Here I am Displaying some of the work from an online rigging workshop I have recently completed.
Part one, which is shown below, focused on building a stable and animator friendly control system including FK, IK, reverse foot, some controls for simplifying hand actions, and some space controllers on the IK hands and feet.
Part two and three has involved the creation of a complete human rig. Part two focused on skin clusters and corrective blend shapes. It also covered an Ik spine system, and equipment rigging. In order to make it a complete rig I also added in Ik-Fk switchable arms, legs, and spine. Part three focused on the face starting with an eye and eyelid control systems. It then moved on to facial expressions and creating the necessary blend shapes and control systems to manage the eyebrows, cheeks, lips, and tongue.
Part four is focused on creature rigging. Below is the completed version of one of the rigs we covered in the course. Possibly the most complicated weight painting I have had to do so far involved the neck and chest of this horse as so many bones effect this one area and must be able to perform a wide range of motions. I think my favorite part of the rig was the three boned leg as the engineering of it was so elegant and so effective.
Geneveve has been a way to polish and expand my rigging knowledge. I am quite partial to rigging and enjoy the complexity of it but due to its complexity there is always so much more for me to master. As my intent with Geneveve was to practice rigging I decided to make her from scratch; starting with some simple character work, and then modeling, UV unwrapping, and finally rigging. Also due to the fact that I am learning and applying my current skills I decided to work on the rig in two phases. Part one has been the body, consisting mainly of the Fk-Ik switch and then a great deal of weight painting. Part two will be the face, and will be mostly blend shapes. I did this because of the different natures of the rigging in the two parts. I also have been building the rig from scratch instead of using some of the preset aspects of Maya. The reason for this is I wanted to have to trouble shoot my own rig. So far, I have learned a great deal and am satisfied with the first phase of the rig.
Above is a simple walk cycle with the Geneveve that I used to test if my rigging was successful. Below is some of my prep-work and then a few examples of how the rig works. In this rig I built Fk and Ik arms and legs with a separate animate-able switch for each. The rest of the body is pretty straight forward, however I did create some special controls within the channel box for the Ik feet.
This project is what our Director Cory McLead liked to call a Rockumetary. It is a virtual reality documentary on the Latvian rock band Pērkons and their roll in the fall of the Soviet Union in Latvia. Below is the official trailer by Boris Opacic.
The first three images are renders of the scenes that I built. The Third image is a courtroom that I designed and Cory then textured with video footage of an important event in the bands history. In order to make it easier to place the final textures I colorized all the separate UVs. The last three images are all assets that I contributed to other scenes. The two things I am probably most proud of are the buildings built from the illustrator designs by Meredith Oberg and the 3D sculpture of Lenin.
The 2D work below is part of the concept work for an animated piece on how diabetes affects the body. The animation is similar to a speculative add but of course it is an informational piece. The green and purple objects on the page are intended to be simple depictions of what some of the hormones in the body may look like. The floating titles on the left will be used in the animation to separate the parts of the animation. The video below is the final animation. As this was a group project and the idea for it was mine I took on the role of the project leader of the two-person team. Also I was in charge of all the texturing and lighting. The texturing was done almost completely with procedural methods. As a result, I learned a great deal, both good and bad, about subsurface scattering, transparent materials, and final gather.
I have been learning two new pieces of software and am using this sword to do it. I started with Maya, modeling a simple medieval sword. I then imported it into Substance Painter to build the the textures. Finally I have been working with the trial version of Redshift render within Maya to create the renders. As you can see the results have been quite satisfactory though I do wish the water mark was a little lest distinct.
With this project I wanted to explore particles with a distinct focus in mind. As particles are usually used for effects I wanted to make something that would be interesting without being overly complicated.
In this project my intent was to model, texture, rig, and animate a human hand and the bones within in three weeks. This turned out to be great deal of work and so though I got everything done I want to take this a whole step further and refine it and then make it into a virtual reality clip that you can look at in 3D. I also want to eventually add the tendons veins arteries and everything else that exists in a hand. My intent is to eventually be able to show injuries and medical problems in a more detailed way by using the abilities of the new virtual reality equipment that is now becoming available.
This project consists of my first explorations in Cinema 4D. The intent of the project was to create a high quality piece within three weeks that would be worthy of my portfolio. As I had never taken the time to explore Cinema 4D I thought that this would be an opportunity to explore and create at the same time.
These renders are part of a medical visualization project that I worked on. The device is a Vena Cava Filter that is made by Bostton Scientific. The device is used to prevent blood clots from getting caught in the lungs and causing a pulminary embolism. For this project I modeled, textured, lit, and animated the insertion of the device.
This was a project in which I was suposed to create a scene that would show off a few detailed models. on the right you can see the wireframes of the objects that are the focus of the scene. The only parts of the ship’s cabin that are not my work are a number of the background items. However, I did retexture most of them, as the quality was not to the level that I desired. I imported the musket, the picture, and the bottle and then retextured them. I also imported the books but some of them didn’t need retexturing, and finally I imported the music box and glasses, which were complete.
I made this model from reference of a friend of mine. This model was also done in 3ds Max using the joan of arc or polygon modeling method.
