New rigging demo reel

[edwardG]

Ha ha, nice stuff!

I would definitely include both on one reel, probably starting with the Ragdoll one first. One reason why is that what you accomplished is very well explained through the demonstration, while the R2-D2 one doesn't do that ( It looked like you did some sort of pose scripting for him but didn't mention that in the demo). Just add some captions to the R2 rig to let the viewer know what they are looking at.

Good luck with everything Richard!

[mlefevre]

The ragdoll demo is especially impressive, can't wait to see some more stuff!

Thanks,

-matt

[labbejason]

The ragdoll stuff was cool!!

[Gnimmel]

Thanks for the replies. It seems everyone so far likes the descriptions better then just showing the rig.

edwardG - The R2 one wasn't a pose script, I quickly animated that last bit as I was recording. I think that shows your point very well, so I will add some text to it.

With that in mind, I just put together another quick example of my Trex rig. This is a old rig, but I liked the animation I used it for and wanted to show that off.

http://www.freelance-animation.com/animations/Trex_Rig_Demo_Web.mov

I have some more complex rigs I want to work with next, like a siamese troll with 4 arms and 2 heads/spines. The only problem with that one is I never got to animate it myself.

Thanks for the comments so far, please keep them comming.

Richard

[Boucha]

Impressive stuffs...I really loved the rag doll system.

[d-brooks]

I loved both! The ragdoll felt a bit floaty, but obviously that was 'straight out of the box' so you can fine tune the way it looks afterward.

Well done, keep the good work coming :D

[d-brooks]

wow and the t-rex too! Great stuff :D

[Gnimmel]

Again, thanks for the coments so far.

I just uploaded another example on how the lego mini's face rig works. It was a interesting problem to solve because it needed a real 3D rig for animation, but the end result needed to be a 2D animated texture map.

http://www.freelance-animation.com/animations/Mini_Face_Demo_Web.mov

Thanks,

Richard

[DanHaffner]

The ragdoll blew my mind. I stared in awe as I watched it, then the pain in my brain set in as I tried to think of how you would even begin that script.

The Lego face one is equally insane.

[Gnimmel]

I just uploaded one more movie example of my rigging tools scripts to;

http://www.freelance-animation.com/animations/RiggingTools_Demo_Web.mov

All comments are welcome.


DanHaffner : haha, thanks for that. It's not as hard as it looks, I had more trouble with setting up the ragdolls in PhysX than I did with the scripts.

Thanks,

Richard

[DanHaffner]

Is PhysX a program that ties in with Maya or something? I have actually never heard of it.

[Gnimmel]

PhysX is a real time physics engine for games, however there was a maya plug-in (there is one for max as well) called Nima which alllowed you to use the engine in maya. Nima is no longer in development, but I belive Nvidia has taken over the project.

I used PhysX because it's faster than Maya's rigid bodies, but the version I used had a lot of features missing. You can achive the same results in maya without it, but I found it took a lot longer to calculate. There is also a ragdoll system built into physX, but the version I used was very buggy and I ended up building my own ragdoll rigs. My ragdoll system was created on Maya 7, so it's a little old now. The newer PhysX might be a lot more stable.

For more info try;

http://www.nvidia.com/object/nvidia_physx.html

http://www.feelingsoftware.com/content/view/45/67/lang,en/

Thanks,

Richard

[DanHaffner]

Def checking those sites out, thanks man.

[edwardG]

Great stuff there! You can easily put together a good reel with what you have. I think you're biggest problem is going to be cutting out some stuff to fit it all in 3:00 minutes.

I would probably do the following:

30 - 60 seconds: Rigging Tools
20 seconds: Ragdoll Legos
20 seconds: Lego Face Rig
20 seconds (maybe just 10): R2-D2 Rig
30 - 60 seconds: T-Rex piece

I think that way you start really strong and end strong as well. The Lego stuff is very good, I just think that the others are a little bit better.

A quick question about the Animated Textures: So did the controls basically control switching between a number of different texture maps? If so, were those maps broken up into different parts of the face so that you could animate the left side different from the right side? Also, were the Iris/pupils done by slide around some UVs or is there something more complex happening?

Thanks!

[Gnimmel]

Hello all,

Thanks again for everyones comments so far. I've just posted a final version with a few new little animations and things to;

http://www.freelance-animation.com/animations/TechDemo2009_Web.mov

Thanks,

Richard

[Boucha]

As Again...your reels are impressive...Keep them coming :thumbsup:

[luigi]

quite impress i have to say , god explanation nice speed and good samples.

one of the strongest TD reel I have seen in alot of time.

congratulations .

[MolemanSD7]

Awesome reel. I'm diggin the lego facial stuff. My only comments would be to use a font that's easier to read, and not the bright green color. Find some other way to display the text without blocking the video. Maybe a light, semi-transparent white box behind the text? I don't know. Get creative or ask an artsy friend. I started to get a teeny headache from it. ;)

[Rupesh1122]

Your reel is really awesome Gnimmel.

[EricDLegare]

Ragdoll stuff : awesome :P

Transition at 1.04 : awesome :P

The R2D2 Lego Rig : Maybe a little to simple for the reel

Overall : awesome :P

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