switch the deformation bones around). I'm color-coding the bones into groups, which is why some of them are red.

And here's the rig with x-ray turned off. The controls are big enough for the rig to be animated in this way.

I'm currently working on giving him some gums (for some odd reason I never made him any, which I know from experience can lead to problems). Once I make those, I'm going to rig his face. When I'm all done rigging, I'll post a list of all the tutorials I used. There are a number of awesome people who recorded tutorials that helped me tons, and I want to give them credit.

Until next time!