Miranda [to Ver.2] ... (Nudity)

#101

lol looks like shes got boogers coming out of her nose,

sorry couldnt resist haha

edit: opps i was refering to older pic with green shadows

#102

> c0ldf1ame

It’s OK.

EDIT:
But what I wanted to try is light-feel, clear shadow & shade. First of all, it was depending on my master’s instruction whether I couldn’t catch the meaning by him well or not, Maybe I’ll try light-feel shadow in future to get a clear shadow.

Thanks.

#103

Hello.

About my job hunting.
I’ve failed to get a CG job in Japan. The reason why is “too much artistic”. There are somethings I want to say, but I let myself be silent.

Anyway, I have to get a job other than CG for my rice-work. If I have a luck, I will also be able to pursuit my lifework – Visual Art. What is clear is I need a preparation period for both rice-work & lifework.

I will.
I will…

#104

Hi all.

First of all, I’ve decided to make my “Miranda” to be a product, which will be customized for client’s figure to deform by muscle rig. I can’t estimate whether it will be bought or not, I want to sell Miranda’s subset to make my life. It will be used for general purpose muscle rigger and a pretty good sample scene for detailed muscle rig. It will be more worth than tutorials. I think it may take a few months, so please give me a chance to do it.

More useful idea. (Excuse me for text only explanations.)
Some of you can have caught my idea about “Animated-Layered Displacement Maps (ALDM, below)”.
It is to say “to enable to express each wrinkles movements like appearing & disappearing at finger joiints”. You can see those by my sample images & movies which is previously posted (I’m sorry for small resolution).

What I had tried is using layered displacement (bump) maps driven by driven keys of MAYA (using expressions are very unstable). Those displacement maps’ opacity are related to each joint’s movement (angle).

I think this idea is very powerful to express a realistic human body. However there are some barriers to be overcome.

  1. How to be appleyed with ZBrush/MUDBOX.
    … Today, normal maps made by those sculpting/painting modeler have more potencial for detailed figure. But ALDM needs each resource layer to be separated to each displacement textures. For example, you can see many independent/dependent wrinkles by each joint (=hand) movements. Those wrinkles have to be defined by separated textures. I had done this process by using Photoshop deeply, but don’t have established a workflow for those ZBrush/MUDBOX. It also have to consider the way how UV maps to be defined with the workflow.

  2. How to define each texture maps regions efficientlly.
    … For the previous version of Miranda, I had decided to use an vast UV area from (0,0) to (11,1) for whole body. And for example, about the left hand texture maps, I used, say, a UV region from (5,0) to (6,1), then I could sepalated those textures to part by part. However total number of images only for a left hand came to be almost 30, as a matter of cource it had cost a lot of memory use. I think ALDM have to consider more efficient use of texture memory by using UV positions & scales well. I have to establish a workflow around here.

Maybe there are some other barriers about ALDM, please let me write about it later.
C&C are welcome.

Anyway, I’ll challenge to make my day!!
If possible, I want to work at outside of Japan.

#105

Hello all.

For recent week, I’ve started some prototyping, or rather a lot of experiments about new version of MAYA Muscle. Then I came to recognize that I have to develop a new workflow for muscle rig, according to new features of MAYA Muscle as possible as I can. It let me know that the paradigm change for my muscle rigging is necessary. Maybe the keyword is “to articurate” to each functions. What I had done on Miranda Ver.1 contains some tricky techniques, so I can’t recomend you to do it, also to me from now.

Well, what I have to concentrate about muscle rig is “this is an approximation in relative deformation space”. For example, If rough muscle shape can make a good-enough results in deformation, then “it is OK at relative sense”. This must be proved by tiny experiments. So I will continue to do these more along with prototyping/production process. Maybe a lot of “tiny” size experiments is good for the development from a system programming point of view.

C&C are welcome. :slight_smile:

P.S.
Another comment on ALDM.

  1. New Workflow with Normal Maps
    … As you know, normal maps costs lower than displacement maps in rendering time. So I want to develop a new workflow about ALDM, but with normal maps. For example, I will need both base texture & detail texture (like wrinkles) by ZBrush, then cut those down to each resource textures for layered structure in MAYA, which is by Photoshop. It seems easy process, but I feel some doubts. I have to do experiments to prove it whether or not it is OK.
#106

Hi all.

     Is this experimental scene about muscle rig useful?

Characteristics of this scene.

  1. Using intermediate joints with Driven Keys
    2. Using extra start/end “joints” (besides of muscle controlers) for squash/strech controls

These make a redundancy on the muscle controls.

 [img]http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/%7EDM5K-STU/WIP/M-V2-95.jpg[/img]
 


         Env: MAYA 2008 w/ Ext2 (zipped MAYA ASCII scene)
     (CAUTION: Excuse me.  As a matter of course, please use this file at your own risk.)
#107

(Excuse me for some private talking.)

Hi there.
As you can see, I'm "Muscle Rigging Artisan" and new to the Artistic field.
I was graduate of Infomation Science of Natural Science Division in Liveral Arts in my university.  My graduate writing was program of "Inverse Kinematics" algorithm for 3DCG.  It was in 1996, and a decade has gone.

My first motivation for Computer Graphics was by watching the movie called "Prospero's Books", directed by Peter Greenaway. The movie is based on "The Tempest" by W.Shakespear, which is full of Baroque, or rather Neo-Platonism.

I have had some interests onto "New Art History", but it is brushed away now! (hahaha!!!)
Please forgive me to join to this Artistic field. I go to dessin class under my master twice a month, that is very interesting experience with pencil and paper.  Oh very fun!!



Sincerly.
#108

Hello all.

I’ve restarted the muscle rig from zero. Now I’m working on forearm muscles, which should care about notation rules, joints’ spaces, and so on.

Before this process, I had to reconsider about my figure’s edge loop a lot. For now, I show you the progress of it. It contains some triangles which might be understood it’s unnecessary, however I want to explicitly define the muscle flow.

My muscle rig will not be PERFECT but APPROPRIATE ENOUGH as defomer.
Anyway, it will take long period somehow to finish.
Please wait until the goal.

C&C are welcome.

#109

Wires on head.

Wire on back.

#110

Hi there. :slight_smile:

I’ve implemented most of the left forearm muscles from outside to inside.
The snapshots are below, but difficult to identify each muscles. I can’t tell you these are precise understanding about anatomy. However I keep trying to refine my anatomy knowledge by some reference books (both artistic and medical) and some images on the NET.

The next step, I have to drastically rebuild the edge loops about forearm, but those are also related to the hand and upperarm. So I have to implement those other muscles at first, then refine the edge loops.

From my experience till now, I know these muscle rigging need a lot of try & errors, and step-by-step refining process is critical path.

Anyway, I’ll try harder about this.
C&C are welcome.

#111

Hi all. :wink:

I’m going on the muscle defining process.
This time, I’ve defined the hand muscles, and the next region will be upperarm area.
The reason why I’m doing this way of muscles definition is that the edge loops for the region is related/connected deeply over these regions. So I decided to define the muscles for these regions at first.

The keywords for this muscle rigging is “articulate” and “approximate”.

The snapshots are below.
For this “hand”, I’ve selected to define some dummy/fake muscles, which is because of the keywords above. It might be also difficult to identify each muscles by those snapshots, please be careful that this is rest position (T-Pose) for skelton, so forearm twisting angle is minimum.

EDIT:
For this time (to Ver.2), my anatomical understanding based on the text book of Tokyo Art University, but it is not perfect. So I’m using some other text book as cross reference. The one is translated version of “Anatomy” by J. Sheppard from artistic view, and the another is “Netter’s Anatomy Flash Cards” from medical view.

Tomorrow, I’ll be able to define the upperarm muscles. Then I can start the refining process for upperarm/forearm/hand regions’ edge loops. It will be a hard task to do it, but the basic settings are already there (I’ve done).

C&C are welcome.

#112

Hi all.
Long time no see.

I’ve changed my mind for this “Miranda” to be a product.
At first, I want this figure to be “full-set” as muscle rigging figure.
And Then, I have to select which way for occupation is good for you, me and our industry. If possible, this figure could be a kind of “open source data”, but I have to consider about its side effects. So, I can’t promiss you the certain things about this issue, since I don’t want to damp our works cheaper.

Anyway, it will take a lot of time more…

For now, I’ll show you a few snapshots about what I’m doing.
Some of you can recongnize that undesired deformations/twists are happend for many muscles. I have to solve this problem, which is along with my methods from Ver.1.

C&C are welcome.

#113

Hello all! :slight_smile:
I’m struggling with my muscle rig.

I told you that I’m planning to provide my muscle rig.
Firstly, to tell the truth, I had decided to write some tutorials. But my muscle rig contains a lot of data with several methods. I know I can explain those techniques by words, however it is beyond the words. So I want to provide the raw scene data about muscle rig, which will be used as “spring-board”.

Anyway, I have to complete my task, and then the new step will start…

Here are the snapshots.
C&C are welcome.

#114

Hi! :slight_smile:

For the last week, I spent most of my time for meditation.
So there is not much progression about muscle rig.

But for this time, I did some tests about toon shading. As some of you know from my portfolio, I’m very interested into toon shading, or rather Non-Photo-Realistic renderings.
Maybe one-path rendering is imappropriate. Dividing rendering result into several resourcing images is better from composite view as matter of cource.

Under my master, I had inquired a realistic figure for 5 years. But I wish I can remake my movie “Splendid Views of Picturesque Landscapes” with traveler.

From tomorrow, I’ll back to my muscle rig.
C&C are welcome.

#115

Amazing work on the muscle set up. Looks like you have put a hell of a lot of effort into this and is a very inspirational thread. Are you creating this using the new muscle tools in maya 2008 or is this something else. Also if you end up releasing this for purchase so it can be used with other peoples models I am sure you would have a lot of interest, I know I would be.

Keep up the fantastic work and look forward to seeing your progress.

#116

> leonlabyk

Thank you for your comment. :slight_smile:

> the new muscle tools in maya 2008

Yes.

> so it can be used with other peoples models
> I know I would be

I wish.
Some little experiments had done.
But the detailed experiments has not done yet.

> Keep up the fantastic work and look forward to seeing your progress.

Greatly Thanks.
I keep it up. :thumbsup:

#117

Hi there. :slight_smile:

I’m going on muscle shape definition process except face.
For facial rig, it will be harder than the finished process.
And for the other process which make desired relationships between muscles & joints will be more harder.

The snapshots are below.
C&C are welcome.

#118

Hi all.:slight_smile:

I’ve finished muscle shape difining process for the left half of body.
Since I’ve cared about the implicit rules for MAYA Muscle, it will be able to mirror to the right one. But it will also be hard task.

Then I have to make some rig controlers, and make meta relationships between muscles. Besides it needs some refinements on the edge loops (whole body). And finally, painting weights process will begin.

There is long, long distance way in front of me.
So, I will do my task in my own pace.

C&C are welcome.

EDIT:
I made the facial controler.
But I must care a lot about the relationships between this controler and facial rig. It’s important.

#119

Hi all! :slight_smile:
But there is a big barrier in front of me now. :shrug:

I’m trying to do muscle expressions in animation. To be suitable for this, I have to rebuild the edgeloops along with muscle flow for whole body. This process is very tite task, and I had failed my first try. The snapshots are below.

Maybe this failed figure is able to be rigged with my new muscle rig, but the result will be degrade. So I will try the other methods for this edgeloop problem from tomorrow.

C&C are welcome.

#120

Wires are here.