Post 03 - Handbook and DVD Resources

After the meeting with Darren, I looked into acquiring several tutorial DVDs from the library. These are as follows:

Character Animation: Fundamentals with Chris Kirshbaum

Character Animation: Mechanics & Emotion with Chris Kirshbaum

Character Animation: Acting & Lip Sync with Chris Kirshbaum

Although these are aimed at learning how to 'animate' (which will be useful for my final project), the character used in the DVD's is a rigged one, so in following these tutorials, I feel that I may gain some useful information and will work along side my research into advanced rigging. These tutorials are also all in Maya, so they should allow me to familiarise myself with the UI. Another useful DVD I have borrowed is: Introduction to Maya: Interface & Workflow with Alex Alvarez.

I also have borrowed a couple of books. One is called: Body Language: Advanced 3D Character Animation by Eric Allen & Kelly L. Murdock. The examples in this book are from Maya, which would make it a good opportunity to explore this package and includes an array of advanced technique, such as blend shapes for facial animation as well as various 'IK' techniques. The other is Autodesk Maya 2008: The Modelling and Animation Handbook. This is a great resource and one which will definitely help me when I make the move from 3ds Max's bone system to Maya's joint system for rigging.

Omar Khan has also very kindly leant me a couple of Maya books titled:

Learning Autodesk Maya 2010: Foundation and Autodesk Maya 2010: The Modelling & Animation Handbook. These will be extremely useful as they use a chapter based structure, which covers specific processes or areas of rigging. Support files are also provided should I become stuck and need additional help. In addition, he has provided me with a newer edition to the book which I got out of the Library (although I still aim to use both editions when I need to compare for descriptions, and so on).

 


Character Animation: Fundamentals - LINK 
Character Animation: Mechanics & Emotion - LINK 
Character Animation: Acting & Lip Sync - LINK 
Introduction to Maya: Interface & Workflow - LINK 
Body Language: Advanced 3D Character Animation - LINK 
Learning Autodesk Maya 2010: Foundation - LINK 
Autodesk Maya 2010: The Modelling & Animation Handbook - LINK
Autodesk Maya 2008: The Modelling & Animation Handbook - LINK

Post 02 - Refining the proposed idea

After a couple more discussions with Darren Wall about the possible areas I could look into, I initially decided to go with Re-topology in ZBrush and learning how to rig in Maya. The rationale behind this was that there are many games companies which use Maya for its ability to be customised as well as being flexible and intuitive. Although rigging in 3Ds Max can be done with CAT rigs and so on, I feel that it would be a good opportunity to learn Maya.

I did start to look into and use the re-topology tool/s in ZBrush and came across an insightful video. The technique so far seems to be very straight forward and would help in reducing the size of my semester A model. This is however, still subject to alterations.

Demo Head Re-topology

However, both myself and Darren agreed that whilst learning how to rig (intermediate - advanced hopefully), re-topology could be a project in itself and felt that it would be somewhat of a hurdle before I would be able to immerse myself in the rigging. It is for this reason that I have decided to concentrate on learning how to rig, by looking at several methods of rigging in both 3ds Max and Maya. This way, I am able to learn how to rig, but can use my knowledge of 3ds Max. I would also be able to compare various techniques and aim to explore advanced techniques.

Unfortunately, this would mean that re-topology and the use of ZBrush would be put on the back burner for now as I plan to use standard models. These could be from Maya, ZBrush or downloaded as it is the rigging which is most important.

I could incorporate research what makes good topology for animation, and research the pipeline, but again, I feel a lot more confident knowing that it will be rigging and rigging only which I wish to explore.

The next phase will be to form a proposal document for next Friday. This will need initial research and findings as to why I feel that this would be beneficial. At this stage, the end product or artefact will be a series of rigged full figure models (stock models). These will be rigged using several methods (such as biped and cat in 3ds Max, and others in Maya).

Retopologising in ZBrush - LINK

Post 01 - Thoughts and development progress

I have so far had a meeting with my supervisor Darren Wall and we discussed which skills I wished to develop (as well as the research practice module).

Here are a brief list of topic areas that I feel would be of a benefit to develop:

-Rigging
-Normal lMapping / UV Texturing
-Re-topology

This would either be with a pre made character (i.e. the demo soldier from ZBrush), or I would make a simple character, possibly in ZBrush.

ZBrush model from Semester A

Another avenue that I could explore is to use a character that I made in the last semester for my 3D Technology module (this is logged in my other blog titled: 3D Technologies). The character was 'polypainted' and is more than 8 million polygons in size. So this would be an ideal 'candidate' as I could learn how to retopologise the character, then rigging it and maybe create UV and normal maps, which I could then apply to the low resolution model. The result would be a 3d model, which has a very reasonable poly count, and yet still retains the detail of the hi resolution version version.

This is currently just an idea / area that I wish to explore and will probably be localised to maybe just rigging, or just re-topology / textures.

The next phase is to conduct some research into each area and will be mentioned in this blog.