elastigirl

#1

Hello!
Has anyone here seen the incredibles yet? Beautiful movie!
I was wondering if anyone has any idea how elastigirl was rigged?
Anyone up for the challenge?
If you come up with something, post it here!

#2

Not sure if exactly how Elastigirl was rigged can be disclosed, but I can tell you the guy
responsible for the stunt rig:

Mark Therrell.

The regular model (face/body )was articulated by Austin Lee with animator-buddy Dave Mullins. These guys deserve props as well.

machsumo

#3

I saw a presentation by a guy from Pixar yesterday who was asked the same question, he said she was nothing fancy or strange, just different custom rigs, depending on what she had to do in that scene.

#4

Yeah, I was wondering the same thing as well… I was guessing just several of the stretchy joint solvers??? I’ve yet to delve into that type of setup, so I don’t know too much about the details of it, but I know there are several tutorials around for stretchy limbs and such, so I’m guessing something similar?

But yeah, I was also figuring they might have to have special models for those stretchy scenes, so that the textures/wireframe would deform correctly.

#5

I’m going to guess a stretchy spline IK setup for the arms, legs and body. Kudos to all involved:)

#6

I would tend to agree with Paul that it must have been a form of stretchy spline IK. I have used the same technique in max to achieve very similar results (extremely stretchy limbs)…and basically had a switch to lock and unlock the spline system to a regular arm rig.

However I think that there must have been more to it than that for some of the more extreme deformations (such as flattening or drastic changes in shape such as the parachute shot). I also expect that they probably had custom rigging going on to achieve some shot specific effects.

Regardless the results look fantastic!

#7

well well a friend showed me this the other day comes from the aol stream. In it it talks about how they rigged the character, muscle system and clothes.
PIXAR VIDEO

#8

Its called Bend Bone, says it on the video. I wish Pixar would release some of there tools like Blur Studio does.

#9

That video was great, really inspiring. Yeah I wish they would release some tools, but unfortunately I don’t have marrionate sitting on my desktop. :banghead: Do you? I mean…

#10

Carlos Baena and Rodrigo Blaas, spanish animators from the movie, told in a 3D festival that the elastic girl’s arms were so difficult to animate, because they had several “arm morph targets” depending how long was the arm. I mean, it seems that they used several meshes with different resolution depending the lenght of the arm. They didn’t explain it with detail, since the event was full of “not-3d-users” people.

Hope it helps…

#11

Hey all
although this isn’t elastagirl arms, it is bendy arms (round elbows)

Jason Osipa Thread

same sort of principle can be applied to create long stretchy arms with diffrent joint targets along the path that can bend/displace the arm.
So you could have your normal arm joints,
then create a joint (several joints depending on the degree of control you wish all parented to the shoulder) system that stays within % range of say shoulder and elbow

by using a expressions like;
UpprMidArm_joint01.translateZ=Elbow.rotate X*-.001*Control.bend

Create a controller that controls bendyness from 0-1 which control the magnitute of bendyness…

NB: I haven’t tried to do this with a joint “system” only with one mid joint, but im presuming the principle could apply to all…

-Chris

i

#12

Yeah, I was beginning to think that they may have used those stretchy joints on a spline IK system, probably not as hard as I had originally thought, maybe.

#13

Sorry, should have done this originally:

SPOILERS!!

Heh, the arms and legs aren’t the hard part; there are about a zilion ways to do that, it’s just a matter of picking what’s most stable. The twisting the limbs up in the “suit shot” and the turning to-and-from a flat “parachute” type structure back into a normal character -THAT’s the fun stuff! -J.

#14

parachute structure??

now you’ve made me even more excited about it…

oh man, i really want to see the incredibles, its not out over here till boxing day…

#15

It can be done just needs a little lateral thinking:

>>PLAY<<

I’ll tell you more once i can show you guys how to set it up.

eek

#16

Wow!
What did you do that in?
Was it easy? am I missing something?
please explain!!!
Thanks!
(Edit:
I just understood what your wrote:
That would rock if you could tell us! thanks!)

#17

It would be dang cool if could figure out how to do “stretchy limbs”. Sooo much can be done with it. What program are you guys discussing? What program did pixar to it in?

#18

Pixar wrote their own proprietary software. I use max, but I don’t know what eek is using!
just think what could be done!

#19

I did that in max 4.2!, built on an existing setup of mine.

Was it easy? am I missing something?
please explain!!!
Thanks!
Not too difficult, the hardest part is making it accessible/easy to the animators. That was just proof of concept, it needs a lot of refinement.

A pic of the rig:-

Heres some more crazy bendy action!:

>>PLAY<<

The final version will probably be built on expressions. Also in Incredibles i rekon they have different setups for different scenes.

eek

#20

Crazy!
That is really cool! I have used expressions a bit for rigging, but not much. mostly in PMG.
So about how long did it take you to set that up? from the pic, it looked like a real headache!