Mike W and Meeper

Hi, everyone! Sorry to have been so inactive over the last month, but I was busy with midterms, and then right after that got busy with final projects. But summer break has finally started, so now I'll be able to update things on here much more often.

To start, I have two new animations to show you. This first one was the second project for my 3D Character Setup & Animation class. We had to design, model, rig, and animate a character similar to Mike Wazowski from Monster's Inc., except without arms. Then we had to make him walk and have an expression change. I had a lot of fun animating this guy, especially with that big nose! I did have some trouble with his feet slipping, though, which I have since figured out how to avoid.

This second one was the final project for my 3D Character Setup & Animation class. For this one, we were given a Meeper model, and had to rig it. Then we had to animate him performing to a song. I chose to have him perform to Marvin Gaye's "Pride and Joy." It was fun making him try to dance around to the song, since he's such a clumsy, silly character. If you've never seen him before, Meeper is the main character from the "Chubb Chubbs" animated short.

I learned some good CG stuff this quarter, which I plan on expanding on this summer. So I should have some new rigs and animations to show you over the next couple of months. And don't worry, I haven't forgotten about finishing Bobby. I also plan to get back into drawing and digital painting, though I'll probably only post my favorite pieces here. To see everything else I make, you should check out my deviantArt gallery and my Tumblr.

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!