Snoswell Design Releases the cgHuman 1.0

[FraggleFart]

That is absolutely incredible:surprised
i want to quit now...

[Gentle Fury]

ok, so are they going to implement a muscle maker or something? Cuz if all you can do is that one guy its kinda useless.

[Stimpy]

http://www.cgcharacter.com/cghuman/image/squeeze.jpg

*BLOOOP*


he looks kind of creepy with the skin.. and somehow out of porportions.. at least to me. maybe im wrong.

[MarkSnoswell]

ah... this is just V 1.0. In the future it will have muscle generation to match Bipeds or whatever and it will be fully parametric...

...for now, we have done the hard work of designing a set of muscles that are mostly correct AND work really well for character animation.

At just US$195 !!! this model set has a real good skeleton, set of muscles and matching skin and head meshes --way, way cheaper than anything else availble just as a static model set.

The shape conforms with The Ultimate Human model set -- which is the ideal male cacuasian physique.

Reshaping -- it's actually real easy to use FFD's to reshape the whole model set... even in the ACT format with everything rigged up you can do this and colapse back to raw ACT primitives with everything still rigged up and working.

Mark

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr Mark Snoswell.
Creator & Head Dude www.cgCharacter.com
Contributing Editor Design Graphics. www.designgraphics.com.au
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[Omita]

I think I know that guy.

-Omita

[Taoizm]

Mark, thank you so much for bringing us this excellent tool. I do medical animation for a living and this is going to come in very handy.

Now to pry the credit card away from the boss. :bounce:

[Zarathustra]

Well......I do medical work as well. Looking at your walk avi, I noticed your scapulas go through your ribs, there's some bad pinching around the arm pits and the external obliques are getting twisted like cloth around the waste as he twists.
In your running avi, the lack of the fascia lata makes it look like the quads and glutes intersect.

So, are these muscles supposed to automatically flex or something? Are they supposed to affect the skin?

What exactly does your monster do, Dr. Frankenstein?

[skello]

i agree with stimpy ...it looks kinda crappy with the skin on...
Sorta defeats the purpose of having muscle under the skin :thumbsdow

[MarkSnoswell]

cgHuman is designed for character animation -- untimatly that means driving the skin in a believable manner -- not being absoutly anatomically accurate or watching what's going on under the skin. If anatomical acuracy is needed, or you want to watch the anatomy then The Ultimate Human model set is what people need.

In most character animation you do NOT have most muscles, an dbones deforming the skin at the same time -- just the ones that are notecable for the particular shot you are doing... and the result has to satisy the Director -- which means looking "believable to the Director" and not "medically accurate" ;)

As for skinning -- we are working hard on our own cgSkin simulation system -- driven by a desire to overcome the problems we have with all the current skinning systems.

[samhodge]

Thanks for your input Zarathustra,

Everybody here who worked on the model understands all the limitations of the model, we will add more accuracy and fine detail with more time. If you want a completely accurate muscle set the cgHuman is not for you, perhaps you would like to consider the Ultimate Human (http://www.cgcharacter.com/ulthuman.htm) .

the scapula has not even been animated yet :blush: so it doesnt surprise me that it is going though the ribs.

The muscles basically form functional groups ie quads as opposed to vastus lateralis, vastus medialus, quadriceps femoris etc etc. They just look OK for some of the character animation audience.

I think the beauty of this set is that I can drag the time slider and get about 10-15 frames per second. With all the muscles displayed. Not bad for such a cheap price tag, even if I do say so myself.:cool:

So to answer your questions:

1) yes the muscle do automatically flex

2) yes the muscles do deform the skin

I would be interested in seeing some of your work Zarathustra you seem to have a good understaning of Anatomy

[Zarathustra]

Ok. the inital sales pitch was a bit heavy, so I couldn't just let you slide unchallenged. The ultimate human looks pretty cool.

If you went to my sight, you'll see the "under reconstruction" sign. I'm just too busy working and trying to do all the things I want to do. After weeks of catheters and nagogastric tubes, all I want to do is get back to my dragon and a mermaid idea I've got going...

Here are my last 2 major projects:

http://magicanimation.com/fink

http://magicanimation.com/nursing

What else ya got?

[piajartist]

Its only for 3dsmax users right?

[MarkSnoswell]

chHuman 1.0 will be provided ina every format we can... it will be a static model set of skeleton, muscles and skin/face... all with UV's and set up so that they subdivide very well. We will also provide NURBS and possibly patch versions as well... Thats a lot for just $195

but... if you have ACT then you will get cgHuman for FREE and all the muscles will be rigged up to deform and work in real time. The whole skeleton wil also be delivered in ACT format and there will be a sub-skin made of cgTubes that deforms in real time.

Anyone who buys The Ultimate Human model set (or any part of it over $500) will get cgHuman for free also -- cgHuman in ACT format is perhaps the best working example of how to rig various muscles groups to automatically deform. IT's up to individual users just how acuratly they set up their own animations or extend the default deformations we have put into the ACT version of cgHuman.

When ACT for Maya ships it will include a version of cgHuman also.

[dantea]

The thing that I've always wondered about ACT is whether it handles skin sliding. Does anyone know?

[MarkSnoswell]

ACT does three sorts of skin sliding:

1. skin sliding over underlying objects (sub skin deformation)

2. Manual (or rigged) skin sliding in the surface of the skin in both U and V directions -- with full soft selection and animation capabilities.

3. Automatic skin sliding to relax unequal stretching -- fully animatable, soft selection and riggable.

We have plans for more subtle skin actions as well - shock waves, dynamics of the actual skin and fat layers ... but thats being kept for V 2.0 with cgSkin integration.

[NelsonInomvan]

Intresting !!! Wish you luck whit it :thumbsup:
Man i remebered a thread where it was discussed about the near future when the director will do everything and there will be no need of cg artists. Funny a ? :)

[wuensch]

--- for the machine to do the job, I mean as cg in general has and will put so many other crafts out of business( or at least reduce their importance) and nobody (exept those that were put out of business) seemed to care because the possibilities of cg are just so fascinating, hehe.
I dont think that the director will do the cg-- at least not the directors i know.
come to think--
with cg getting more and more powerful, the cg-animator might as well become the director, hehe.
You never know.
Until the producers start doing the animation themselves --- because they know better what sells, right?
;-)
Olli

[facial]

Coooooooooool :thumbsup:

[nimajneb]

Did you say you're going to hand this out to us ACT users for free? Mark, I'm going to kiss you :)

[Joviex]

Originally posted by Olli Wuensch
--- for the machine to do the job, I mean as cg in general has and will put so many other crafts out of business( or at least reduce their importance) and nobody (exept those that were put out of business) seemed to care because the possibilities of cg are just so fascinating, hehe.
I dont think that the director will do the cg-- at least not the directors i know.
come to think--
with cg getting more and more powerful, the cg-animator might as well become the director, hehe.
You never know.
Until the producers start doing the animation themselves --- because they know better what sells, right?
;-)
Olli

Not me. As a producer/director I welcome it. I love CG art, don't get me wrong, but I do lust for the day of the magic button. I am more concerned with telling my stories as quickly and beautifully as possible, not that I had to tap 50k keys and pay a huge electric bill to see the same vision.

I don't see traditional, which is an ironic thing to say at this point, 3d CG going anywhere soon, and even 20 years down the road I imagine people will have things like Max 10, LW Extreme, etc.... as a standard install with whatever OS is still flying around, allowing them to make 3D jsut as we do know with higher end software.

[MarkSnoswell]

:) Work to be done always exceeded time availble!

Blieve me... tools like ACT and cgHuman don't really mean you end up doing less work!... you just start doing better work in the same amount of time -- and hopefully more creative story telling type work rather than hack technical work...

... but, it's seems that no matter how good the tools get, the time alloted to do a project ALWAYS exceeds the tima availble. You show a director or supervisor some new capability and they immediatly want way more than what you showed them!



:) cgHuman FREE with ACT.

To confirm someone elses comment -- YES cgHuman will come free with ACT in future and will be sent for free to all cuttent users.



:) cgHuman on non ACT/max platforms

cgHuman is an excelent model set for character animators... but that's all it is unless you own ACT (and run max) for now. We are working hard to get the Maya port of ACT done and to work out just what sorts of animation functionality (pre-linked bones) can be provided on non-ACT systems for now... mind you, just haveing a giid quality matching set of skeleton. muscles and skin that others have tested and got working well for high end production animations is a hige benifit to start with.

[wuensch]

;-)
absolutely right.
I just finished a 3d illustration after a weekend with minimum sleep, barely making it, nearly exceeding my 1.5 Gig of RAM and all that with the latest version of my app which is faster an better and whatever, on a brandnew super dual machine.
Still it is the same as 2 years ago: I barely made it.
to amorano:
I agree, i for myself do not fear new technology (I am too new to the whole thing yet, coming from traditional Illustration/animation) and I hate to spend 2 weeks on rigging and re-rigging a character instead of animating.

Olli

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