Rigging & Tool Showreel

In a previous blogpost I was talking about some of the work I have been doing with tool development but I wanted to also show it in a bit more detail. Here is my new showreel of some of the stuff I have been working on and some personal projects. The reel breakdown is as follows:

00:04 - 00:28 -> Face Rig: Rigging Only. Model etc. provided by Judd Simantov.

00:29 - 00:54 -> Avatar System: Writing Mel tools to streamline pipeline for use in Flash and responsible for integration to Unity. Expanding existing rig. Creation of lowpoly assets as part of a team.

00:55 - 01:05 -> Rendering Tool: Mel-Tool used to streamline rendering of assets for Avatar System in Flash (more in previous blogpost)

01:06 - 01:35 -> Biped Auto- Rigger: Written in Mel featuring dynamic parenting, FK/IK arms and FK/IK  stretchy spine.

01:36 - 02:30 -> Belt Tool & Rig: Tool written in Mel, mentored by Martin Parsons as part of the Move on Up Scheme I was part of.

 

Showreel 2013 from Angelika Aibel on Vimeo.

Tool Development for Avatar Pipeline ...

In the last few months I have been working a bit on the avatar system here at Little Bridge. I am responsible for improving the avatar pipeline and also creating and integrating more assets to the avatar. This involved a lot of restructuring of scene files and some rigging & skinning.

As the avatar assets are not only used in Unity but also in Flash, I needed to come up with a tool which deals with rendering of each single item of the avatar (sometimes in conjuntion with other i.e. bodyparts or the mattes) and also the avatar's bedroom while adhering to different pre-existing naming conventions as different programs needed access to it. I ended up using Mel and automating the rendering process with only the least necessary user input while maintaining as much flexibility as possible. It really paid off...what used to take one person more than a day in rendering off and on could now be done in a few minutes and the renderfarm could do the rest when running it there.

While I was doing this I also added some features to make it easier in Maya itself to change the look of the avatar as this is often needed for renders for marketing material. This makes it a lot more fun to use I think in Maya itself.

I am looking forward to further improving the avatar and the tools that my colleagues use and making it as quick and easy to deal with as possible.

Avatar System used in conjunction with Unity

Update - Mechanical Rigging

I always wanted to see if i can't get the beltrig I create with a script to act a little bit more dynamically and interactive WITHOUT using any dynamic curves....I think I might have found a way :) I wanted a belt around two wheels to react to size changes of the wheels and also distance changes, like you would find with a rubberband I guess.  Hopefully I can get a chance soon to integrate those features into the script i wrote a while ago.

The new manual part of the rig can be seen around 35 seconds in...first there is a recap of the scripted mechanical rig.

Additional features to belt rig -rubberband like behaviour without using dynamics from Angelika Aibel on Vimeo.

Update

The brief of the project has slightly changed...instead of just rigging the beam engine manually, I am trying to use a modular approach to the rigging with scripting to reuse certain parts.

The first part that is being rigged using Mel Scripting, is the part of the beam engine which drives a belt around two wheels. This could be reused for, i.e. tank tracks, bicycle chains etc.

This is still a work in progress but here is a quick update.

WIP - Modular procedural mechanical Rigging from Angelika Aibel on Vimeo.

Beam Engine

My next project is some mechanical rigging- I want to animate a beam engine like the one shown here.

I think it would be an interesting project. At the moment I am trying to figure out how the engine works and try to see differenr ways of rigging different groups of elemts of the engine in order to get a clearer idea of what is required.

I am also trying to come out with a more comprehensive idea of what is needed in the rig to make it the most flexible and user-friendly for animation.

ANY THOUGHTS OR COMMENTS WOULD BE VERY APPRECIATED!

WIP - Procedural Rigging Update

Work In Progress -Procedural Rigging from Angelika Aibel on Vimeo.

WIP - Procedural Rigging Clip

I just wanted to upload a small update on the improved torso rig which I created with Mel Scripting. I am now hoping to add further features.

WIP - Procedural Rigging

Have added a new feature to the procedural rigging to include an FK/IK Spine, enabling independent hip and shoulder movement. Will put up a clip of it working soon.

WORK IN PROGRESS

I am currently trying to wirte a script to help with the rigging process of bipeds and
enable rigging in a procedural way. I have only a basic IK rig so far, but I would
like to add more features such as

- IK/FK switching

- Stretchy limbs/back

- Space Switching/ Dynamic Parenting