Wednesday, February 03, 2010
50’s diner - modeling progress
in Realistic 50's diner for film productionI’ve modeled all the smaller objects that is necessary for the diner. Most of the other objects
are done aswell, I post a picture of those before friday.
I think I will be done with the modeling a couple of days before schedule, which is great.
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Skinning the head
in Animation friendly character rig with lip-syncI have started to skin the head and made a corrective blend-shape for the open jaw.
Taking Olles advise, i made a new topology for the neck. I should have less problem with deformation now.
New mesh and some skinning:
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Tuesday, February 02, 2010
Peasant Village - Meat Snake Rig
in Peasant Village, Visual effects in live actionI actually finished the rig last week, but had some problems with Vimeo not accepting my videos. Anyways, here is a short video demonstration of it.
In the final scene, the Meat Snake will be lying in the snow, moving just a little as if it is about to die. Then our hero (the Doctor!) will poke it a couple of times and then pick it up to examine it further. Two shots, one for the introduction and poking of the snake (I’ll poke a white water balloon in the snow) and one shot where I lift it and toss it around a bit.
In the second shot we’ll use some home made contraption that will make the object tracking easier. We didn’t think too much about this the last time and ended up with some crappy thing we constructed out in the snow…
It was pretty much just a toilet roll with some screws, dots and lines. Though it probably would have worked OK we forgot that it also needed to match the weight of the snake…
Here’s the video. You might want to view it in HD to see the comments. Parts of it are a bit laggy, but it’s actually Maya lagging when I’m running Stretchmesh, a Wrap deformer and two Hair solvers simultaneously.
Peasant Village - Meat Snake (the rig) from Peasant Village on Vimeo.
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Game Character Creation
in Game Character CreationWell i forgot to upload some pictures of the modell last week! So i upload the progress of the model now that i’vee done so far 
I can say it was very hard to model the face because i havent’t have the right modeling technique, but now i’vee come to understand a bit how i’am going to do it…
Progress report 2
in 3D Environment DesignHave been modelling like crazy. The entire neighbourhood is near complete, with houses and backgrounds. I’m going to put some cars in there aswell.
I have also created a script for my scenes, deciding angles and cameramovements. Simply so I don’t have to model and texture anything that won’t be shown on film anyway.
Here are some screenshots from the weeks work. A frontview of the house, a SWAT van, etc. More to come.
Animation Test
in Beyond the FrameI’ve tried making a quick rig and animating the horse a little bit, partially to see how well it deforms and also to see how it works with nCloth. The nCloth didn’t work quite as well as one might have hoped, the constraints are doing some things I don’t want them to do but I haven’t tried it all too exessively. anywho… here’s the film
Monday, February 01, 2010
Mudbox - Maya workflow
in Animation friendly character rig with lip-syncI have been looking into how to get the work-flow from maya to mudbox and back to work as i want it to.
By using the FBX format to set up blend shapes that are created in mudbox on the base-mesh and then exporting them back to maya, it will automatically set up the blend-shape network for you (the basic setup).
By using this system i can crank out more blend-shapes then before.
Mudbox also has some nice features to flip blend-shapes between sides of the sculpted face.
I have also sculpted the cranium to make sure i wont deform the face in an unrealistic way.
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Level Editor Specification
in Framework for Game Engine ToolsIn last week Floh sent me a mail with specifications, kudos to him for taking his time to help me.
A quick summary: Focus should be on extensibility both of the C# application in the form of specialized editor panels, and for Nebula 3 in the form of extensible command protocol (based of XML) and command handler classes (will be very basic and require implementation for new projects). Planning an undo function is important right from the beginning as it is hard to apply later.
They’ve indentified a core set of features:
1. Camera Navigation, 2. Create Object, 3. Duplicate Object, 4. Object Placement, 5. Object Deletion, 6. Some sort of generic object attribute editor panel.
A standard for providing category and attributes of available objects is needed - Nebula 3 got a database with tables that might be used - and simple wrapper classes for the C# editor to use.
“It would be great if there exists some sort of standard framework to implement new functionality. Such an extension would consist of three parts: a set of new XML commands, the C# side (UI stuff and creating commands) and the C++ side which handles the received commands.” I’ll aim to design and implement this, along with a how-to-use guide.
What he didn’t mention is a way to store and load levels though don’t think it’s optional for a level editor. I’ll include it as one of the core features and probably implement it by using XML.
I will prioritize the above first and focus on core functionality only in order to get the most important parts done first, for example only including “fps-controls” for the camera view and exclude maya-controls for later, or implementing only simple object placement functions for movement and rotation. I will do this because it is quite easy to get stuck developing one single feature further and further only because you know how and you want to.
Therefore I’ll set up two lists for the features above, one primary which covers all core functionality and a secondary for extras that give a more “whole” framework. This will be done at friday, along with a wishlist of features (excluded in this project).
Aside from that I’ve studied other commercial level editors in order to find other common properties:
The Unreal Development Kit level editor
The Hammer Editor by Valve
Spark Editor by Unknown Worlds
As well as the level editor for Farcry (thanks to Hirche).
I know that all those editors are mainly for first-person-shooters, but some of their common functionalities will probably be useful for any 3D game which Nebula 3 is intended for (these will be added to the secondary prio list):
- At least one (usually three) extra different views of the level, usually viewing the level in wireframe along an axis
- A grid with an editable size
- Snap-to functionality, objects with other objects and objects with grid
As well as some other features I will have to exclude from this project because of time limits: Basic shapes and colors, vertex altering, browsing and editing object textures.
In the rest of this week I’ll test exactly how to implement its core parts and find out possible additional features, and have most features defined and prioritized in a excel document by friday.
EDIT: Completed project plan with editor features.
Finding locations
in Creature Modeling for Film Production
I’m trying to find the right location for the film clip.
So far this is the place I’m thinking of. The tortoise is supposed to stand there in the little jungle, in the middle of a hall. It’s a lost and misplaced turtle…
What do you think?
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Report week 2
in 3D Portal RenderingThis week have been all about understanding the nebula 3 render system so that implementation of the portal system can be started. Different tests have been made to see what can be used from the nebula engine and what things that has to be created.