Goals for this week

• Figure out the Fx

What happened.

The first thing I did was make one more tent in marvelous designer.

Then the rest of my week was

• After many different attempts I got something working.

Next Week:

More Fx work

Goals for this week

Modeling

What happened

I modeled the interior for the airplane shot. There was some confusion on the look, so I ended up doing some remodeling. In the end it all worked out.

Additionally I went back into marvelous and had some fun destroying some tents for the camp scene.

Next Week:

Help model more

Figure out whats going on with the FX.

Hours: 18

Goals for this week

• Model props, Work on the shoggoth

What I got done this week

• I modeled and uved five bottles, a knife and a small tent.

• Additionally I worked on the shoggoth rig. I fixed some weighting in the front of the shoggoth and I added more control to the big mouth so it can be moved around.

Next Week

• Model

Hours: 16

Goals for this week

• Work on modeling tents and environment art.

What happened

• I got a lot of modeling finished this week. I took a bit of time and experimented making a tent in marvelous design. The first design did not seem to be held up by anything. Therefore Ethan made some frames, then I draped the cloth in marvelous. I made two of the three tents. I also modeled and uve`d a pan, fork, cot, and plate.

Next Week

• Fix up some issues on the shoggoth rig.
• Tweak models based off crit
• Model last tent, model other props.

Total Hours: 17

I was not able to get much done this week. I got the flu over the break and was dealing with trying to get better. I did practice some fx work for when the animation is complete, I also tried to work ahead so I can dedicate most of my time to work on the fx when the time comes. For right now I will be working on the environments with Ethan and Josh.

Goals for this week

Finish rigging the shoggoth.

What got done.

I finished rigging the shoggoth. I added in clusters with fk and ik controls to all of the small tentacles. I added in SDKs in for all of the mouths and eyes. I added in some additional controls to morph the body. The only hard part of the week was trying to get the weighting to work with the tentacles and the body moving.

To help save time I am rendering the turntable of the shoggoth on my home computer. I set up the shaders and textures that val and josh made then after a few tests with the lighting I was able to get something working.

Hours: 27

For next week:

Fix / add anything to the shoggoth rig.

Prepare for dynamics.

Task for this week:

• Rig more of the shoggoth.

What got done:

• The rigging of the eyes and mouth was not a very difficult task. It was straight forward placing the joints and controllers for all the eyes but it was very tedious. The base painting of all the weights for the eyes and mouths took awhile but was straight forward. The hardest part was smoothing out all the weights, and getting the eyes to work with the shoggoth bending. On a good note all of the mouths and eyes have been rigged.

Next Week:

• Rig more of the shoggoth

Hours: 40+

Goals for this week: 

• Get animators to look over tentacle rig.
• Fix any issues with the tentacle rig.
• Begin rigging the shoggoth.

What got done:

• I decided to go over the tentacle rig again to see if I could find any issues. After a second look I found issues with the control hierarchy not working with the whole rig and there was twisting issues in the small tentacles. I was able to fix the hierarchy issue easily. I added in a advanced twist in the main rig, this helped fix most of the twisting issues. If the animators feel like there is still a twisting issue in the rig I will go back and try and fix the problem. I also went back and added stretchiness  into all the small tentacles

• Dave went over the rig and said he liked it. The only issue he found is that the small tentacles do not follow along when using the twist and roll attribute in the rig. I attempted at fixing the issue but I could not find a solution. I am going to re visit the issue in the shoggoth rig.

• Rigging the shoggoth went well. It was a challenge to figure out the correct weighting and spine structure for the shoggoth. After different attempts, I figured out the correct layout and weighting for the spine. I then added in an sdk for the shoggoth to raise its front part of its body.  From there I rigged the mouth and added in a sdk for the mouth to open and close. Finally I began rigging the eyes of the shoggoth. I so far have rigged five eyes.

• One small task that came up during the week was to add more detail to dyers jacket. Luckily I had an old file that had a more detailed jacket. Switching out the jacket was straight forward, the only issue that came up was maya crashing.

Next Week

• Rig more of the shoggoth.

Hours: 21

Goals for this week:

Finish rigging the main tentacle rig. Help attach the hair and mustache.

What I got done: 

• I finished rigging the tentacle. I added a lot of control similar to Evans rig that was given to our team as example of a tentacle rig.  The main body of the tentacle rig has Ik and Fk controls. It has the ability to stretch. It also has a sine deformer. I attempted to have Ik and Fk controls for moving the tentacle fingers individually and together.  I could not get that to work so therefore the individual tentacle fingers have Ik controls and individual sine deformers.  For moving the tentacles together the rig has Ik and Fk controls. Finally the tentacle fingers can twist together.

• I also met with some people from the team to have a “emergency mustache meeting”. After different attempts to get the hair to follow the rig correctly we found that binding the head and mustache cap to the rig was the
  best option.

Next Week: 

• Get the animators to look over the tentacle rig.
• Fix any issues with the tentacle rig.
• Begin rigging the shoggoth.

Hours: 22

Clothing

This week most of my time was taken up working on the clothing. The whole team decided to use marvelous designer to create the clothing. The team met to go over the clothing and what type of detail should be added. The biggest hassle was getting the clothing to work with the character rigs. After many different attempts binding , and fixing the clothing I was able to get the clothing to work for Danforth. Currently I am in the middle of getting the clothing to work with dyers rig.

Pros: Finished making the clothing

Cons: It took too long to get the clothing to work with the character rigs.

Hours: 25

Rigging

In addition to working on the clothing I prepared myself for rigging the shoggoth. I broke down and remade an example of a tentacle rig that was made by Evan Boucher.

Pros: I can start rigging the shoggoth.

Cons: None

Hours: 3

Upcoming Tasks

• Start rigging the shoggoth

Rigging Dyers Face

This week I finished up rigging dyers face.  I ran into no errors when rigging his face. His face was straight forward to rig but very time consuming and tedious. Gabe did come across an issue with danforths rig, luckily I was able to fix the issue fast.

Pros: Finished facial rigging! ( until an issue appears)

Cons: none

Hours: 22

Clothing

I decided to help create a first draft of the clothing in marvelous designer . Compared to modeling in Maya, it did not take too long to create the clothing.  This week I am going to work with val and whoever else in creating the clothing.

Pros: Marvelous designer is awesome

Cons:  A lot needs to be done to finish the clothing.

Hours: 6

For next week:

: Rigging the shoggoth

: Help with clothing

Rigging Dyer and Danforths Face.

This week I continued on rigging both of the faces. I spent a lot of time battling dyers weights because mirroring was not working correctly. Luckily I was able to fix the issue today. Now all I need to do is race to finish up dyers face rig. I finished Danforths face rig. I added a lot of controls to his face because he expresses a lot of emotion in the story.

Positives: Danforth`s face is finished and I was able to fix the issue with Dyer.

Negative:  Dyers weighting issue took up a lot of time.

Hours: 25-30

 

Rigging the Face

• Summary: Over the break and the first week of class I worked on rigging the face of dyer and danforth. I was able to get pretty far on both. Right now I am in the middle of rigging the mouth for danforth and dyer.
• Negatives. Over the break me and Val had issues trying to get the eyebrows to follow the geo deformation. Luckily we figured out a solution. As well dyers weights got weird and would mirror correctly. Me and gabe tried to fix it but had no luck.
• Positives: A lot of the facial rigging was finished. If things go smooth this week I might have an extra day to fit in finer controls into the rig.

Hours ( including break) . 40 + hours

 

We made it to our final presentation! Hoorah!

Instead of the usual screenshot of our Trello board, I made this little screencapture video (embedded) to highlight our progress from the beginning of the term to the end. As you can see, our “done” column stretches aaaall the way to the bottom, and only a few cards were put on the backburner. Two of them, the Shoggoth model and facial rigging, will be done over winter break. The other two, prop modeling and environment detail work, are ongoing projects that will stretch through the next term while the animators finish animating. Overall, I’d call our progress successful!

Looking forward to presenting to the faculty tomorrow!

Task #1: Character Turntables

For our presentation this week, I wanted to make sure our characters were presented in the best way possible, so I created turntables of both the close-up facial details and full body wireframes. When I started animating the characters, however, I soon realized that a lot of the dynamic properties I tweaked to sculpt the hair did not translate well into animation. After fighting with the hair and fur systems for a while (the characters’ eyebrows kept flying away and Dyer’s hair completely exploded), I realized I had to backtrack a LOT and redo most of the hair. Sigh.

The good news: It all works, and is completely animatable! This took muuuuch longer than I budgeted though, so I had to table a few of my smaller deliverables. I was originally intending to texture the clothing modeled by Dave Maguire, but I decided it would be better to have some REALLY polished head turntables instead of half-assed clothing. I tweaked Dyer’s model to give him more pronounced eyelids, modeled eyelashes, painted additional texture maps (for more detail), and rendered it all out.

• Positive Stuff:  I got some really positive feedback! Everybody seemed to love my changes, and the turntables rendered without any SSS flickering. And, perhaps most importantly, even the extreme close-ups rendered at only 3 minutes per frame.
• Problems / issues:
  • Danforth’s fluffy hat texture took too long to render, so it was left out of the renders. It’ll be added in when it’s optimized a tad better.
  • I didn’t re-UV Dyer after modifying his model, so his wireframes have seams down the center axis. I’ve already fixed this problem, but I didn’t fix the renders.
  • Mustache could be a little fuller.
  • No clothes… yet!

Hours: 15 😦 😦 😦

Task #2: The Presentation

SrProjectProposal_Team1_Final_pdfExport

I created the Keynote for our end-of-fall progress report presentation. I used the same template as our pitch, so thankfully putting everything together didn’t take too long. The assets themselves took a while, though — because so many of our deliverables include motion, I edited together a few videos from everyone’s assets and embedded them in the presentation.

• Positive Stuff: I’m really, really happy with all the progress everyone has made! Looking forward to showing it all off tomorrow. 🙂
• Problems / issues: None so far, but I suppose we’ll find out tomorrow what the faculty thinks.

Hours: 4

LIST OF UPCOMING TASKS:

Before the end of the term, I’d like to have the following completed:

1. Textured clothing
2. Tweaked Dyer model (his eyes are slightly too feminine for my tastes)
3. All textures, shaders, and character details DONE and ready to be imported into the rig

Houdini

Summary: This week I continued my work in learning Houdini. The main issue that I was able to over come was exporting FBX files to Houdini correctly. I also figured out how to export alembic files to Houdini.

Pros: I actually exported a full scene correctly from Maya to Houdini.

Cons: Alembic and FBX in Houdini both have their strength and weaknesses.

Hours: 4

Rigging

Summary: Nothing too new this week for rigging. I finished up dyer. I added all the finger controls/ sdks. I fixed the ikfk blending. I also added in eye controls.

Pros: At this point the rigs are finished! Expect fixing some weighting issues and any other issues.

Cons: None other that hand sdks take a long time to make.

Hours: 10

For next week:

Prepare for the presentation.

Move onto the face rigging.

Rigging

This week I fell a little behind because I went into hospital in the beginngig of the week for a back injury.

Summary: To this point I finished all that need to be put into danforth for the body rigging. Unless anything else comes up, that being rig issues, the rig breaking, and helping gabe with the weighting. This week I finished all the SDKs for the hands. I switched the IK FK switch so they can be blended between one and zero. I rigged the hat. The hat still needs a little work on the weighting. Finally I added controls for the eyes.

Pros: Danforth is very close  for facial rigging.

Cons: Need to catch up and finish dyers extra rigging.

Hours: 10

 

Houdini

Summary. I continued my weekly study of learning Houdini. This is mainly for advanced animation but anything I learn in Houdini I believe will help in the future when I begin working on effects.

Pros: I am slowly starting to understand different parts of Houdini. Excited to try implement. Houdini in the project

Cons: Still a lot of Houdini to learn.

Hours: 3

Rigging

Summary

Being that I was not getting great weighting from last week and to save time gabe decided to help out this week with rigging. The way things worked out is that I worked on base weights for both danforth and dyer. I got all the weights to an alright state, then gabe went in and did all the fine tuneing. I am really happy with the result of the weighting that gabe did. The weights will still change as the animation progresses. Gabe also added in a extra joint to help with the squash and stretch in the body.

Along with weighting I worked on some rigging fixes. The animators found some issues with the rigs that I went in and changed. The setup for the neck control was not as good as I hoped it was going to be. Therefore I went and changed the neck back to a regular Fk neck setup. I also fixed the fk controls in the arms. I set up the controls up so the clavicle controls are on the same rotation axis as the fk controls. While gabe was weighting he saw some joint placement errors, so I fixed those issues as well.

Finally I worked on hands. It took me some time to find a good setup for the hands. I was able to set up the hands in a way that will let me go in and add in extra control in the future. As well I avoided using sdks and used the connection editor, which will also save time in the future. The rest of the hands will be finished tomorrow.

Pros – It was great working together with gabe, he helped a lot. I am excited to start the face rigging.

Cons – Some of the issues in the rigs could of been prevented.

Hours: 13

 

Learning Houdini

Summary

This week I continued learning Houdini. I worked on learning the smoke solver in Houdini and attached smoke to broken up geometry. I was able to get some pretty good results with fast sim times compared to maya

Pros – Houdini is fun to learn.

Cons –  Figuring out how to incorporate Houdini into everything with the project.

Hours: 10

 

 

 

This week I started working on the weights for dyer. I was not able to work as much this week because I had some issues at home to deal with.

Rigging

Summary: I spent a lot of time painting the weights for dyer and did not get too far. The tight edge loops around the legs is giving me trouble to get good deformations out of the legs. I was going to make corrective blendshapes, but I want some what good deformations for making the blendshapes. After awhile I got something working with dyer.

Pros: Nothing at the moment

Cons: The weight painting was not working well

Hours: 7

Houdini Clouds

Summary: I was able to make clouds in Houdini. They seem like they will be a good option for some of the shots in the animation.

Pros: The clouds look really good.

Cons: Long render times.

Hours: 4

Upcoming tasks

Painting weights.

Rigging

• Summary: So this week i finished up both of the proxy rigs except for the hands. But the animators can begin! So I found out i found my twist attribute was not good enough to replace making pole vector controls. It took me a awhile to set up in the beginning. But I found an amazing trick to set them up, which saved me a lot of time.  From there i added a lot of extra controls. I added visibility controls to hide different parts of the proxy rig, and the global controls for the flexiplane rig.  I added space matching for the pole vectors, feet and hands. The leg pole vectors can now follow the body control, or the ik control. The arm pole vectors can follow the ik control, the clavicle control, and the body control. I added added auto clavicle controls for both arms. The feet can switch between local space and world space. I added a attribute to the elbow bend controls to follow the pole vector control.The arms can switch between local, head, and world space. I also attached curves to the pole vectors. Just in case the pole vectors get lost in geometry.  A minor add, but I colored coded the rig.
• Positive stuff  : Animation can begin… I hope!

• Problems/ issues : Setting up the pole vectors. The twist in dyers forearm was off. I fixed it but I am not sure if still looks incorrect.

Hours : 15

• 

 Learning Houdini

• Summary: I would not say what i learned in Houdini  this week directly influences our current progress. But it will help later down the road. I went through the first part of one of my fxphd courses that goes over tree animations. It went deep into complex topics in houdini.

• Positive stuff  : Going through the course helped show me more the power of Houdini.

• Problems/ issues : Houdini can get complicated fast.

Hours: 15

 

 
For this week more rigging.

Summary.

For this week i finished the main base rigs for both of the characters. I added an ik fk switch to the the arms. I added a clavicle controls. I added in the ribbon rigs for the forearms and the shoulders, including twist. I added a stretch controller for the elbow.

Negatives.

The ik arm rig was resulting in horrible deformation/twists. Therefore I went back and fixed it.

Positives

Base rigs are finished.

Hours

14

I also met with Dave Mauriello to go over various rigging topics.

Summary.

We talked about rigging tentacles, rigging the shoggoth, locomotion of the shoggoth, and potential ways for me to contiunre rigging while dave, gabe, and pat are animating.

Positive

It was a great meeting, that helped break down the shoggoth into different parts.

Negative.

After talking the current shoggoth model will need to be scrapped.

Hours

2.5

 
For next week.

Continue rigging (add in finer controls, hands, try to break the rig)

Test clothing simulations.

Relay all the information from my meeting with Dave to the rest of my team.

Rigging

• Summary: Got pretty far this week in rigging. I was able to add stretch in the ik and fk joints. The joints still switch fluently between the two chains. The fk chains have independent stretch inputs for the thigh and knee control. I also added the flexiplanes in both legs. This required me to add twist functionality for the thigh flexiplane and shin flexiplan. Finally I added a control to stretch the leg from the knee.

• Negative Stuff: I ran into an annoying issue in the beginning of the week with the Ik legs orientation. As well, I am not too sure why but maya 2015 was crashing constantly. I am still not sure what is wrong but I am still trying to figure out the issue. I am behind in where I want to be in the rig.

• Positive Stuff: I was able to set up the legs for both the characters. The animators seemed to really like what I did with the rig.

Hours 15-16 Meeting

• Summary: I met to talk with my group. We went over our presentation and the script revision.
•  Positive stuff: I am not involved as much in the script but I loved the changes in the story
•  Problems: Nothing right now, I felt that the meeting went really well.

Hours 3-4

FOR NEXT WEEK : 

• Rig the arms

For this week I continued to rig.

• Summary: This week I started off by finishing the neck. I added space matching to the neck, then I started to work on the legs. I first made the bind joints, then the IK and FK joints. I then created an IK FK switch for both legs. When the legs are switched into one mode, the visibility for the controllers in the other mode is switched off. I also added a lot of controls for both the feet.
• Problems / issues: Nothing too major this week that made me completely restart. Only issues were typical things that happen when rigging. The ik handle was not orienting correctly, some of the constraints I tried to make were not working, and a mistake on my part I left a .001 rotation in a joint.
• Positive: I fixed all my issues! ( I hope) Now I can start rigging the fun stuff.

Hours : 15

UPCOMING TASKS

• Add advanced controls for the   legs
• Start the arms
• Hopefully break down Evans rig

This week my primary focus was rigging. It was a week of testing new solutions and combing old solutions.

• Summary: For this solution I used a ribbon rig.The rig has built in squash and stretch with volume preservation. In addition it has twist built in.  I began with trying to use this solution in the spine and the neck.
• Positive Stuff: I really love the ribbon rig and it has a lot of potential to add cartoon motion into the characters.
• Problems / issues: Sadly this solution was a no go. After showing the animators they pointed out that the spine was set up in a way that it would have to be counter keyed. Before trying to fix this solution I tried something else.

• Summary:  In this solution I used an ik spline with an advanced twist. It has squash and stretch built in with volume preservation . It also has fk and ik controls. I used this solution in the neck as well. The rig is built using proxy geometry.
• Positive Stuff: The animators love the solution.
• Problems / issues: The volume preservation was not as good as the ribbon rig. I could potentially fix that with using a lattice deformer. I am not sure but I tried to add volume preservation into the neck but the solution I used in the spine was not working in the neck. The biggest problem is yet to come, trying to combine this solution with the ribbon rig in the arms and legs.

LIST OF UPCOMING TASKS:

1 . Rigging

Hours: 11-12