Pirate Monkey Ninjas

#1

Here’s something you might have seen on SpinQuad, cgtalk or maxforums already. This is meant to be a kind of spoof of those classic series like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and the like. We’ll be working towards producing at least an intro sequence to this as a series and try to pitch the idea to someone to get funding for it later. If anyone has any good suggestions as to who we should speak to about funding that would be great.
We already have a slightly strange workflow with a bit of LW<->Max but are currently contemplating if we should include messiah in the joyful bunch. I’ve only done a bit of rigging in messiah so far so it might prove a bit of a challenge. I have however seen quite a lot of it’s power and have already made at least a one minute short in it. This will be a bit more advanced than what I did there though. Anyway, on to the concepts:

Model no.1:

Model no.2:

Start of model no.3:

And the very start of their ship:

#2

I like very much all the models!
Im sure you will get outstanding results!
Congratulations
Andreseloy

#3

Very cool style. It appears you’re using LW for modeling and rendering. How is Max contributing to the workflow? :slight_smile:

#4

Thanks to both of you for your compliments.
About the workflow: There’s two of us here at useful slug that do 3d. I use lightwave and my friend Peet uses 3d studio max. Some of the models have been modeled & rendered in 3ds max, some in LW. Later we’ll put them all together in one program for the animation and then use one of the three for the final rendering.
It looks like we might be getting some help from a skilled rigger in max so at the moment that’s our destination. He has however said that he might not have enough time to do them all so that’s partly why we’re contemplating using messiah instead for the rigging and animation. We really want some top notch rigs (with squash & stretch etc) for this one, something ala Marek Schneider’s rigs would be ideal. We’re not sure we can achieve that in max on our own if the rigger can’t help us out. We have used LW for previous projects but have encountered some problems in LW on the CA side that led us to look at other solutions. Messiah looks a bit more promising on that front for us right now.

#5

hehe, models 1 and 3 were modelled, unwrapped and rendered in max in case you were wondering :wink:

thanks for the comments so far!

#6

Telescoping ik in messiah would help your cartoon approach.

Your work thus far looks very well done. Good Luck!

Best,
Rick

#7

Arrrrrgggg… me hearty!

Nice models, looks like a fun project.
Where are you at with it? Do you have any script/storyboard or animatic for your opener?

Can’t contribute to rigging, but if you need one of the characters animated and it’s a messiah rig just let me know. My email and web link should be in my signiture.

I don’t offer my services much but I just love the monkey pirate with the hook and want to animate him. :slight_smile:

#8

:thumbsup: Excellent work so far, guys! :thumbsup:

Good luck!

Would be nice if messiah played a good role in this.

#9

Can you rig yourself?

#10

Thanks for all the replies guys.

catizone: The telescopic IK/normal IK blend is definately one of the features we want in these rigs.

gsuttor: :applause: Thanks a lot, we’ll get back to you once we’ve made our decision on the program. In terms of the script etc we’ve got a few good ideas for that, and some silly ones, but we’ll keep that a bit of a secret for now.

PaulNewman: Thank you, we’ll see if messiah can convince us.

dobermunk: I can rig, but I’m not a rigger if you see what I mean. I’ve never made a rig that is as advanced as the ones we want for this but I think I might be able to do so in principle.

#11

Cool character designs :thumbsup: Best of luck on the project. I’ve only used toon rigs in Maya, but that’s adding yet another program to your pipeline and I think there are scale issues going between Lightwave and Maya.

#12

Bugpoo: Cheers. Yep, adding Maya as well would be a little much for us right now I think. We already have more programs than people. :slight_smile:

Just to keep this thread a little updated. here are the latest characters:

And one at a much more WIP stage:

#13

Ulven I love your work! specially this last post is just wonderful, my family was very happy with your work, my kids enjoy tons with the last post.
Congratulations
Andreseloy

#14

Andreseloy - wow, thanks a lot! glad you and your family are enjoying what we’re doing :slight_smile:

so, here’s an update on the lady ape : ) base mesh pretty much done, next on the list is the ‘loincloth’ thingy, leg straps, refine the hands, cloth strips on the headband and belt and the usual creasing malarkey for the clothing…

the main modelling thread is here in case anyone’s interested : )

thanks for the comments so far!

#15

Man Cool :smiley:
if your Max guy has hard times, I can rig them in Messiah for you, with all the trimmings

Just don’t give me a “By Monday” deadline and I should be able to fit it in over afew weeks
I’ve been in XSI alot lately, like to get back to fun in Messiah :smiley:

Afew quick question

facual animation Morphs based ? you could do Bone/direct edit type rig on these guys
Lot’s of Fun :applause:

telescopic IK ? is that Strenchy IK ( move IK Target & have Bone rest length scale to meet new length ? for Toon legs and arms etc ?

Because can do that to But if telescopic ik means some else I may have trouble and need some info :wink:

#16

Hello there Thomas.

Would be great if you could help us out with the rigs. I’m thinking muscle-bone based facial deformation with boxcontrollers. I’ve done this once before and it’s a breeze in Messiah. I could perhaps help do this if you’re short on spare-time. Telescopic IK sounds like stretchy IK indeed. I know from poking around on the Messiah forums and reading a little in the docs that if you do the IK by using expressions in Messiah you can have telescopic ik and normal ik mixed in such a way that when the bones go beyond the normal scope of things they turn into telescopic IK. I think you do this simply by placing the telescopic IK expression underneath the 2d one in the list. Just pointing that out because that’s the sort of action we want for that.

Umm, I’ll try to give you an example of what we want the rig to do: If you look at Marek Schneider’s demo reel and look at the body rig of the cat and the hooded figure, I think that’s the kind of action we’re looking for. Does that help explain things?

:bounce: Yay! we’re getting a little excited with people offering us help here :slight_smile:

#17

I can easily get a joystick face rig going to control morphs

but i done afew face rigs using bones and morphs all connected to alittle controls on the face ( my playing with what i think the face robot workflow is ) and it’s a pretty good method.

would like to try that type of face rig in Messiah as well.

yeah i could get the cat and hood guy I think :smiley:
seen the reel before it IS the best rigging reels I’ve seen :thumbsup:

Done something like that in XSI.
and afew toons but not to that level in messiah so i should be able to work it out… with alittle time,:smiley:
again need to convert XSi ways to Messiah.

but it’s pretty big job ! :eek:

I need the most flexiable character (eg Iceage i need the cid of the show not the manny )
workout with the animators preferences with the rig details ?
get everyone happy with the rig then move to the rest.

anyway we need to chat Email t4d@thomas4d.com

#18

Ok, we’re a little slow on the updates here. Peter Thomas (T4D) is currently making some excellent progress on the rigs for us. I’m working on their ship and should have an update on that fairly soon.
Meanwhile here’s the latest on the femme fatale:

#19

Very nice.

#20

hey peter, how are you liking XSI? I have been playing with it but its pretty…different. not bad just takes getting used to. LAtely i have been rediscovering how much i love maya…

Anyway, this thread is great, i like the look and the style of the characters, nice clean modeling too.