Kitchen 2.0

Second time around the kitchen scene! I'm a little more content with this one. It feels more realistic, and I was able to get a better understanding of how to use lights to sculpt the range of values in a scene. Hopefully the composition is a little stronger as well - I slightly altered the camera angle.

As I worked, I took shots at various steps. Here's the basic progression:

1 Directional light + background color:

2 Skylight + Window bounce

3. Floor and Ceiling Bounces. Shine added to bottle, globe changed to white.

4. Wall bounces + Effects light on bottle. Adjusted camera. Rotated fan, moved bottle, chairs, changed globe back to grey.

5. Corner fill lights, transparent phongs on bottle and globe. Lots of adjustments to the size, intensity and drop off of these images were made at this point.

Voila! What do you think?

Rigging has Begun

As with most characters I do, proper rigging is my most important step. It can sometimes take me weeks just to get everything flowing and moving proper. As always, the better the rigging the easier it will be to do smoother and more believable animation later on.

Today I've simply begun the joint rigging process.





I have though already been finalizing the blendshapes that will morph the face. I absolutely consider this part of the rigging process. If the blendshapes do not work well with one another than my facial animation and lip syncing could be in jeopardy.

As for what this will hopefully all look like in the end? Well I did a quick mock up of a simple concept.

Fixed file link

fixed the link should work now :)

Share and Share alike.

Hey guys I'm sure a lot of you are interested in character animation, however there isn't a lot of free facial models rigged for use. For those interested in facial animation, I'm posted a head of mine, rigged. It includes blendshapes. To be honest this is an old version of a head I completed a while back, This is kinda the raw file with the blendshapes pretty much done just in need of tweaking. I recently completed the file and was about to delete this version of it, but figured that I did put some work into it and maybe you guys could get some use out of it. I just did it to teach myself facial animation by using techniques from Jason Ospia's "Stop Staring", and though the final file differs greatly from this one, you can still probably crank out a semi decent lip sync with it, So you may use this as you need just not for commercial work.

Enjoy, really rip it apart. try making an interface for it, I have and am not posting that one haha, thats for personal use :) so enjoy and happy maya-ing

new file

included are:

Head model
eye model
eyelid weights for eye rotation
expression driven blendweights for teeth and neck fat
18 blendshapes for the teeth(tounge) and face

P.S: to open this file in maya 2009 or earlier go to file>open and click on the box next to it. click the check box that says "ignore version" so open fine:) Also, the eyes are currently constrained to empties. So by rotating the head the eyes stay straight on, Kinda a cool effect. delete if you want or just rotate the empty (though this file doesn't have the eyelid expressions I made)

Oh well run with it!

Fall 2009: ARIL 360

This blog is now entering its second year with the return of ARIL 360: MOTION, LIGHT, TEXTURE, MAPPING. I would like to welcome to this blog annex digital workbook the students taking this class with me this fall. Looking forward to seeing your brilliant renders!

MetroCAF 2009 Call for Participation video

Music: "Wake up" by bluebottle (ccMixter.org)

Wolf and Pig

Another great example of a creative person with too much time on his (her?) hands: "At first I photographed stop motion　animation. And I displayed the photographs in my room and photographed it again.　Enjoy a connection with the world of the room and the world in the photograph" (via BoingBoing)