Short Scenes: Pygmalion Computer Graphics Project

#581

Welcome to the Project kemer2! Be sure to ask us questions when you need to know something. It can take awhile to get an answer sometimes but we all learn right along with you.

Alistair McCello: Nice job. And you made your deadline! Double nice! I’m going to ask one of the Lightwave people to read in your model and save it out again as a Lightwave file. The Limousine that Henry comes out of is a lightwave model also so that will make things flow eaiser. I sent your FTP account information in an e-mail.

Wilson 3d: I’m sorry the model is causing problems. Let’s see if Jason or someone else can help. When you are searching mosquito718 posts you will see a brief glimpse of a cigar also.

#582

Maronson mentioned in an email that I the jaw needs rigged with a broken joint heirarchy. Apparently because “certain joints can only affect parts of the mesh.”

To be blunt… why? Perhaps this is my limited experience speaking… but I just do not understand. I tried searching through the thread but found nothing.

Honestly, I’ve never done a broken joint hierarchy before. I can learn quick… but maybe someone can point me in the right direction (website, book, etc.)

I really don’t see any reason why I can’t do a traditional facial jaw joint connected to neck joint. I actually started doing it that way and it looks pretty good so far.

Anyone care to enlighten me before I get to far involved in my current method? If I do it my way it’ll only take me a few more hours (though Thursday night is booked… and Friday looks slightly busy as well. Looks like it’s a Saturday morning schedule…). I want to get this out of the way. I’m excited to get started on the body.

K

#583

kemer2: If you do not setup a broken joint hierarchy then Matt would have to wait until you rig and weight the entire model so that all the deformations are smooth when the model is animated. So basically you could just rig and weight the head (neck turn and jaw rotation) and then later constrain joints together so that they moved like they were connected.

Now if I’m off base on this let me know. If it will make a huge delay for us we might have to make our first quality compromise and let kermer2 go ahead as is. In other words, this is something that other cgers will see as wrong. The audience will miss it.

Rockmanex has agreed to straighten out the GBS model. I think we can continue to animate with what we have until he is done and we can then make a substitution.

#584

Thanks for the info Aaronson. And Thanks Rickman. I guess we can export animation curves unless you have to really change something. Rockmanx if you get a chance let me know when you think you will have a new version. If it is just a few days I may just work on thumbnails.

I have emailed mosquito718 but I guess that is not be necesary now. mosquito718 did a good job of getting us this far.

The voice over is really good. I just want to make sure we can give George a good performance.

#585

kemer2… Yes you can do the broken hierchy (is that how you spell that?). We will add it in with the rest of the skeleton later, its not the normal way to do things cause it might bring up problems later on the line. But it can be done.

#586

hi! Mike i’ll have some freetime this week end, so i want to finish the taxi, i want to ask - can i use LW procedurals, or may be better way is make an unwrapped texture?

#587

Uploaded the .blend file and a text document with some info to the FTP server. I also put up a 1024x1024 .jpg of the model. If you want a different file type or higher res, Mike, I can re-render and upload a new one anytime.

#588

kemer2,
I suggested the broken hierarchy rig to Mike because I thought that would be the only way to rig only the head and send it off to me for lip sync as you worked on the rest of the body. I had seen it done in a Paul Thuriot rigging video, but it looked a little difficult. However, I’ve been playing around with rigging her and it works just as well (if not better) to have a united skeleton but only skin certain joints to certain parts of the geometry (should’ve thought of that before). I was worried that this way would effect other parts of the mesh and there would be bad deformations in her face later on…I can send you the file that I was playing with to rig her if you’d like, but if you’re on that route already than more power to ya. Sorry for the confusion.

Matt

#589

Ok let’s see if we are back on track again. MJO120881 (Hey, did everyone notice that Matt’s birthday is next Thursday?) and kemer2 are both happy with the way Kemer will rig Covent Garden Liza’s head. So he can go forward.

Alistair McCello: Your model has been sent to T4D to convert to a Lightwave model. Opreska: Alistair’s model of Higgins comes out of your limousine. Do you want a copy just to see how they look together?

mirabeau: I’m nervous that we will not finish in time so I feel ok about procedural textures. The taxi does deform its body so maybe we can skip a step.

Wilson 3d: We might not hear back from rockmanex until after school is out ~ Dec 11th.

Tughan: I didn’t like the classroom background video. The angles are wrong. It will have to be reshot.

#590

MJO120881: Haha, yeah. I thought a single skeleton would be fine as well. You guys had me frantically looking for rigging DVD’s/book’s and reading through every possible peice of material I could get my hands on. I blame you for the $200 now on my credit card that I just spent on education material I’ve been putting off buying :). Haha. In any matter… I’m part way through weighting the head. Actually… like, 3/4th done. It’s a busy night tonight and tomorrow. I’ll probably finish up Saturday mid day.

Let’s talk controls. Typically, I’ve just put an icon at the bottom of the chin which can be rotated (at the pivot of the jaw joint) to control the jaw. Another thought that popped into my head was using a control identical to the four direction slider controls for the rest of the facial controls. Or I’m open to other ideas. Let’s not get too carried away though. I guess I’m looking for feedback from anyone who will be using it or… whoever really.

K

#591

Haha, yeah sorry bout that Kemer, broken hierarchy would’ve been so cool though! :cool: Anyways, I’m glad it all worked out and that I could help you learn something new ;).

It would be really cool if you could make a slider for the jaw rotation and add it to the rest of the facial controls. That way everything you need for the face would be centralized in one area. But if that’s too much of a hassle, then any kind of control near the neck/head area will do.

On a side note: I was fooling around with Mental Ray and came up with this render of Liza…just something to keep the creative juices flowin…Oh and Mike, thanks for the birthday note…you shouldn’t have :smiley:

#592

I know it’s early, but when I get to it… any recommendations for rigging the shaw? That’s the one piece I’m not looking forward to.

#593

The problem with the shawl is that it’s not really connected to the character, and since we’re probably not using cloth in the production, then it becomes rather awkward to keep on her body and animate so it doesn’t look rigid and lifeless. Mike said he wanted it brought up to the shoulder area…it could be parented or combined with geometry, but without any dynamics acting on it I think it will look like a stiff board…it would be a pain to hand animate too.

#594

I updated the status files on the Web site and added an Active Members List. This list is what we will use to identify your work at the art show in March. Please look at it and see that everything is spelled correctly and contact me for changes or additions. I don’t know some of your home towns, for example.
Membership List
It is also interesting to look at this and see how many people have made a contribution to the Project.

I just used up my last vial of tinkerbell fairydust, closed my eyes, clapped my hands three times, and said, “I believe that we will see a post of the Englishman and English Teacher this weekend.”

mirabeau: I’m thinking we may convert your Lightwave model to Maya and use two models for animating. Freddy will act with the Lightwave version and Covent Garden Liza will act with the Maya model. Submit the model in native LW format and export to OBJ. I think we will have less texture problems if you use procedures. Maybe you can convert the model to Maya yourself?

kemer2: Can we start with the shawl as an object in another layer? Put a few bones in it and parent the shawl to Covent Garden Liza’s shoulder? Then I buy another vial of fairydust and wish for someone with a copy of Maya Cloth or maybe Motion Builder?

#595

Good news: I have Maya Unlimited with Cloth.

Bad news: I’ve never used cloth before. Again, I can learn… but I doubt it’ll be an overnight success story.

#596

kemer2: Ok, teach me how this works. You are the first person I know with Maya cloth. If you do use your next $200 on cloth tutorials and animate the shawl does that mean we have to render all of Covent Garden Liza’s scenes on your computer? Or does cloth embed information into the model (or scene file) and any Maya Complete version can do the rendering?

#597

I don’t know for sure.

But I have a hunch…

I actually work for a outsourcing render farm company. We have one license of Maya Unlimited which we install on all the machines. I was told that rendering is free. It’s the design portion that requires the license. In fact, everything we render is done from the command line. So that leads me to beleive, we could use a batch script to render out these files on anyone’s machine. It’s the same Maya rendering engine that gets installed with Maya Unlimited or Maya Complete.

Further… if we get in a bind… I MIGHT (I stress the word. I can’t make any promises) be able to talk the boss into letting me render some of “my personal work” on the machines here during some of the slower/down time we have. He’s pretty cool and probably wouldn’t mind… but I don’t know for sure. But I only want to use that connection if we get stuck or REALLY pressed for time.

Hope that helps. Face should be done soon. Sorry for the delay. I got stuck with some overtime this weekend. Never fails.

K

#598

Hello all, I guess im new to this project, but thought i’d jump on board a bit and do some rigging. For now it looks like I will rig Col. Pickering. looking forward to working with everyone a bit and havin some fun ; )

#599

I not sure if the coins have been done so I whiped them up realy quick.

http://www3.sympatico.ca/davidarnold129/coins/

#600

Burkester: Welcome to the Project! You are just in time. In December I will be concentrating on rigging. We still have 4 or 5 models with rigging unassigned. There’s at least one more person interested in rigging who may join us soon.

deathstar129: Wow! Those are cool coins. I’m sure taxi will accept them for Liza’s fare. Please send the models in Native format and in OBJ file format just as you did with the basket. The animator will scale them and put them in Liza’s hand. I don’t know if you are over 21 or not so “Can you draw me a glass of beer?” With lots of bubbles and a little bit of foam? The Scotsman is thirsty. And he is a 3DsMax model so if you want to experiment with Wahooney’s rig and try to close the Scotsman’s hand around the glass, let me know. It’s good practice for you. See if you can figure out how to pick up the glass without puncturing it.

kemer2: Let’s not plan on using your render farm unless it is March 1st or later. I’ll probably put out an emergency request for render time to members of the Project before that.

You do have me interested in your copy of Maya Unlimited. Maybe after you finish with Liza and her shawl you may be interested in helping the other animators have George Bernard Shaw blow smoke rings and some other vowels. Look how much you learn by joining a collaboration project!