Yes, thanks Allan Check out Puma’s Speed Leg Soccer site. I was green with Envy like one of the people in your paintings. 
The client did mention there was a problem at one point because there were so many Porcupines, but they since resolved it.
No problems here. I know it’s not my RAM I don’t think they works or system. Firefox is FireFox.
Yeah,
I actually studied the Baby and Dog in Walt Disney’s Peter Pan. I had to just think happy thoughts. haha.
More images.
As I mentioned, Placer Deposit was instrumental because I need to have the quills stripped black and white. 
That was a bit of a challenge because Maya’s fur is a render effect and not paintable geometry.
One thing that was a benefit and something I hoped for, is my Maya rigs are now looking like my iconic “ReadyRigs”. As I have ofter said, The color coding process is a big help when animating.
The character was completely model from scratch in Zbrush.
And I use musculoskeletal reference for a more realistic creature. I use this image for my model and rig bones.
The texture painting was generated in Zbrush instead of importing reference.
Building the project in Maya made it very easy to switch it over to EIAS via FBX when I ran into trouble with the Quills in Maya.
Maya Fur can be a little tricky. It’s was difficult to move the project around without losing some intregral part to the render. I occasionally got a blooper that took some time fix. It’s not like EIAS “Collect Files”.
[img]http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f190/AVTPro/Picture27-1.png[/img]
[img]http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f190/AVTPro/Picture25-1.png[/img]
Good UVs is an important thing to keep in mind when doing fur, texture paints, and just general good character animation work.
The final render sizes as you can seen on the site are small. This greatly weighed in my favor concerning render times, level of detail, quick cheats here and there. For instance, I didn't have to render shadows, and I actually use the low res proxy in the renders instead of a hi-res smoothed. Just the fact that it was a furry character, many slight flaw would go unseen because they would be covered by the fur. I was feeling the pinch with long render times, the next furry character I get an Octo but 11Gbs on my Quad proved to be fine. :)
minus prickly pain here and there, I got the job done. :)
[img]http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f190/AVTPro/render.jpg[/img]
HAHAHAHAHA, I plead the 5th on that one Alonzo. 
Great job. The animation in maya looks cool! Keep it up!
Yeah Dude thanks for hanging in the wings. I was in a real tight spot there for a minute. I gotta work on better managing the project file location for transporting and exchange with out users. I figured out the command animation controls again, and everything came back to me. I got into character sets so that was a good learn.
Your new character rig looked cool. Was that auto-rig or manual. Looked like FK/IK? Much Success
AVT
So what’s it going to be? 2D or 3D?
Glad you got more work and that client liked it either way.
That’s good. Well, if you want to get 3D let me know. Those are cool characters. Hope you post them one day soon.
I have a whole lot of new work to update my book/site with, haven’t had the time to stop and do it.
Character sets huh, cool. I messed with that a little in Maya. Never quite got it. Although i didn’t try for too long.
The c4d rig is all manual. Rigging in it is almost fun, well as fun as rigging can be anyways. I wanna set up squash n stretch and FK/IK switchers. I know it’s capable, just gotta figure it out. Also wanna build a high end facial rig. I always thought the free rigs in maya were awesome to play with. I came close in EI, but not really what I wanted.
http://www.morleyarts.com/post/hero-facerig01.mov
http://www.morleyarts.com/post/super-02.mov
I have learned so much. I’m truly hoping that EI v8 offers some sort of vertex caching or mdd file support and texture imports so I can bring in my characters and hopefully scenes to render in Camera. Nothing beats camera…hence that little plugin Beta
LOL! Was checking the shoe when the thing came floating across the screen… Nicely done and very funny! Congrats.
Glad to hear your growing. Your stuff is already TOPS. I give you props, you got 2 or 3 films in the can already. I got NARRY, NADA…NULL. least not yet.
What plug in beta? Am I missing somethng? I just try to sign up for Sonica.
Your turtle rig looked like it had FK/Ik switchers, that's why I asked. I'm still having a hard time justifying incorporating FKIK switchers even in Maya considering I can animate fine without them. BTW, those Porcupine animations were done in only a few hours. I did them inbetween renders. I had two weeks but I think I drew it out to 3 with the good grace of my client. :)
Yes, rigs are suppose to be "Fun" for the animator. That's a feature.
But there's "nice rigs and there's "DOWN and DIRTY rigging". I'm trying to figure out when does "Happy Rigs" come into play.
I mean, the Puma Robot was a big rig job. If I cut corner it would have been "Danger Will Robinson". The rig would have turned on it's master. Also, I had to pass it to other animators inorder to meet the deadline. One bad texture meant redoing 4 outsourced files. It had to be right. That's when ideas like "Publish and Subscribe" pop into my head as a production feature. If I forget a texture (or David, the renderer) I could "Publish" a new update to 3 other users "Subscribers" with the same file and only the texture update. The pipeline for that rig had to be well thought out or it would've meant back-tracking.
[http://www.puma.com/holiday/](http://www.puma.com/holiday/)
So I concluded there's different types of rigging based on timetables. Personal projects, long form film project, short term web and TV deadlines and lastly super-turbo (ok, that's not a catagory but it puts the dead in deadline) . The sweet rigs are "films" and what every RigTech wants, room for testing and some room to make rigs "Pretty". I think it's a rarity unless all you do is rig or use scripts.
I want to do a nice facial rig UI but more than likely I would opt out for just enough morphs to "sell" the performance. Either that or I would have to make sure my budget included a modeler, a texture painter, an effect guy, and renderer so the TD/rigTech can have time to do a decent rig (that would be me :).
I think pretty soon after few more studies, or projects, I'm going to move to auto-rigging. I think rigging is for custom characters. Once I understand the mechancs of the process, I don't see a real need to keep repeating it per character. Most projects only need 1 or 2 character but what if you need 10 or 20? It has to be gotta be automated. Thanks Rich!
Yes, I'm only do 3D production. The CDs, ADs and SP ROCK. I like the Quills/Spikes theme. Hit home with me right away. I think they have brilliant concepts.
There's only few times when I am envious, but the Puma Speed Leg Soccer team animation Kicks My Butt.
[http://www.pumafootball.com/](http://www.pumafootball.com/)
wish I did that prj. too :)Hey Folx,
Just a note, the "Deformer Rig" is still selling and one just went out to Germany. Though this particular "Porcupine Puma" project was completed in Maya, the theory and many techniques such as analyzing muscloskeletal reference photos are part of the EIAS DVD.
Remember the DVD is for you to “know” rigging. it’s not so much that you have to complete the exercise as it to that you “understand” how it works. It clears many of the mysteries away in a interface you already know.
[http://youtube.com/watch?v=D0-7Vehe1_k](http://youtube.com/watch?v=D0-7Vehe1_k)
It's still $85 right now because there's no CD cover art yet . I will be working on the graphics very shortly then I will send it to the distributor Cafepress. At point the price will go up to $120 as I originally promised.
More new stuff still to come :)
Thanks and God Bless
Artistically Yours,
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