New demo videos for Anzovin Rig Tools

#1

We’ve just released a new set of rigging videos for Anzovin Rig Tools ! Here’s a preview reel we put together to show the breadth of ART’s features.

I thought people on CGTalk might particularly appreciate the new muscle deformation example. Here I’ve constructed a simple “muscle system” out of ART bones. It’s not as detailed as true muscle simulation, but it’s fast to set up and deforms in real time (it will be even faster once ART is fully optimized). I also use the built-in pose-space deformer to sculpt elbow deformation in the video.

This is enabled to a great degree by the ART Constraint, a feature we implemented since our last round of videos. It uses the ART deformer to “deform” the positon of a transform node. This can be really useful–for instance, in the muscle example the muscle bones are attached to other ART bone chains, and when one bone stretches the attachment point stretches with it. The ART constraint can also be used to build layered controls easily.

I hope you like it!
–Raf

#2

Love the direction you guys are going!

I love the way you’re focusing on deformations.

My I suggest you get a new mic for your tutorials, it’s a bit painful to listen too.

thanks

#3

Thanks! We’ll try to get better sound quality next time.

–Raf

#4

Nice! Is it an offset curve deformer that you are using?

#5

No, OCD is very cool but it has some limitations on what kinds of curves you can use to get the full effect.

To get the nice mesh spreading effect on the inside of a curve they require you to place the control points of the curve in very specific places, or to use arc segments, which aren’t appropriate for a free-flowing curve. You also need to have conventional, rigid bones underneath to tell the deformer what direction to slide the CVs in.

Our method creates a nice mesh-spreading effect on completely arbitrary curves. We’re having those curves controlled by our bones, but that’s purely for the users convenience–all the ART deformer cares about is the curve, and some frames for calculating twist. That’s why you can add a bone CV without disturbing the deformation. You can add as many CVs as you want, and pull the curve into crazy shapes (like the knot example in our video) and still get nice deformation.

–Raf

#6

It is looking very promising and I am really looking forward to a first release.
I was always waiting for a next step in the skin deformation like this, but it never came. Now I can finally skip those oldschool joints and have proper deformation way more easier.

How far are you in development? It look already quite useable. My only concern would be the speed. Is there an option to switch to faster low resolution deformation for animating?

I could be wrong, but I would imagine that building a rig will become much easier. I don’t have to create hundreds of utility nodes for those joints to have stretchy and bendy arms and legs for instance. I guess I would still need joints to have IK behavior?

#7

How far are you in development? It look already quite useable. My only concern would be the speed. Is there an option to switch to faster low resolution deformation for animating?

We’re getting very close to an alpha release. Speed is one of the main things we’re still working on: there’s a lot of optimization that can still be done.

One of the nice things about the VPPS algorithm that the ART deformer is based on, though, is that it paralellizes perfectly. So with an eight-core processor, for instance, you’d get something like a seven-times speedup. As we get more and more cores in our computers ART will get faster and faster, as opposed to conventional rigging which is primarily done through the node graph, and therefore single-threaded.

I could be wrong, but I would imagine that building a rig will become much easier. I don’t have to create hundreds of utility nodes for those joints to have stretchy and bendy arms and legs for instance. I guess I would still need joints to have IK behavior?

Yes, that’s the idea–ART pushes a lot of that rig behavior into the deformer so that you don’t have to build a huge, slow, and brittle node graph. We have our own IK handle that operates on ART joints.

#8

That looks great! Nice to see a new generation of rigging for Maya.

#9

Please post threads like this in the Press Releases forum instead of CG News.

#10

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