Evolving and learning

Evolution involves screwing up. So does life. I'm a little grumpy that my Gizmo model can't deform (or I just can't get it to deform) as I want it to; the front legs are positioned wrong and the front feet can't rotate around far enough to grip the fridge door top.

So I need to go back and re-work the model. Do the feet at a real neutral pose, not just standing. And figure out how to do this version 1 movie without fur; as much re-working as I'm doing I don't feel like adding the fur to the mix; it can wait till version 2.

Anyway, there it is, time to accept, go back, make it better.

The rigging has been tough; the books say 'think about what you want you rig to do' but until you've gone through with it once or twice, you don't know if you need the spine to be able to stretch. And they don't talk about assigning the skin to the bones, as if it's a snap. Maybe it is and I'm missing it; that'd be cool when I eventually figure it out. The first stab at rigging this one has made me learn a lot, maybe enough to go back to the book and gleam more understanding.

Crawling along

Bit by bit he's getting there (excuse excuse excuse).

Seeing Gizmo in the kitchen, looking forlornly up at the spot the cake will occupy makes me smile.

Yes he's currently floating; I've been doing test rigs but have not yet completed one I feel like posting a pose from.

Gizmo visits the Kitchen for the first time

Here is the Kitchen with Gizmo standing at the fridge. I remembered that checking the scale of the puppy at this point may be easier than after I finish up all the rigging.
On the other hand, the kitchen is NOT very complex compared to Gizmo, so maybe I should keep the rigging I've started and re scale the kitchen later if need be.

Freezer has a door!

woo! Just don't look too close...

Not yet the Kitchen Sink

Here is version 1 of the kitchen. Minus a real fridge with a freezer that opens and stuff that will fall out, (maybe).
And minus a cake.
So where am I on this project?
The puppy Gizmo has, in draft form, a body, a UV map, and a basic skin. A skeleton was made. It maybe crappy... and it hasn't been assigned to the skin. Not that the skin's final, but I haven't done this skin assignment in more than the brief tube with 3 joints tutorial. we'll see....
There's a basic kitchen.
None of it has been put together, which usually takes lots of work. I think.

SO what I'm going to scramble for:

• (While learn facial rigging for idiots from the book)
• do an hour's more touch ups on the gizmo mesh
• import the old skeleton to the new Gizmo body mesh
• Assign skin to skeleton
• Try out that rig
• Try rigging the face
• If the body and face react to the rig well enough for my purposes,
• Skin it, not detailed
  
• ship it to the kitchen.
• try to have a basic opening shot or something, have one bit of animation and camera work done.

I'll be happy with a dog done and just scenery left, as that has required very little learning so far... but we'll see. Other than a 10 page paper in one class and the final in the other this is the only thing left. And this is what will get me a job someday, not systems analysis or security. Hmm....

A model is never done

a few comments/critiques from Tisha

• Back legs not looking legish
• Face and nose more work
• toes good, good definition
• forehead add brow buldge?
• squareish body; back probably ok but tummy and sides needing help
• too high poly
• snout too square,
• build up chin more.

Bolt ears; actually convex things, with fat part toward center and skinny flap towards edge.

TO do list for T break

1. (assuming laptop maya works as well as desktop) Setup kitchen. Keep far wall to 4 pics at this point, can always go more in version 2.
2. Sys paper; the 10 page one I haven't really started yet.
3. Join CG Society and post puppy project in the WIP section. Ask for comments.
4. Join Digital Tutors... maybe. 6 month or so I think. FOCUS.
5. Other homework (Sec, indie study, ect).
6. Draw
7. Enjoy family time.
8. PSU?
   

Back to the Sketchbook

Next week I'll be in portland with the family. This is good and important, but cuts off from the desktop and Maya.
I loaded Maya onto the new laptop, but the laptop doesn't have the horses to do work on Gizmo. But it can be used to block out and develop the Scenery (kitchen, maybe the cake).

So here's a rough sketch and initial color palet attempt.

not sure what color to do the fridge. The blue isn't working too well, but it should be more interesting than cream...
I'll do some image research I guess.

Though I walk through the Valley

Of the shadow of Time and sleep sucking theatre, I will fear no Freaking Annoying UV debacles; for UV Smooth is with me, and though it cause my CPU great distress, I shall see the light of the end of the Mapping process.

Use 'Edit UVs -> smooth' not the little tool in the UV editor window. Remember the anchor points.

Here's my first shot at painting this guy.

Exporting some how added a lot of other things; maybe my nodes are being messed up. THis was a proof of concept anyway.

Now to see if I can apply my Theatre Tech weekend focus and endurance upon the puppy, so it may be presentable at the end of the term

Animatic Vrs 0.5

Spent most of this labbing time working through this again.
I lost the flash file to the 0.4 animatic somehow. Hence Completely re-doing the end.
I wanted the puppy to get the cake.
Not sure about the middle of the end sequence.

Here's Version 0.5

(yes you still need Flash player)

Rigging course, on my own.

I'm learning some of the fun things about rigging.
Actually a lot of this makes sense once I figure out what the book is going on about.
Though I'm not sure why it didn't work the first time but did the second.
Picture shows my little hand rotation controlling the skeleton hand.

(google thinks that 'rigging' means with rope, and puts up rope ads. I laugh)

No, really, I'm working...

I chugged through the rest of the tutorials in my Maya 09 basics book, time to tackle the Rigging book Miles has stashed somewhere.

Oh and I've continued to play with sketch pad, and continued to like it.

There's a mirror function, both for x and y axies... this weird face was fun, kinda a thin man squished out and placed on a wall. I don't really know.

Sketchbooking at home

Yes. I should be working on Gizmo. But I'm not sure what to do. And this is a new toy.

The Autodesk bundle comes with a little program called Sketchbook. This is like photoshop lite for drawing and painting. Big annoyance is that the 'fuzziness' of photoshop even worse. Better side is that I have it at home, and an old Wacom tablet. Much time wasting ensues.

Sketchbook pro (which has things like Layers which are very nice) is about $100 (less for students I'm sure). And feel easier to sketch with (rim shot) than photoshop.

So here's my latest creation.

Still figuring out brushes mostly, finding what I can create well and what the right brushes (and smudgers and blurings) can help me create better.

Playing with Photoshop and painting...

Just cause it's fun. If I own this program at home I will waste so much time playing with it...
I like the trees more, playing around whith what happens when you add something like yellow to a green tree, then smudge it...
Wish I could rotate the image while working on it...

My goals for the distant future...

Here was a job posting for Activision in the San Francisco area:

Lighter/Environment Artist - Activision Bay Area

· Light characters and environments (interior & exterior).

· Understanding of composition and the ability to enhance mood by lighting.

· Expert knowledge of Maya.

· Working knowledge of industry standard rendering programs, such as Renderman or Mental Ray.

· Ability to do UV mapping/modeling/texture work as required.

· Working knowledge of Ambient Occlusion maps, HDR rendering, Lightmap generation, and Global Illumination solutions is a must.

· Knowledge of color theory and strong sense of light and shadow.

· Ability to follow design reference and ability to work with wide range of styles.

· Initial responsibilities will be 50% lighting/50% environment art creation. 100% lighting duties once in production.

Please click the 'Apply' button below

THis is pretty much right up my lighting alley. I just need to work with the rendering stuff and the other bits in the middle of the post.

Still need to finish the puppy first...

Maybe ask Gore-face if I can use his many models to light interestingly....

Dem Teef be nearly done

Woo copy and paste!
I have pulled out the teeth into different objects, as per recommendations. Then I shamelessly copied the secondary teeth, nearly mirroring top and bottom. It will annoy me later and I will tweak them more then, but for now I feel really good to kinda have all the teeth.
Add a tounge and that's all the body parts. Wow. Even in crappy first effort form, I'm making strides forward. Or stumbles. Like a drunken sailor. Who should be able to walk well drunk, after dealing with the challenges of walking on a ship at sea... anyway.
Gods this all would be easier to do in real 3d. Maybe I'll invent a holo deck where you can manipulate these things in all 3 dimensions at once.
Yeah, I'm tired, it's been a long first week.
Repeat to do list:

• Sys lab1,
  
• indie study projector thing,
  
• drag myself in here this week end and add the tounge (how many faces should it have? I don't know..)
  
• and start tweaking this model.
• Work on psyc ward stuff?
• Feels like I'm forgetting something...
• Grad Project! sketch sketch sketch ideas. look up and see if I can do it in C# for the learning...
• (My current Grad project is a 2-d game of this Corgi versus the forces of evil squirrels. Pretending this game is commissioned by a dog treats company, the corgi gets dog treat power-ups to overcome obstacles. Maybe there should be a goal different from the squirrel chasing.)
• Oh, and the Corgi may get named "Gizmo." It sounds better in my head than it looks on paper.
• Also I may think about doing the game in 3d, over the shoulder like the old Spyros. Hmm concept theft....
• p.s. yes I'm re-posing this Grad stuff where it belongs, in the other blog.
  

Still Teething.. a little lip too

Vampire puppy. I need to zoom out more often. Maybe teeth and gums will help, maybe I'll have to futz with the teeth and make them more kid-friendly.

Oh and lips. How do you model Lips that will be deformed a lot? sigh...

Expert advice from Trisha is to put the teeth on a different object so the deforming of the lips doesn't screw them up.

Another link

http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/JamesGonzalez/20090827/2859/AAA_Game_Jobs__How_to_Prepare_Yourself_To_Get_Hired.php

Another 'how to get a game company job' link...

Animatic Re-Post

Here is the Animatic

(You will need flash player)

Art 450 again

0. A working title:

• Hungry Puppy

1. Project goals:

• Create a 3d animated short.
  
• Learn the technical processes included in such, and have something to show for it.
• Make it fun to watch.
  

2. A project description:

• A 3d modeled Welsh Pembroke Corgi of about teenage years making various attempts to get at a cake on top of a fridge. And it's funny.

3. Specific products of study or deliverables that you will be creating for your project.

• The finished, polished movie clip. The corgi model which can be re-used for other projects. The 'story board' which is really a "low production quality" 2d flash video, but shows I thought it out before doing it.

4. Visual and/or written research for your project. Stuff done by other people.

• Lots of picture of adorable dogs. Lots of tutorials, several books I actually paid for. Disney's "Bolt" as an example of a 3d animated dog whose teeth don't scare little children.
  

5. Treatment visuals for your project. This is stuff done by you. This can consist of links, a bibliography, images, etc.

• All those photos (see tag 'puppy refs'), the story board anamatic.
  

6. A written description of specific technical and research issues you will need to address during the course of your project.

• Modeling organic things accurately-ish is hard, and requires trying several things before finding the right way to do it.
• I've never skinned something like this (or anything other than a box).
• Rigging? What's that?
• Animating a complex model?
• Lighting it
• Capturing it (woo render farm nights...)
• Polishing the final capture is really beyond my current experience. I'm sure I can figure it out with help from resources, I've just never even used any of that software.
• Finally, my creative adviser (My girlfriend, who, when I mused last year "I should do an animated short..." immediately shouted out "Make it about a puppy!! Trying to get food!! from the top of a Fridge!!"), anyway she still thinks I should try to get fur on the dog... which would be better but more work.
  

7. A timeline of your project. When you will be doing all of this good stuff. You must include specific DEADLINES (for example: "January 27th", not "some time in January."

• Well.
• Working on the model 3 times a week,
• Work on the animatic for 2 hours a week or more as sanity allows.
  
• Finish the teeth and tongue Wednesday 10-14 (2 weeks from today).
• Finish the eyes/forehead the week after that (10-21)
• Final touch-ups by the following saturday (10-24)
• Rig it for 2 weeks (Nov 7)
• Skin it for 2 weeks (Nov 21)
• Test drive it, start animating.

Honestly... I would like to keep to this schedule but I don't feel confident that I can. I need to schedule regular work time more than goals; if I work it then it will get there.
My schedule as a 1 year CS Masters student is a little rigorous. And not completely to my liking. But this is my year, and i will do with it as I want to.