LW char animation demo thread

#81

Originally posted by Eugeny
This is some scenes (please right click and download ) from " Bugvaders " - i made all characters set - up, bike set - up, all animation’s, all lighting and environment set up as well as some model tweeking ( Kyle bike jacket was remodeled by me , Kyle arms and bike in some areas )…
… and grass :slight_smile: - made by me with Susquatch . All other models and texturing made by peoples of Adventure - Publishing ( i joined to project on pretty early stages :frowning: )

Hello Everyone.

I’m Nir Hermoni. I worked on the “bugvaders” project from it’s very early stages, before Eugeny came on board.

I’d like to correct some problems in the above statements.
Eugeny did not create all the animations for this scene.
He did not do any of the rigs for the bugs.
I don’t know what he means by “environment set-up”, but it does not include modeling and textures.

This is not the first time Eugeny put up work and made incorrect claims about it. While he is a talented artist and helped us a lot on the mentioned project and others, I will not sit back and allow him to take credit for other peoples work.

Other people who worked on this project, and who were directly involved with this scene: Tal Flint, Shabi Leon, Gil Baran, Eyal Narkiss, Omry Shalish, Hadar Edry, Tom Dor, Nelly Levin, Guy Friedman and myself.

Regards,
Nir Hermoni
www.hermoni.com

#82

Dear Nir , please download the scenes that i posted , and see them carefully. I’m not posted the ALL Bugvaders serials, i posted the scenes there I made the animation’s … And than i say that i made all animation’s i mean all animation’s for these scenes - NOT for ALL Bugvaders! also YES i made all rigs for ALL characters if u not remember that just ask at Tom , even more, for these scenes i made my custom Kyle with hands modeled by me, and more short arms, as well as IK FK rig with controllers for all fingers (u can come back to Adventure and load these scenes to check it) …
U can ask at Eyal about bike model, YES i made some changes for the lamp , as well as little changes for painting textures (ask Nelly), as well as bike rig - because only me used this bike in motion !
Now about animation’s of the bugs - did u really think that i used the crappie bugs animation’s made by some one else ? Or did u really think that i used one spot sun light at cemetery and other scenes made by Gil ? Still look at the the shots that i posted … Then i say environments i mean lights, fog, background (yes, yes i changed the sky for the cemetery sequence), also the grass . I’m not modeled the surrounding objects (cross, landscape , trees e.t.c.) but i 'm not say this!
… uh, one more thing, Kyle - if u don’t know this I’m remodeled Kyle’s jacket (ask Nelly she made new textures for him) :slight_smile: and Tony’s head and Hair u ( can ask Ori) .
Now for other times there i take the credits … The only one place there u may be saw work from Bugvaders is Wind Blowing Leaves that i posted here and on LWG3D forum
CG Talk thread
LWG3D thread
and sorry Nir but here i made ALL from stretch - i remodeled the cross (for close up) , the grave plate and i made little piece of ground for this scene, as well as modeled the leaves and textured. All lights on this scene was made by me as well as all wind susquatch effect - so why i need to share some credits for this short with some one else ? The scene WAS NOT INCLUDED on final cut (if u don’t have final cut version ask at Yuav to receive) and i add the link to Bugvaders … Pretty enough , not ?
The problem that this image was nominated to image of the month - but i was surprised exactly as u , they did this without asking me …
As for credits u forget about Sherban (pretty well known on this board) and Yanay Rubaha .
Cheers Nir ,
Eugeny.

P.S. sorry guys for the little war here …

#83

Take this to private messages. Any more of the who did what bugvaders stuff gets deleted from this thread.

Mike

#84

First I’d like to say Mike and SG, you guys have once again proved why you’re my LW heros. =)
</buttkissing>

Anyways, are there any kind of tutorials online that create the same kind of rig you guys use. All of the tuts I find are really poor, or create the lamest rigs I’ve ever seen. All of the character animation I’ve done has been in Maya. I can rig like a banshee in Maya, but I’m finding it difficult to create any semblance of a useable rig for my LW characters. Since I hate maya’s renderer so much, I end up using renderman for everything, and it’s just getting to the point where I’m sick of the hassle. I’d like to be able to animate my characters in LW. Any tuts for an experienced rigger that just needs the LW spin on things?
Oh, and I’d love to be able to pay for something to help me, but I can’t…I’m a college student majoring in 3d animation…so my budget is nothin’. =)
Thus the necessity of tuts. =)
If you guys can give me any kind of help, I’ll be appreciate. If not, I appreciate your time. =)

#85

Originally posted by vapulus
[B]First I’d like to say Mike and SG, you guys have once again proved why you’re my LW heros. =)
</buttkissing>

Anyways, are there any kind of tutorials online that create the same kind of rig you guys use. All of the tuts I find are really poor, or create the lamest rigs I’ve ever seen. All of the character animation I’ve done has been in Maya. I can rig like a banshee in Maya, but I’m finding it difficult to create any semblance of a useable rig for my LW characters. Since I hate maya’s renderer so much, I end up using renderman for everything, and it’s just getting to the point where I’m sick of the hassle. I’d like to be able to animate my characters in LW. Any tuts for an experienced rigger that just needs the LW spin on things?
Oh, and I’d love to be able to pay for something to help me, but I can’t…I’m a college student majoring in 3d animation…so my budget is nothin’. =)
Thus the necessity of tuts. =)
If you guys can give me any kind of help, I’ll be appreciate. If not, I appreciate your time. =) [/B]

The problem is that most people tend to rig based on technical criteria. They have been taught or told that rigging has something to do with expressions, IK, FK, twisting forearms, closing fingers and so on. Theyre shown HOW to create a rig and not WHY you rig. Ive found that most good animators I know come from a traditional Cel background. Ive found that many good riggers/animators come from a stop motion or puppetry background. There are certain basic principles that make a puppet a good one and makes it easy to work with. Those principles should drive WHY and HOW you rig. If those basic principles are understood properly it makes rigging easier because you know why youre doing what youre doing. Many people are creating rigs for themselves to use. Rigging for somone else who is a very experienced animator is another thing.
I think the reason you dont see lots of in depth tutorials on this is because it takes a lot of time just to do very basic rigging tutorials. The other reason is that, as I said, many people dont understand the princples that DRIVE the rigging (or should drive it). The Online Character Course I have has close to 12 hours JUST on rigging. Youve heard of the 12 principles of animation…well in that part of my course I have the 12 principles of rigging. If those principles are understood a person can rig in any package. In my case I show it for Lightwave. :slight_smile:

#86

I understand the principles of riggins and the kind of things you want to get out of a rig. I actually just completed a really good course on animation, and I learned a few rigs that really do what I want them to do. Unfortunately, I can only seem to apply these rigs in Maya (where I learned them), and I’m having difficulty getting a rig that can do the same things using lightwave. I may just resort to using someone else’s rig, even if that does make me sad. I just look at the gifs Mike posted in the first post of this thread and I want to make THAT. =D I’m just curious how I’d make a rig of that quality using LW’s tools.

Example: how would I create a non-expression-based roll attribute for the foot?

also, Mike’s rig seems to have a lot of things I don’t even know what they are. The circles through the midsection, and the circular planes below the feet. I don’t even know what they are. =)
Like I said, I’m a LW rigging n00b. I would just like to learn it so I can quit using Maya for everything. =D

#87

I think those circles are just nulls. Although for the life of me I can’t seem to find how to make a null look like that.

Mike, I’d also like to see a tut on how to make those knee targets or at least a small explanation on how they work:
Are they parented to anyhting?
What Goal strength do they have?
Are the bones unaffected by descendents?
etc.

I have a pretty good idea of WHAT I’d like my rigs to do but am lacking the technical knowlege of HOW. I keep having my feet ‘slip’ around the targets. Or the knees pointing in odd directions. No tuts I’ve found seem to address these points.

#88

Originally posted by vapulus
[B]I understand the principles of riggins and the kind of things you want to get out of a rig. I actually just completed a really good course on animation, and I learned a few rigs that really do what I want them to do. Unfortunately, I can only seem to apply these rigs in Maya (where I learned them), and I’m having difficulty getting a rig that can do the same things using lightwave. I may just resort to using someone else’s rig, even if that does make me sad. I just look at the gifs Mike posted in the first post of this thread and I want to make THAT. =D I’m just curious how I’d make a rig of that quality using LW’s tools.

Example: how would I create a non-expression-based roll attribute for the foot?

also, Mike’s rig seems to have a lot of things I don’t even know what they are. The circles through the midsection, and the circular planes below the feet. I don’t even know what they are. =)
Like I said, I’m a LW rigging n00b. I would just like to learn it so I can quit using Maya for everything. =D [/B]

You mean you want the character to be able to roll up onto the ball of the foot? Use a null with math goal on it or orient constraints to keep the toe straight as the foot rotates up onto the ball. Those things hes using are Item Shapes so you can use little shapes, colors and labeles to make it clear what controllers do what.

#89

I’m guessing Mike’s using nulls with an ItemShape and maybe a ProxyPicker…? … or something like that, a friend of mine, Joe Gardener, who’s damn good at all things LW, wrote his thesis on rigging. If he still has it up on his ftp site, I’ll post it here (gotta ask him first). In his thesis he takes you straight from the beginning to the end. Some parts are a little vague and jumpy but for the most part, a very new way of looking at rigging for me. However, he does use an expression to keep the foot on the floor whereas I tend to stay away from those just because I have no idea what I’m doing when it comes to expressions. (not a good reason I know, but one thing at a time, please)

Neal

PS also, www.lostpencil.com has some great examples, as well as www.evil-plan.com

#90

Originally posted by Merlin
[B]I’m guessing Mike’s using nulls with an ItemShape and maybe a ProxyPicker…? … or something like that, a friend of mine, Joe Gardener, who’s damn good at all things LW, wrote his thesis on rigging. If he still has it up on his ftp site, I’ll post it here (gotta ask him first). In his thesis he takes you straight from the beginning to the end. Some parts are a little vague and jumpy but for the most part, a very new way of looking at rigging for me. However, he does use an expression to keep the foot on the floor whereas I tend to stay away from those just because I have no idea what I’m doing when it comes to expressions. (not a good reason I know, but one thing at a time, please)

Neal

PS also, www.lostpencil.com has some great examples, as well as www.evil-plan.com [/B]

Yup, those are nulls with special item shapes on them. You can attach sliders to different nulls but you have to hide them so your interface doesnt get clutterered with them. Proxy pick allows you to select those hidden sliders/items easily. I dont think using expressions to keep feet from sliding thru the ground is a very good idea. Its just extra rigging that you can avoid by simply using the graph editor. I usually dont have animations where the ground is always the exact same level. This would mean creating an expression AND some way to override it. Too much work when its just easier to select y values in the graph editor and set them to the same height.

#91

Okay, I have another question. I’m using to setting up set-driven keys that will form the poses I need in the hand. What’s a good way of doing this in LW so I can form a hand-pose and then go back to the pose whenever I need to…a fist for example. I’m determined to replace maya in my workflow. =D I’m sick of it’s quirks. =D

#92

Skin corrective morphing:
http://www.3dluvr.com/blackbourn/web/tuts/cmorph/CMorphs.html

Pose Mixer:
http://www.3dluvr.com/blackbourn/web/tuts/pmtut/pmtut.html

#93

Thanks, Mike. =)
You guys have done a lot in pointing me in the right direction today. Now I’ll just have to figure out how to make what I want in LW’s surfacer. I’m used to renderman, now…it’s been a while since I’ve used LW for anything besides it’s super-sexy modeler. =D
I’ll get there. Thanks for everybody’s time. =D

#94

Hey there,

I was wondering what you guys think of Timothy Albee’s rig in his book LW3D 7 Character Animation… it just seems to be quite unlike any other rigs that I’ve seen in tutorials, but certainly very useable. I’m not sure if I like the feet that much though…

Just interested,

Geoff

#95

Originally posted by vapulus
Okay, I have another question. I’m using to setting up set-driven keys that will form the poses I need in the hand. What’s a good way of doing this in LW so I can form a hand-pose and then go back to the pose whenever I need to…a fist for example. I’m determined to replace maya in my workflow. =D I’m sick of it’s quirks. =D

Lernie has an lscript that emulates how set driven keys work in maya.

#96

Originally posted by geoff3dnz
[B]Hey there,

I was wondering what you guys think of Timothy Albee’s rig in his book LW3D 7 Character Animation… it just seems to be quite unlike any other rigs that I’ve seen in tutorials, but certainly very useable. I’m not sure if I like the feet that much though…

Just interested,

Geoff [/B]

Ive never seen the book but like anything else heard good and bad about it. Its probably better then it is bad. Seeing alternative ways of rigging never hurts. For me what drives how I rig is what the character has to do.

#97

I hope you guys saw my rig that I posted…

#98

This rig is awesome, hope I’ll be able to reproduce that one day.
Did someone learned you ?

#99

Greetings all,

IM a toatal newbie at character animation with lightwave
but im usung credos lifeforms to map character motion to lightwave rigs and learning to clean up and refine it in the POWERFUL Graph editor
here are som very rough examples

http://66.70.166.29/promo/getup.mpg

http://66.70.166.29/promo/reduced.mpg

thanks

#100

On another note.

How about animating your characters.

One thing I’ve found odd about LW is the TCB splines.

How many people use TCB splines vs. Beziers?

I’m partial to beziers myself, just because that’s what I’ve come up using in other apps.

The beziers in LW are a bit weird at times though. Seems like they default to broken tangents.

Advantages/Disadvantages?

I like the precise in/out velocity control that beziers offer on a per keyframe basis.